Epic Bars Review
I first heard about these through Mark’s Daily Apple when he offered them as a prize for one of his contents.
Since I’m on the road so often I was eager to try these out since they seemed like the perfect paleo snack.
Grass fed, gluten free, preservative free, antibiotic free, hormone free, low glycemic, dairy free, and low glycemic. The ingredient lists are also filled with items that I recognize and can pronounce.
The company even lists ‘ketogenic’ on its website. Needless to say I couldn’t wait to try them.
They offer three different animals, each with their own distinct flavor:
– Bison: Bacon + Cranberry
– Beef: Habanero + Cherry
– Turkey: Almond + Cranberry
In my fervor I almost went all in and ordered a box of 12 of the Bison bar. I’m glad I didn’t. The company actually offers a sample pack that lets you try each flavor. Since these bars are relatively pricey at a little under $3.00 per unit, I wanted to make sure I found something I definitely liked before committing to a box of 12.
The packaging it came in looked very sleek. Upon opening, the bars weren’t very pretty to look at… but I didn’t buy these for their appearance. I bought them because I wanted a convenient snack I could carry with me to eat on the road which would taste decent and help me stay ketogenic.
After trying each bar, the first thing I noticed was how dry they were. They have a flaky consistency and made my mouth immediately feel like I needed a drink of water before I could swallow a bite. This was pretty consistent with both the turkey and bison epic bars. The beef bar was slighty more moist and therefore easier to swallow.
I tried to show with this picture on the left how flaky and dry the bar was.
In terms of taste, they were all essentially mix of sweet and savory. I couldn’t really distinguish the cranberry from the almond in the turkey bar or the cranberry from the bacon in the bison bar. The beef bar was a little spicy due to the habanero.
I would rate the bison and turkey bars a 3-4 out of 10 in taste. Of the three my favorite was the beef bar which I would rate a 5 out of 10.
My wife at one point during a flight was hungry enough to take a bite of each of these bars… and she almost gagged. Now I should preface this by saying that she has a more sensitive palate than I do and is a pickier eater than I am. When I asked her how she would rate these bars, she emphatically said 1 out of 10!
One thing I wish I paid more attention to when before buying these was to look more closely at the nutrition information. There are actually a fair number of carbs from sugar in each of these Epic Bars (Turkey – 6gm, Bison – 8gm, Beef – 9gm).
Since I’m currently experimenting with the Carb Nite Solution which requires me to keep my carb intake below 30 gm, there were too many carbs in these bars for me. Eating a beef bar would already take up a third of my daily carb allotment.
Ultimately I don’t think I would purchase these again due to the price (~$3.00 per bar), taste (not something I would look forward to eating), and carbs (I’d rather eat something I really enjoyed with my daily carb allowance).
This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t pick these up since your tastes may very well be different from mine… or my wife’s. There are plenty of positive reviews out there for these bars (here, here, here), but I think it would be reasonable to proceed slowly and at least try out the sampler pack.
I hope you enjoyed my Epic Bars Review.
Although I can’t say I’ve researched it heavily, I’ve not come across any low carb bars that pass the carb test, taste test, and healthy ingredients test. It looks like these only got 1 of the 3. I usually have to just go with a bunch of nuts on the plane, and I bring some nuts to eat too.
I recently found something that sort of foots the bill which I’ve enjoyed recently.
Will do a review soon!
The wrappers do look pretty slick but the bars look truly disgusting…
You should look into Quest Bars, low carb and 20g protein and about 7-10g fat.
I’m not sure about the paleo qualified but their an awesome snack, it’s all relative anyway.
Thanks for pointing me out to Quest Bars. I wrote briefly about my past experience with them here, where I tested my blood sugars every 15 min after eating a quest bar… and they raised my glucose up to the 150s. This never failed no matter which flavor I ate.
So at least in me there’s something in the Quest bars that really spike my glucose. But they tasted pretty good.. much better than the Epic Bars I have to admit!
It was probable the 20g sugar but that shouldn’t matter because the 17g of fiber cancels out the sugar and all your body metabolizes is 3g sugar.
It takes about 30 min. to spike insulin to it’s highest after you eat sugar so maybe the 3g did it for you.
I know I’m really carb sensitive and most the time I eat a cup of white rice it puts me to sleep.
Also, the quest bars do use sugar alcohols they just don’t count when you eat them because your liver metabolizes them and they don’t cause an insulin spike.
They use: http://www.questproteinbar.com/ingredients
If you’re not a diabetic sugar/insulin spikes don’t matter anyway.
If you try them again put one in the microwave for about 5-10 sec. they taste better.
The whole ‘net carbs’ thing is a little suspect to me. Some people have found online that the best way to count them is to actually take the total carbs and divide it by 2, because the sugar alcohols have been found to elicit an insulin response. Not in everyone… but in some people, and unfortunately I am one of them.
While I’m on this low carb protocol it’s something that I’m still going to stay away from… but in the future I may reconsider it!
So I tried my first Epic Bar today. I had the Bison Cherry Bacon. I found that mine was soft, moist, and about as tasty any jerky product minus the overly smokey flavor. As a quick snack I would definitely eat them again. I could taste the cranberry but the bacon not so much. I bought mine at my local grocery. They were 2 for 5 dollars still a bit pricey but about the same as many protein bars. I wonder if the ones you got were older or something. Mine were not dry all.
I’m glad you liked yours!
Yeah, maybe they’ve refined their process in the interim… but I’m too scared off already! Once bitten twice shy! Also too many carbs for me…