Eating Kind bars is the new go-to munchable. They are simply gratifying and easy to access, making them ideal when you have a random craving. But what are Kind Bars? And are Kind Bars keto?
The ketogenic lifestyle has gained widespread popularity, and it offers a variety of food items to choose from. Meal replacement shakes and protein bars are two options that work well with the diet. It is now simpler than ever to begin a healthy way of living.
It is essential to investigate the components of the items you purchase to make sure they are compatible with your eating habits. Not all keto-friendly products may work for your diet.
Kind Bars
Tasty Kind bars are recognized as vegan, mostly organic and without gluten. They are constructed utilizing natural elements such as almonds, cashews, and coconut.
Kind Bars come from the idea that doing nice things should be something that we incorporate into all that we do. This is depicted in the volunteer work that the Kind Foundation does to back activities near and dear to them.
The Kind Foundation has undertaken numerous projects with the aim of aiding those who have requirements all over the world, ranging from supplying pure water to those who are suffering to supporting children with after-school activities in their local environment.
They back numerous philanthropic organizations and initiatives that educate kids on the significance of nutrition and eating habits in addition to the significance of being considerate.
The story behind Kind Bars is very inspiring. The corporate values of the company contain a strong commitment to a social purpose. According to Daniel Lubetzky, the head of Kind, the firm endeavors to unite people from various communities and countries that are in contention and help demolish prejudicial preconceptions with the aid of commerce.
Upon founding his corporation in 2004, even with a limited sum of money, he had the foresight to build an enterprise that would endure and make the world a better place by aiding humanity.
He began by giving his goods to his peers and neighbors, and they immediately were immensely popular with everyone who sampled them. He was the creator, head of the business, and head of quality control, all combined into one individual! He was engaged in a multitask of baking, peddling, and advertising his own product.
Kind bars and Keto
Kind Bars are most popular for being highly nutritious. Each bar holds 206 calories and just 10 grams of sugar. However, although Kind Bars can be a great choice when you want something sweet that is advantageous for your health, they are not compatible with a ketogenic diet. These contain a high amount of sugar.
They contain lots of carbohydrates due to their major component, rice flour, which ought to be eliminated on a ketogenic diet. If you are attempting to adhere to a ketogenic diet, you should search for bars comprised mainly of sound fats as opposed to carbs and sugars.
They hold many non-keto sweeteners such as honey and maple syrup, which don’t fit in with a ketogenic diet. The high carbohydrate content from almond and sunflower seed fat renders them unsuitable for ketogenic diets.
Additionally, these snacks have a mix of almonds, peanuts, cashews, and coconuts, which are all uncertain whether they are compatible with the keto-diet or low carb lifestyle. Kind Bars are not suitable for a ketogenic diet, since they contain highly processed oils such as palm kernel oil.
The Kind Bar that is created with maple-pumpkin seeds and sea salt is the most nutritious of the lineup. It has the lowest amounts of carbohydrates and sugar. It possesses the greatest concentration of protein of all the Kind Bars.
It has no more than 6g of sugar and 23g of carbs. This bar is the best choice for those on a keto diet as it provides 3 grams of protein and 2.5 grams of dietary fiber.
Including Kind Bars in Keto Diet
It all comes down to what you are hoping to achieve and how devoted you are to sticking to a ketogenic diet. It is acceptable to consume Kind Bars every now and then, as long as you ensure you stick to the recommended portion size.
The kcal count of each Kind Bar is around 200, and the sugar levels vary between 5 and 10 grams.
If you are truly a big fan of Kind Bars, there are ways to work them into your keto lifestyle. The majority of the components in Kind Bars are derived from natural and whole foods, making it an excellent selection for those who monitor what they eat.
Since they contain only natural components and lack any synthetic elements or additives, they are also good for you. Their items do not contain any genetically modified organisms or hydrogenated oils.
The sugar and carb content of these items is fairly high, but they also pack a good amount of protein and beneficial fats which help keep you feeling satisfied for a prolonged period of time.
If you wish, you can have a Kind Bar as a substitute for a meal on the day that you choose to eat it. You can decide to have a limited number of servings. Avoid taking other high-carb foods that day. This will assist in maintaining your glucose level consistent and aid you in adhering to your nutritional requirements for the day.
If you have a Kind Bar and then follow up with a carb-heavy dish, your blood sugar increases, possibly taking you out of ketosis and stimulating your appetite.
Kind Bars consumption on Keto
When beginning a keto diet, you determine your daily nutritional necessities depending on your existing weight and desired weight.
You can use this to determine the amount of calories you should have daily to achieve your target weight in a safe manner. You should consume more fatty foods in order to lower the amount of carbohydrates your body takes in.
A limit of fifty grams or fewer of carbohydrates should be consumed daily while following a ketogenic diet. The limit of net carbs per week you can consume is up to 300 grams, depending on the outcomes you are hoping to achieve.
Consulting a doctor or nutritionist is a good way to determine the ideal amount of carbohydrates that should be consumed daily based on your dietary plans and any medical issues.
Once you have calculated what your caloric requirements are, and how many grams of carbohydrates you would like to have in your daily diet, you can determine how many Kind Bars you should eat. Once you have figured out what you are looking for in a bar, you can pick the Kind Bar that best suits your own personal desires.
For those starting out on the ketogenic diet, it would be wise to begin with having one Kind Bar a day and slowly increasing the number of servings if permissible by the individual’s calorie allowance.
FDA’s observation about Kind Bars
In order to discern if Kind bars are healthy, it is important to first establish what is meant by the term “healthy”. This is what the FDA has to say about Kind’s declarations of healthiness. In 2015, the United States Food and Drug Administration wrote a nine-page cautionary note to the production company behind Kind bars.
In it, they claimed four bars, in particular, did not meet the FDA’s requirements for being “healthy”:
- Kind Fruit & Nut Almond & Apricot
- Kind Fruit & Nut Almond & Coconut
- Kind Plus Peanut Butter Dark Chocolate + Protein
- Kind Plus Dark Chocolate Cherry Cashew + Antioxidants
Therefore, Kind producers were prohibited from utilizing the word “healthy” on the labeling of the four bars. It should be noted, however, that one should think carefully about it since what the FDA considers to be “healthy” is debatable.
To be approved as a healthy food item by the FDA, the amount of saturated fat must be no more than 1 gram per serving and no more than 15% of its caloric count can come from saturated fat.
It is not permissible for nuts, coconuts, and avocados to be described as ‘healthy’ since their fat content surpasses fifteen percent of their total calories.
As you can observe in the detailed overview of good versus bad fats, saturated fats are beneficial as long as they are obtained from appropriate sources including the three foods listed in the guide.
The Problem With Kind Bars
There is not an issue with the amount of saturated fat in Kind bars. The crux of the matter is the quantity of sugar substitutes in these snacks. Shown below are the tags for five distinct bars picked at random from the most popular lines offered by the Kind company to demonstrate the contents of each label.
1. No Sugar Added Kind Bars
The “no sugar added” statement on the label is somewhat deceptive.
No additional sugars were used in the making of this food. But that doesn’t mean it’s free from sugars. This Mango, Apple, and Chia Kind bar is actually quite the opposite.
A single bar contains 21 grams of sugar and 31 grams of total carbohydrates. For those of you who aren’t familiar with how much a gram of sugar is, a teaspoon of sugar equals 4 grams. This drinking establishment has more than five teaspoons of sugar.
No matter if one follows a keto lifestyle or not, it isn’t healthy for one small snack to contain such a large amount of sugar. It’s similar to enjoying a carbonated beverage or a sugary snack – that is even more damaging in some scenarios.
It’s great that you’re able to articulate the components of the dish – mango, apple, and chia seeds recognizeable to many. Nevertheless, having this bar still consists of too much sugar for one person to eat at once, even though the sweets are from fruit.
This bar will drastically elevate your blood sugar levels, resulting in an inevitable ‘crash’ soon thereafter which will leave you longing for more sugary and carbohydrate-rich foods.
2. Low Glycemic Index Kind Bars
The glycemic index is a system for determining the amount of blood sugar rise caused by a particular food. Meals that have a lot of carbohydrates cause your body’s glycemic load to be high, and thus are accurately identified as such. They enter your body quickly and cause a sharp increase in your blood sugar levels.
Low glycemic foods don’t act this way.
Your insulin has less fluctuations as your blood sugar increases and decreases at a slower rate. Try to consume the foods with the least amount of glycemic effect to keep your health in the best condition.
Is eating the allegedly “low glycemic” Kind bar secure?
Again, not so fast.
This Kind bar, containing Almond and Coconut, has 5 grams of sugar in it. This bar has less sugar than the prior one, at 14 grams, which is still equivalent to more than a teaspoon.
Envision consuming a single teaspoon of sugar all at once. You wouldn’t imagine something like this being included, yet that is exactly what you receive with this bar. Contemplate what effects a teaspoon of sugar has on your blood sugar levels.
One more thing to consider: when you inspect it further, you’ll find that there are 5 grams of sugar and 4 grams of sugar alcohols. This means that the bar only contains 1 gram of sugar that occurs organically, and the extra 4 grams come from a combination of honey, sugar, and glucose syrup.
This bar also contains two other enticing components: soy lecithin and chicory root fiber. Chicory root fiber is a form of fiber derived from a plant that your body cannot process. It is economical, does not contain any calories, and has an innately pleasant flavor.
This is why producers usually put chicory root fiber in their bars – it is an economical way to incorporate lots of fiber into each bar while also adding some flavor without any calories.
The bad news is that, since it is actually a type of prebiotic fiber, the bacteria in your digestive system may consume and ferment it, causing a production of gas as a consequence of this natural activity.
That’s why both large and small does of chicory root fiber may cause:
- Gas and flatulence
- Bloating
- Abdominal pain and cramping
If you are prone to a delicate stomach or have been diagnosed with IBS, ingesting even the slightest amount of food can cause your ailments to get worse. So, is this Kind bar genuinely healthy?
Between the added sugar and cheap filler, probably not. Beware of the next two spots on the list as they can be deceptive, especially with the presence of artificial sweeteners, added elements, and extenders.
3. High Protein, Fiber, and Sugar
You may feel compelled to try a protein bar such as this one in an effort to satisfy your daily protein needs, but it is not necessary for a ketogenic diet.
Do not be deceived by the 12 grams of protein and disregard the other numbers. There are 12 grams of protein, 8 grams of sugar (equal to 2 teaspoons) and 12 grams of net carbs in the serving.
If you are attempting to consume 20 grams of carbs a day, this is in excess of 50 percent of that quantity. It is not advised to consume the same volume of net carbs as you do protein in a single meal.
The same happens with this high-fiber version:
In exchange for only 6 grams of fiber, you must sacrifice 11 grams of sugar.
A person can acquire an equivalent amount of fiber and no added sugar if they consume 1 1/2 cups of broccoli. This snack bar from Kind includes generous amounts of dried fruit such as dried cherries, raisins, and cranberries in addition to traditional sweeteners like honey, glucose syrup, and sugar. Talk about a sugar bomb.
4. Bars With 5 Grams of Sugar or Fewer Still Aren’t Healthy
For Kind bars that contain 5 grams of sugar or less, the added sugars are primarily composed of three components: sugar, honey, and glucose syrup.
You’re referring to an ample amount of sugar, equating to 9 grams of carbohydrates in a single snack. This is generally asked in discussions regarding Kind bars and a ketogenic diet.
