quaker vs kashi

30Jan08

For a long time, my chewy granola bar of choice was the Quaker Oatmeal Chocolate Chip, with less sugar. During finals week, my friend offered me a Kashi bar, cherry dark chocolate. I accepted it, although with some hesitation because I assumed that it would be higher in calorie than I would have liked. For someone who eats things of the same size at the same rate, regardless of the calorie density, I try to stay away from the higher calorie option, even if it has more protein or less sugar, etc. Basically I go for the one that is the biggest with the least number of calories.

Surprisingly, the Kashi bar had only 120 calories, compared to the 100 in a Quaker bar, plus more protein. But the best part was that the texture of the Kashi bar made it difficult to just chomp into, so I actually took my time and ate the bar a lot slower than I would have my normal bar. Being a big fan of dark chocolate over milk chocolate also tipped the scale in Kashi’s favor.

When school started again, I started buying the Kashi bars, except when last week, all the Cherry Dark Chocolates were sold out. I looked at the other options- Pumpkin Flaxseed and Trailmix, but their calorie counts were a bit higher- 140. I could eat almost another half of a Quaker bar for those 40 calories! So I did not buy the other flavors and went back to my normal Quaker bars. Upon eating one, I was surprised to realized how sweet they were compared to Kashi, even at only 6 grams of sugar. And now that I actually looked up the nutrition content of the Kashi bar, it has 8 grams. Sure doesn’t taste like it.

Either way, I think they’re both great options. I tend to treat the Quaker one as a sweet treat because it tastes like it, whereas I’d pick the Kashi bar for feeling full/ refueling purposes.

Filed under: snacks   |  Leave a Comment