I may despise meal prepping for the week, but I absolutely love spending a little time to making homemade snacks ahead of time to fuel us through the ordinary hustle, impromptu bike rides, ski tours and other surprises that pop into our days. The past few weeks I’ve been putting my snack-stashing efforts into overdrive in anticipation of the fuel we’ll need for new parenthood ahead.
These Easy Almond Butter Granola Bars are my latest favorite creation – for now, and later!
We aren’t huge snackers in this house, but being that my stomach is about the size of a pea, my appetite only seems to grow as this baby gains in size and our active winter rolls on, I find myself reaching for creative, delicious, nutrient-dense ways to make my many-small-meals count. Boosting my protein intake, keeping energy high, and refined sugar intake low are all priorities and these bars fit every bill. It may or may not be surprising that all the foods that are exceptional for mamas-to-be are also exceptional for athletes-on-the-go; after all, the physical intensity of a full term 40-week pregnancy is basically the equivalent of running a 40-week marathon.
“Pregnancy is the most energetically expensive activity the human body can maintain for nine months,” Duke University evolutionary anthropology professor Herman Pontzer
…but pregnant women more often than not have an easier time telling themselves to “eat for two,” than athletes do in convincing themselves to eat adequately for one. (Which, is a detriment to both!) So having something sensible on hand is a great idea for everyone.
Rant aside, if we’re fueling for optimal performance – as pregnant ladies OR athletes – we’ve gotta put in all the basic, nutrient-dense building blocks in a digestible manner. Added bonus if we can get this kind of super fuel in a way that doesn’t involve a package. And these granola bars are all that in a quick-and-easy format. With just a tiny chunk of time, and a few pantry ingredients here, you’ll have a strong stash of granola bars to fuel your week strong!
There are a wide variety of ways you can swap out ingredients in these granola bars to make them your own, and I recommend a few in the recipe notes below! But, substituting honey for the maple syrup is absolutely not one of them.
Many granola bar recipes out there suggest making honey syrup to bind your bars. And while this is delicious, it is NOT a smart digestive decision. In Ayurvedic medicine, sticky, sweet honey is packed with vitamins, minerals and nutrients not found anywhere else in nature. This unique compound not only delivers the goods to our systems as we digest it, but helps to glom onto unwanted toxins in the body on its trip through the digestive system. However, Not only does boiling the honey obliterate these magical properties, but it also makes a sticky substance even stickier…and so sticky that it actually doesn’t move through the digestive system, instead getting stuck and sticking other “stuff” to it along the way.
What we end up with is an indigestible substance that starts to ferment in the gut which just sounds icky, right?
Steer clear of this issue by using clean-burning, easy-caramelizing maple syrup (or date syrup if you wish!) instead.
You can absolutely use peanut butter here if you like; the bars would taste divine. But, there are a few reasons I choose not to use peanut butter very often.
Unlike many other nuts, peanuts grow on the ground, and their growing practices often result in lots and lots of moldy peanuts accidentally making it into the peanut mill. These peanuts are pretty unsightly, but the massive commercial beast that makes peanut butter doesn’t want to waste crop, so these ugly, sometimes moldy nuts that contain aflatoxin are tossed into the hopper where the peanut butter is made (saving the pretty peanuts for cocktail mixes and such.) Blend it all up and no one will ever know!
Except, we might know if we paid a little bit of attention to the ways that our modern health has been impacted by peanuts. Lack of early exposure to peanuts *could* be one of the reasons that there are so many peanut allergies out there, but the prevalence of fungus and mold in our peanut butter supply could be the other. Just saying.
If you’re eager to learn more about this topic, check out T. Colin Campbell’s book “Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition” and flip to the chapter about his extensive research on peanuts.
I hope these just-sweet, power-packed bars make their way into whatever adventures are filling you up right now!
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