Diabetes Community

Reporting back on the Peanut Butter Chocolatey Chip Meal Bars.

I have been allergic to peanuts for a long time - peanut butter has been out of the picture forever it seems like. Anyway I tried the bars for 2 reasons. 1) I wanted to see if I am still allergic to peanuts. 2) I want to lose the 10lbs I gained since my neck surgeries in June and Sept.

Not allergic to the bars - Yeah. They do not spike my sugars - 2 hrs after eating 1 my sugar was 95. I will be buying more of the shakes and meal bars.

Hey Deb, I'll ping Dr. D this week and see if he's available to chime in on this discussion!

H

teddybear--the shake contains no lactose. In case anyone is interested--this shake of four boxes or cans contains (for $5.99) Water, milk protein isolate, evaporated can juice, Erythrotol (which is (2R, 35)-butane (yummers, butane!!)-1,2,3,4 tetraol which is a sugar alcohol and a food additive, canola oil, cocoa, Natural flavor, gum arabic, Fructose,cellulose gum, potassium phosphates, soy lecithin,salt,carrageenen, cellulose gum, REBA ( rebaudioside A) which is an isolated component of the stevia plant and some manufactured vitamins and minerals.

So for $1.50 per can or box the only whole food you get besides water, listed as the first ingredient and which you can get from your faucet, is cocoa and a little salt. Even the canola oil is a highly processed oil. Everything else is processed or extracted or manufactured and are mostly additives. If you are diabetic you are already sick. Why would you put anything into your body except wholesome whole foods?

Dolores

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erythritol

Maybe Dr D can shed some light on this subject. You seem to have a negative approach to everyone you replied to so far especially to teddybear.

Yes. I would really like to see Dr. Dansinger shed some light on this subject. According to the publicity from NBCUniversal consummer products, the assistance of Dr. Dansinger was critical in developing these bars and shakes. Their publicity blurbs have Dr. Dansinger saying that the shakes and bars are for people who want to harness the power of natural foods and ingredients to maintain a healthy body weight, stay strong and live life to the fullest. He says that people will find them to be a satisfying and practical way to help them meet their health goals.

I thought I was being negative about a 190 calorie highly processed, manufactured food which is no substitute for 190 calories of whole food, not to teddybear. If you have fruits and vegetables in your house there is no need to use these products and if you are traveling, you can carry along a piece of fruit or some cherry tomatoes and/or baby carrots or my own favorite to carry on airplanes is 1/2 a whole wheat pita (without fat in the ingredients) filled with some homemade hummus (made with garbanzos and white kidney beans and no fat). About the same number of calories as the bars and shakes but real food.

Dolores

Dr Dansinger there is a reply on here bascially saying the shakes are not good for us. Could you please shed some light on this. thank you very much. Deb

Dear Dolores,
Thank you for sharing your important thoughts about the Biggest Loser bars. I indeed had a lot to do with the formulation of these bars.

Everybody agrees that whole foods are best for health. Fruits, vegetables, healthy proteins, etc. Having said that, it is not the people who strictly eat mainly whole foods that are generally struggling to overcome obesity. The rest of us are fighting a very challenging daily battle to find an eating strategy that is strict enough to prevent health problems, but free enough and enjoyable enough to actually follow consistently. In principle we should all just snack on whole foods, but in the real world I'm often trying to find ways to help people with obesity and type 2 diabetes to eat less junk food, restaurant food, candy, etc. Helping people find practical ways to navigate this challenge is part of what I must do in order to fight diabetes and obesity.

Why do people even want protein bars and shakes? Why not just eat an apple or raisins or a piece of fish? I wish I could actually get people to do that, but some people want ready-to-eat snacks or "meal replacements" that will satisfy hunger and taste like chocolate etc. Should we ignore this consumer demand and say protein bars have no potential role, or should we take a middle ground and try to make something that is actually going to help people adhere to a moderate-calorie eating strategy? Furthermore, medical research studies consistently and convincingly demonstrate that such shakes and bars help people achieve and sustain weight loss. Therefore I believe it is important to have "mixed feelings" about this category of processed foods. They represent a middle ground between whole foods versus candy bars etc.

When Biggest Loser and Walgreens invited me to join their collaborative efforts to provide folks who want protein bars and shakes with better options, I saw it as a meaningful way to help improve on what is already being purchased by many consumers. We worked hard to make products that are "all natural", without artificial ingredients, with the minimal amount of processed ingredients that will allow the product to be simultaneously tasty, healthy, affordable, and economically viable.

The bars are mainly made of dried fruit and nuts. They have soy protein, natural sweeteners (stevia) and natural flavoring such as cocoa. These bars are about as "clean" as you can get and still have a viable product. I'm pretty happy with the way they came out.

The shakes are made of milk protein, canola oil, natural flavorings like chocolate or vanilla, and some natural gums and fibers to provide body. They are sweetened with natural rather than artificial sweeteners, with no more than the minimum amout of sugar necessary to make an acceptably tasting product. The shakes are about as "clean" as you can get and still have a viable product. It was challenging to get it as good as we got it. Keeping the sugar low and the taste good was a major challenge that I pushed and pushed until we got it right.

I learned a lot in the process about why it is so hard to make processed food healthy. We should all stick mainly to whole foods, but for occasions when that is not realistic, we've got these "middle ground" products that are not ideal, but not so bad either. I stand by what I said: "the shakes and bars are for people who want to harness the power of natural foods and ingredients to maintain a healthy body weight, stay strong and live life to the fullest...people will find them to be a satisfying and practical way to help them meet their health goals."

Michael Dansinger, MD




There is no clear formula for the optimal bar or shake. It would be easier if shelf stability

1. Natural. Arsenic is natural. White bread is natural. If there are natural flavorings in a product (say banana flavoring), food processors are not going to mash up lots of bananas and extract the chemical that makes the flavoring, they are going to make them in machinery designed by chemical engineers to make chemicals. Manufacturers have the habit of calling something natural just because it is chemically wrenched from real food. I already wrote of the ingredients in the chocolate shake. Harnessing any power from this stuff is highly unlikely.

2. I do not have time to do calculations for all the products, but the chocolate shake is about 25% protein and about 28% fat. So you could just as well call it a fat shake as well as a protein shake. To be more accurate you could call it a sugar shake because it contains about 35% sugar. I am surprised that anyone who will not eat a small potato will eat something with 35% sugar. I calculated one of the bars and it comes out to 22% protein, 25% fat and 36% sugar.

3. The fiber in at least the bar above is corn fiber. Tossing in some isolated fiber outside the food matrix does not have the same benefit, if it has any at all, as eating a high fiber food. Nutritionists pretty much agree on this.

4.The protein in the food is an isolate--a highly manufactured product that goes through an extensive manufacturing process to free it from the original food. No one should confuse a protein isolate with protein from real food. That is why lactose intolerant people can eat it. In they bar above, there is whey. I forget if it isolate or concentrate. If it is concentrate lactose intolerant people can't eat it.

5.Yes, shakes and bars have been shown to help people lose weight. But what happens when you go off what must be a tiresome shake and bar diet? People regain. Just like Kirstie (whoever) gained the weight back on Jenny Craig or Nutrisystem or whatever. If you don't learn to eat properly shakes and bars won't help.

6. I do not know what you mean by keeping the product "clean".

7. I have read lots of different opinions on what is the optimal diabetes diet and have never read that anyone, either low carb or low fat proponents recommend dried fruit. It is higher in calories and sugar than the whole fruit. Yet that is what is in the bars.

8. While everyone will have a different opinion about this, it is my own opinion that a processed food item containing 63% fat and sugar and 25% protein is being marketed to make people believe they are getting something healthful. If they had an advertisement that said--highly recommended by Joe the plumber --would anyone buy it? It didn't take a marketing genius to know that a doctor, and one who is familiar to at least some diabetics, will make people draw the conclusion that these products are good for diabetics or others. I do not have any of this stuff. Does it say on the label, "Dr. Dansinger would rather you ate whole foods?"

9. To talk about a middle ground is just another way of saying you can have your penny and your cake. You can't. Everyone falls off the diet wagon of his choice occasionally, no matter if it is low carb, low fat, high protein or anything else. But to believe you are in no danger from making these snacks a regular part of your diet is foolish. Do you think the manufacturer can make money if people don't consume large quantities of this stuff?

10. I do concede that if people have diabetes and are losing or maintaining weight, are not on meds, have no complications and are not getting worse and having their sugars rise and are eating these processed food like things, then their diets including these bars and shakes are doing the trick. To each his own. I personally don't think I could "live life to the fullest" eating something that comes off the assembly line.

Dolores

Valid points. While I do not use "protein bars or shakes" on a regular basis, I do on occasion-when in need of an easily transportable snack that I won't worry about spoilage, when doing a lot of exercise or walking where an apple may be inconvenient. When I feel a need for higher calories during strenuous exercise-kayak racing etc. When making purchases of these bars, as I usually don't do shakes, I look for the nutritional breakdown, and the fiber free sugars included in the carb listing. Then I look at the ingredient list. I look for a short list, where sugars are not listed first or even in the top third. I look for ingredients I can recognize, and I look for proteins that I can recognize. I also am not excited about bars that list sugars and other sweeteners in manners that hide their actual position in the nutrient table-ex evaporated cane syrup, fructose, sucrose, syrups and honeys. Picking a good bar for these emergency situations is really tough. How often do I use them-maybe 10 times a year.

So, betaquartz, the manufacturer isn't getting rich on you. On rare occasions I have had my blood sugar go low enough after exercise that I feel shaky and wobbly. Very rarely I carry a small individual pack of raisins and sit down somewhere and eat a very small portion at a time and wait to see if the shaky feeling goes away and if it doesn't have another few raisins. Like you I only do this if I know I will not be able to get to my usual food quickly. And like you I rely on the convenience of carrying a small box of something that will raise my blood sugar quickly. A few days ago at the gym I could hardly stand up after getting off the exercise bike after a long session. When I got home my blood sugar was 57. Too low.

However, these bars are being marketed as a good addition to a regular diet. l do not see the need for the shakes at all since it isn't the sort of thing you would carry around easily and at home you could have plenty of good snacks.

Dolores

Dolores, I posted a few days ago that I carry a 4 grams gluco tab in a little tiny "pill" plastic bag pinned to a shoelace on my gym shoes. It will raise my blood sugar about 20 points. I crunch it 1/2 hour into my hour gym session, and usually end up about the same reading as when I started. Note, I also eat a snack just before starting. Without this extra food, I have dropped 46 points in one workout.

Yes, true, uh-huh, yup, right...I agree with all...


But, the reality is, processed, manufactured food is here to stay. In other words, you won't see Buffet pulling Berkshire Hathaway out of foods, anytime soon.

Does that mean that for those that refuse to cook are doomed? Not at all.

The market, to this point, hasn't demanded cheap, tastier foods that don't give people heart attacks. We just demanded cheap, tastier foods...

Now, we want more.

Are you saying that GLUCERNA shakes are good to take?

I hope you are right brunosbud. So far it seems to me that food producers are hopping on the health bandwagon, not by making better products, but by advertising hype. Here is an example. In Atlantic magazine I saw an ad for M and M candy which said--don't be greedy, share your M and M's with someone else and you will eat fewer calories.

I am concerned about this sort of thing because my daughter has all kinds of junk food in the house for the kids. She buys it because the label might say something like--whole wheat-- when reading the ingredients shows that whole wheat is not the first ingredient. Or the box will show calories per serving to be very low when a careful reading tells you that the serving size they give is so impossibly small that no one would eat that little at a meal.

I have my doubts that the food industry will in the near future come up with stuff that is really healthful because shelf life is very important as are texture and other things. To store something a long time requires the elimination of healthful things and the addition of preservatives. Not to mention the need to make an appealing texture and odor and color for the product all of which is processed right out of it. (Did you ever read how they make chicken nuggets?)

Dolores