I Hiked for 14 Days to Find the Best-Tasting Granola Bar
Nestled between “hot air balloon ride” and “meet Martha Stewart,” “hike the Camino Primitivo” has been at the top of my bucket list for years. This fall, I finally crossed off the last, (and if anyone reading this has a hot air balloon or is Martha Stewart, please do not hesitate to reach out.) The Camino Primitivo is a 9th-century pilgrimage route from Oviedo to Santiago de Compostela, Spain, winding 200 miles through scenic valleys, remote villages, and more cows than a girl could dare to dream of. After booking my flight and making sure my boots still fit, I addressed my next natural priority: snacks.
When it comes to trail food, there is still no substitute for the granola bar. But in the fracas of the global protein explosion and the science-ification of Good Old Raisins and Peanuts, we’ve lost the folk soul inherent to what it means to be “crunchy.” So in tandem with my pilgrimage through Asturias and Galicia came a different kind of spiritual quest: to find the granola bar’s platonic ideal.
I want a bar with visible, recognizable ingredients. I want to be able to see the oats and nuts, and I want a recipe that I can feasibly recreate in my own kitchen. I want something that evokes the comfort inherent to the granola bars I grew up eating — the Nature Valley pulled out of my mom’s purse on road trips, the requisite Quaker Chewy inhaled after a rec soccer game — and that’s an antidote to the blocks of -gyns and -ates that fill every grocery store aisle today.
As I’d be taking these bars for long walking days I needed them to be hearty and filling with nutritional elements that make me feel prudent and responsible. I am neither a registered dietician nor a high-performance athlete, so these metrics are malleable to me, but I know to look for a balance of carbs, a few grams of fiber, protein, and minimal added sugar. I’d also need them to be formulated for eating on the move — if more of every bite’s landing on the trail than in my mouth, we’re toast. Especially considering, most essentially, I’m looking for a bar that tastes amazing.
So, for every day of my two-week hike I sampled a different granola bar, and I found all the best that GORP can be.
My top picks
The ones that didn’t quite cut it
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Protein: 7 grams / Fiber: 4 grams / Carbohydrates: 27 grams
This is a bar with a point of view! The only savory option on this list, the earthy flavors of turmeric and garlic rounded out with hints of date and agave nectar were a very welcome respite from a glut of chocolate chips in the other bars I sampled. In keeping with its “we do things a little different here” vibe, the package opens on the long edge, not the top. This one keeps you guessing!
For all its ingenuity and truly amazing flavor, though, whole peanuts and coconut flakes make this bar a little on the crumbly side. It’s better enjoyed stationary, maybe seated on a rock overlooking a gorgeous vista where you can think about how life is full of surprises, and you’re holding one of them.
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Protein: 4 grams / Fiber: 5 grams / Carbohydrates: 32 grams
I’ve always had a soft spot for this brand because candidly I have a crush on the guitar-wielding Dave drawn in the logo, looking like the Fabio of whole grain bread. I gave him a little kiss before opening the wrapper to find this bar had turned into crumbs in my backpack, broken up into sweet little morsels like the topping of a blueberry crumble.
Its ingredients list is longer than others in my lineup, with things I’d never buy unless I was having an organic vegetable glycerin-themed party or something. But every broken bite was delicious — the sweetest by far, with a flavor not unlike a British flapjack, right down to the whole oats. Though not a bar that maintains its integrity when packed and smushed, I would gladly have it with a cup of coffee as a special treat, and I’m not just talking about cartoon Dave’s bulging bicep.
The runners-up
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Protein: 10 grams / Fiber: 4 grams / Carbohydrates: 29 grams
I’ve loved RXBARs ever since my family got a Costco membership, but I have countless friends who can’t stand the things, bemoaning the texture, fretting that they’re too thick and chewy. The addition of peanut butter and rolled oats does away with the divisive density of the originals, adding enough subtle variation to make every bite feel new. Just when you think you know what you’re in for, boom: little pumpkin seed. It still necessitates an athletic bite, but I think that’s a feature, not a bug. Nothing good is ever easy, and lots of chewing gives you more time to meditate on how yummy the honey and cinnamon taste, and how happy you are that there’s not a single crumb falling on the trail.
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Protein: 4 grams / Fiber: 5 grams / Carbohydrates: 30 grams
I ate this bar with my butt in a river, feeling grateful that I was tasting something as sweet as the feeling of having my butt in a river. Dates are doing the heavy lifting, making for a soft bite like caramel undercut unmistakingly with banana. At just seven ingredients, all of which you can find at the grocery store, this bar is an impressive feat of chemistry, minimal while still hearty and filling. Kind of exceptionally, none of the seven ingredients are nuts, making this bar largely allergen free. But I found it lacking a little in the texture department — it went down almost too easy.
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Protein: 6 grams / Fiber: 2 grams / Carbohydrates: 19 grams
This bar is a work of art. A glistening mosaic of peanuts, raisins, and cacao nibs frozen in a crystalline case of brown rice syrup, almost too beautiful to eat. Bravely, though, I ate it, and it tasted just as good as it looked. A perfect, self-contained snack, like having two handfuls of trail mix without getting your palms all dusty.
It’s the only crunchy bar on my list, a trait that’s hard to come by if you, like me, have sworn off Nature Valley Bars. I ate enough Oat & Honey two-packs in my youth to wrap around the equator if you laid them end to end. This bar’s good enough to almost make me miss them.
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Protein: 3 grams / Fiber: 15 grams / Carbohydrates: 29 grams
I will not go into detail because I am a lady, but if you’ve been hiking for a week straight, you know what a beacon of hope “15g fiber” is. Started by the founder of Jeni’s, the Floura bars taste unsurprisingly amazing, especially when they’re aping an essential ice cream flavor. The mint is subtle, but undeniable, commingling with the melange of dried fruits from Floura’s signature plant fiber blend, composed of things like watermelon rinds and apple cores. As such, it’s not a bar I would have the wherewithal to recreate myself, but the ingredients are at least largely words that I recognize.
You have to take your time with this bar. It’s dense and gooey, tiny chia seeds and hemp hearts breaking up every labored chew. But it’s work to which I was happy to apply myself. Lord knows the bar had a job to do, too.
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Protein: 6 grams / Fiber: 3 grams / Carbohydrates: 22 grams
If someone told me to draw a granola bar from memory, this is what it would look like. A grade school cafeteria icon all grown up, this 88 Acres snack is a classic, nostalgia-infused chewy oat and chocolate bar wearing her finest jewels, bedazzled with sunflower, pumpkin, and ground flax seeds. Another allergy-friendly option that didn’t give me any trouble while I was eating it in stride.
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Protein: 7 grams / Fiber: 3 grams / Carbohydrates: 28 grams
There’s a story written on the wrapper about Bob’s wife lovingly crafting an easy snack of oats, peanut butter, and honey that inspired this bar. Eating it makes me feel like I’m a part of the family. It’s sticky and gooey, kind of like the outside of a banana bread loaf, and it’s made from the mix of ingredients that comprised my breakfast every single day of college, plus tapioca syrup. It’s familiar, no-frills food that works well for walking.
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Protein: 4 grams / Fiber: 5 grams / Carbohydrates: 25 grams
Like a classic white T-shirt or the quintessential cashmere turtleneck, this is a bar that believes in simple, minimalist perfection. Its five ingredients are all in a harmonious balance — chewy dates, cacao nibs, chia seeds, and visible chunks of raw almond for texture. The only ingredient I wish I could taste more is the salt, but I think everything is better with more salt. I ate this bar on the move without any fear of deterioration and could have gone for another.
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Protein: 9 grams / Fiber: 7 grams / Carbohydrates: 11 grams
Next to caviar, good steak, and the perfect peak-season fig, I believe that one of life’s truest delicacies is the very last dregs of a peanut butter jar. You know, when it gets kind of dry and fudgy and flaky and salty and you have to eat it off the spoon in the dead of night lest someone should see and try to rip it from your hands? This bar is that bite. It’s peanut-buttery and salty and sweet, thanks to the chocolate chips, and features a mix of ingredients like MCT oil and reishi mushroom extract, hence the “superfood” in its name. I cannot confirm whether or not the fact that I felt good while eating this bar had anything to do with the functional ingredients or if it was just because I was eating a yummy bar that I liked, but I can confirm I felt good.
Unlike the bars on this list bound by dates and syrups, its consistency is more chalky than chewy. As such it was a little bit of a mouth workout, but nothing I couldn’t handle, especially with a little water to wash it down.
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Protein: 10 grams / Fiber: 5 grams / Carbohydrates: 29 grams
Maybe it’s because I’d been walking for almost two weeks wearing a mammoth backpack (I’d brought Lonesome Dove as my trail book and I swear that tome got heavier every day), but I almost teared up at my first bite of this bar. It tasted just about as much like a peanut butter and jelly as anything that isn’t can hope to, and I happen to think that’s one of the best tastes in the world. With just five ingredients, tied for the fewest of any on this list, this bar’s a magic trick. It’s chewy with big peanut chunks for crunch and organic strawberries in perfect balance. It had masterfully held its shape after 13 days stuffed in my backpack and I ate it practically skipping with joy, no problem. The only reason it didn’t make it on the podium is for the stiff competition between my winners.
The winners
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Protein: 11 grams / Fiber: 4 grams / Carbohydrates: 20 grams
When I had my first bite of this bar I said “whoa” out loud to no one. It is mind-blowingly delicious and wonderfully sophisticated, flecked with chunks of fig, infused with Masala chai spices and wildflower honey, and riddled with Mission almonds throughout. All ingredients I could find in my pantry if I were a better woman, barring some fibers and protein crisps.
The fact that “peanut butter” is essential enough to feature in the name earns it big points in my book, lending to a consistency at once chewy and cakey. The bites of these handmade bars break off in big chunks, so you have to focus when enjoying it on the move, but I would eat any fallen crumbs off the cold hard ground without even batting an eye.
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Protein: 15 grams / Fiber: 15 grams / Carbohydrates: unlisted
I first found this bar at a notoriously hip coffee shop in Manhattan called Cafe Lyria and was immediately intrigued by its lo-fi, handmade packaging. With a masking tape logo and ingredients listed on a sticker, this unassuming bar just begs you to bet against it. But that would be the biggest mistake you ever make in your entire life!
This bar is to die for. It tastes so good. It’s thick and dense, stuffed full of good ingredients like hemp hearts and goji berries and baked to perfection, finished with a salty caramelized top. It’s easy to eat while you’re walking, it’s completely filling and offers impressive nutritional stats with 15 grams of both fiber and protein. I am obsessed with this bar. I want to ask this bar to dance. She’s the prom queen, the most beautiful girl in school, but one that would stand up to bullies and help you with your homework in a cool, humble way.
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Protein: 7 grams / Fiber: 4 grams / Carbohydrates: 36 grams
This is a good old fashioned bar. One with family values, one with integrity — what you see is what you get. Whole ingredients announce themselves in every bite, cranberries all but shaking your hand, oats telling you good morning. If this bar were my boyfriend I’d take him home to mama and she would love him as much as I do. It’s perfect for eating and walking, sticky with honey, easy to chew and wholly nourishing. A real meat-and-potatoes kind of snack.
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