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KIND Snacks is a company I’ve always admired so I was stoked they’d produced a product specifically for endurance athletes. I tried their chocolate chunk variety recently which looked a lot like the Clif Bar - Chocolate chip version. I’m familiar with this Clif Bar as they sponsor numerous triathlons and regularly find their way into race bags. The KIND Bar taste is similar but the big difference is probably the texture. The KIND Bar feels more aerated—like a more crumbly, lighter, crispy rice texture—which felt like it digested better than the denser, stickier Clif Bar.
When comparing the nutrients (they stack up pretty similar too) they are both calorically dense. A good thing if you’re considering them for competitions over 2.5 hours where, depending on body size, you benefit from 70-90g/hour of carbohydrate. The KIND Bar packs 34g of CHO to the 45g of Clif Bar. So if you mixed a bar each hour with a liquid carb source you’d hit that target for these long haul races. They both boast a high protein content but, while useful in training, protein has limited performance benefits during competition. But they are more than suitable to bring on a long ride as they are easy to throw in a cycling jersey pocket.
My only concern, for both bars, would be the fiber content which could lead to potential gastrointestinal chaos if you're prone to that. From my current bible of all things sports nutrition Nutrition For Sport Exercise and Performance they write, “Due to the transient nature of gastrointestinal symptoms, and large individual variation in dietary intakes, it is difficult to draw firm conclusions about the effects of fibre, protein and fat on exercise associated gastrointestinal symptoms. However, in the field practitioners will generally advise low fibre, low fat and moderate protein intakes around competition.”
So again, there’s no substitute to trying any fuel out on yourselves (before race day) and seeing how your body reacts. After trying them out I wouldn’t hesitate to trying adding them to my mix of half ironman, ironman race day nutrition and definitely for any training before, during and after.
Try KIND Energy Bars for yourself. Click here for 15% off a single purchase at KINDsnack.com 11/15-12/31/20.
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