We were just about to launch our new Gratisfied Almond Butter Bar. It had been a year in the making. While on a walk, my husband and I started discussing marketing tactics (as we do), and how we could effectively communicate why these bars are different. Figuring out the motivating factor – the why behind our products – has always been a cornerstone of our message.
Before I tell you about the protein-to-sugar ratio my husband Alex cleverly came up with that day, let me take you on a quick tangent. It’s January, 2019. Over the past month, Alex and I have loosely been discussing launching a natural foods company around a grain-free bar I had been baking over the past couple of years. We are walking through our favorite natural foods market and I catch a glimpse of the wall of nutrition bars lining an aisle. That’s right – it’s not a section, but almost an entire wall. In that moment I felt this ping of fear, and the anxious thoughts started to surface. The main thought was that the bar market was super saturated, what made me think my idea would be unique enough to stand out? I was a tiny fish in a huge pond, and I knew there was a long road ahead. But in that moment I had a choice: I could either let the fearful thoughts win, stopping me in my tracks, or I could feel the fear and do it anyway, knowing that the fear was a sign I was stepping outside my comfort zone, and that just meant it was an opportunity worth pursuing. As you might as well guess, here we are 4.5 years later…I chose door number two.
Here is an old photo from 2019 with the Original Empower Bar in front of said wall of nutrition bars already established on the market
Here I am four year later, standing in front of the same wall of bars with Gratisfied’s new Almond Butter Bar
There are a lot of bars on the market. While I believe that Gratisfied bars are different in many ways – firing on all cylinders of nutrition, taste, and texture – there are two ratios I am going to highlight here that hammers home their nutritional superiority: the protein-to-sugar and protein-to-net carb ratios.
I credit Alex with the protein-to-sugar ratio. When he first told me we had the highest ratio of any other bar he had looked at, I immediately knew what he was referring to. High protein and low sugar is what you want in a nutrition bar. Protein is known as the most satiating of macronutrients. Not only does it increase leptin sensitivity, (leptin is your satiety hormone), but eating protein can also lead to you feeling more rewarded by boosting dopamine production. Feeling both satisfied and rewarded after eating results in a more pleasurable experience while also keeping you fuller for longer. In the other bars we analyzed, the sugar content was materially higher with not nearly as much protein (the Gratisfied Bar has 16g of protein). The only exception was the Perfect Bar Peanut Butter flavor. It had only one more gram of protein at 17g, but over twice the amount of sugar (19g of sugar to be exact!).
As I was looking at some other bars, I noticed many on the market are made with sugar alcohols. This results in a lower sugar content on the label. Therefore I looked to the net carb count, and created the protein-to-net carb ratio (net carbs is calculated by subtracting grams of fiber from the total grams of carbohydrates). Gratisfied materially beat the other bars on that metric as well. The number of net carbs for the other bars were either much higher (Clif Bar coming in at 35g of net carbs!), or it was more in line with the Almond Butter Bar but with much less protein. Let’s just say I am so proud of our Gratisfied Bar, and this analysis reaffirms its blood sugar balancing powers! (And you can use the code HEALTHIFIED at checkout to save on your order!)https://gratisfied.com/products/almond-butter-bar
