IT’S FUCKING GLUTEN FREE!!!!
Net carbs: 15 g Sugars: 14 g
Overall rating: 😡🤬👎
Flavor
Bad. It should be easier to tell the difference between Toasted Cranberry Almond and Chocolate Peanut Butter. These are two significantly different flavor palettes and the difference between them should be more obvious.
BUT THAT’S WHAT FUCKING HAPPENS WHEN ALL OF YOUR PRODUCTS ARE THE SAME SUBSTRATE OF FILLERS AND SWEETENERS WITH MINOR SUPERFICIAL ADDITIONS!!!
These bars taste like sugar and brown rice primarily. It seems they mainly included dates for the structural and aesthetic benefits, because I can’t taste any of my favorite fruit in here.
On GFB’s website, they describe their products as “ridiculously tasty, which is a flat-out lie.” At this point I’ve sampled at least 40 different bars and these are average at best.
This is a disgrace. The Gluten free brothers are from Michigan, so maybe there is a larger customer base of people who don’t care about flavor over there. The midwest is not known for exciting cuisine.
Packaging appeal
Boring. This might be one of the most formulaic packaging designs that’s ever existed.
Add in a lightly textured earth tone, a color splash to indicate flavor differences, and some vague virtue-signalling copy.
At least they had the good sense to put a window in the packaging. Transparency always sells on the health food aisle.
Ingredient quality
Trash. Shitty dumb unhealthy trash masquerading as healthy food.
Extra sugar is bad for you. To be fair, the two sweeteners GFB uses have a lower glycemic index than pure cane sugar. This means they don’t contribute AS MUCH to diabetes and other sugar-related health issues.
Agave and Brown Rice syrup have a much higher Glycemic index than zero added sugars, though. GFB is yet another company that uses great ingredients then negates their potential health benefits with extra sweetener.
I don’t understand the motivation to add these extra sweeteners, other than the obvious goal of getting consumers addicted to your shitty food slabs. I can really feel the addiction because I keep eating this stupid bar even though I don’t like the flavor and I know it’s slowly edging me towards prediabetes.
It pisses me off, because we take the time to wash the sugar off of the dried papaya we use in Dirtballs. GFB leaves the sugar on their dried cranberries, though.
Company practices
I’m gonna tone down my rage a little bit for this section. These Gluten Free Bretheren do seem like decent guys.
Read their sustainability page. These guys are keeping jobs in America, prioritizing environmental sustainability, and genuinely giving Celiac people something they can snack on. And they don’t use soy, which is a major allergen and an endocrine disruptor.
Creating jobs in your immediate community is always good. We should shift our overall business culture away from outsourcing-based business models back to community endeavors.
In addition to the economic benefits, when people have meaningful work they can devote their time to depression levels go down.
Marshall and Elliot Gluten Free are not idiots, though. They have done their market research and they understand that, to the average consumer, “gluten free” is synonymous with “healthy”.
I guarantee you the average middle aged white woman who’s speeding through whole foods in the break between her fireside pilates and picking up her pet micropig from daycare is not thinking deeply about her snack choices. Karen sees “Gluten-Free” and the efficiency centers of her brain abbreviate that to “this is healthy, buy an extra one for later.”
Returning to the subject of sugar, though, I suspect some mild foul play by the Gluten Free family here. The FDA requires that manufacturers list added sugars except for in the case of single-ingredients syrups and some cranberry products.
Perhaps their decision to use agave and rice syrup was an attempt to circumvent the mandated disclosure of added sugars.
If that’s the case, then fuck these Gluten Free guys. They have multiple product lines and sales in over 12,000 stores.
Snackability
Eh. These are technically snackable. I don’t feel good after eating these. Maybe if I was hiking or out tending to my cannabis fields and I actually needed the extra energy I wouldn’t mind the sugar so much.
But I want people to eat snacks that feel good after you eat them. Everyone tells me that Dirtballs feel good in your stomach after consumption, and I want everyone to experience that joy.
Overall, The Gluten Free Bar gets a rating of 😡🤬👎
—
Thank you for reading 🙂 If you enjoyed this review, please share it on twitter and DM it to your friends.
If you’d like to stay up to date with news and exciting info about healthy diets, strong communities, and connections to nature, please join our newsletter.