100% Natural meat used | Gluten-Free | Made in USA
Net carbs: 7 g Total sugars: 6 g
Overall rating: 😋💪🥩
Flavor
All EPIC meat protein products are hearty savory snacks. The flavor varies, as one would expect, based on what animal the bars are made of.
They have a full repertoire of red meat, poultry, and even salmon bars. My favorite is the chicken sriracha flavor. It’s hearty, spicy, and has a great texture.
I can tell that EPIC’s founders have a lot of experience with meat and understand how to work with the natural qualities of each protein. The Bison bar has a softer, sweeter texture and flavor, while the venison and chicken bars are drier and a bit chewier.
These guys definitely hunt, and I’m willing to bet these started off as just a snack they made for friends and family out of their kills.
Do not eat these bars if you want sweet processed flavors. These are hearty, real food.
If you feel weird about eating salmon or pork in protein bar form, get over it. It’s the same food, just presented to you in a convenient snackable size.
Packaging appeal
EPIC Bars look beautiful. The animal illustrations are very realistic and still have the classic artistic energy of old pioneer field guides. They’re timeless and rustic.
These designs are bold and clearly sophisticated. Hipsters and hunters alike will be lured in by this modern typography and earthy aesthetic.
It’s kind of hard to write a lot when something is this good. EPIC made packaging that could hang in an art gallery.
When you look closely and compare the different flavors, you can see subtle variations that indicate a lot of care from the company.
The chicken is in a light, blank background while the bison is in a more earth tone landscape with a majestic mountain in the back.
It’s always a good sign when a company takes the time to put different details in the visuals and the copy on each product.
Ingredient quality
It’s great stuff. Quality meat, no fillers, only one sweetener. Given that only a select few EPIC meat products contain sugar, it seems that their decision to use it is based on making good products, not a desire to get people addicted.
I get angry a lot when people put sugar in their meat products. Every single beef jerky I see has sugar on it. A lot of bacon has sugar on it.
This may be part of the curing process, but there are a few bacon and jerky companies that avoid sugar. So what’s the deal with these other people?
Company practices
In addition to making great meat products, EPIC is part of the regenerative agriculture movement, which may be part of our salvation as a species.
Agriculture experts say we have only 60 harvests left in the United States until our soil is completely depleted and unusable. This is due to massive monocropped industrial agriculture operations.
When you clear out huge swaths of land to grow one cash crop, you deplete the soil, drive out wildlife, and wreak untold havoc on the ecosystem. In real ecosystems, the variety of fungi, fauna, and plants all work together to keep soil nutrients in balance.
Monocropping, on the other hand, sucks nutrients out without replacing any. So you have to buy a bunch of chemical fertilizers to put back the nutrients your next crops need. This kills the microbes in the soil, creates harmful runoff in the water system, and makes it harder to grow anything.
Regenerative agriculture, as practiced by The Savory Institute and Polyface Farm, combines holistic livestock management with organic and permaculture techniques to create farms that are fully functioning vibrant ecosystems.
Regenerative agriculture restores soil and acts as a carbon sink. That means these farms take more carbon out of the atmosphere than they put in.
We’re losing usable soil and constantly putting more carbon into the atmosphere. We need to shift overall from industrialized mono-crop farming to a more harmonious regenerative culture.
For the past century, everything has been about extracting and refining substances from the natural world. Now that we’ve recognized the harms of that we need to shift toward lifestyles that keep us in better balance with nature.
Any farm that uses these methods, and any company that supports these farms, is a winner as far as I’m concerned.
Give EPIC Provisions your money, and some of that money will go towards a movement that is crucial for humanity’s survival.
Snackability
These are great snacks. Being meat-based helps them pack more nutrition in a small size. And if the normal bars aren’t snackable enough, maybe their bites, pork skins, or jerky strips will be.
EPIC is killing the game on a variety of levels. They have a product for any snack scenario and a lot that you could use to cook with. They’re pretty inspiring, tbh.
Overall, EPIC meat protein bars get a rating of 😋💪🥩