The sports energy bar market has been growing steadily for years. We are seeing a major shift from ultra-processed products to much healthier ones. Consumers are increasingly demanding about the quality of their daily diet, so naturally they are equally demanding when it comes to their sports nutrition. Do you know which energy bar is best for sports?
Find out how to choose the best energy bar for your athletic performance: ingredients, when to consume it, and a comparison of 100% natural products.
What is an energy bar?
Made with cereals, dried fruit, seeds, spices, and various types of carbohydrates… An energy bar, or dietary exercise bar, more commonly called a “cereal bar,” is rich in carbohydrates, fats, and proteins, providing calories—and therefore energy—to athletes during exercise or as a snack for people with very active lifestyles. Its packaging makes it easy to carry for eating on the go or during activity.
The energy bar has a good reputation, as it is consumed by professional and amateur athletes to optimize their performance, but also by people who want to eat healthily when they need a quick snack. It is even one of the snacks recommended for children, rather than giving them an industrial chocolate bar full of sugar and fat.
In short, the energy bar is the top performer among foods classified in the “sweet grocery” category, provided its ingredients are carefully selected (100% natural), properly balanced, contain neither too much refined sugar (sucrose, glucose, synthetic fructose) nor too much fat, and above all contain no preservatives, colorings, or other synthetic flavorings.
Do not confuse energy bars with protein bars (or recovery bars) or meal-replacement slimming bars. The former, as their name suggests, contain a lot of protein. Protein helps build or rebuild muscle damaged during exercise. More specifically, we are talking about microtears in muscle fibers that need to be repaired. Slimming bars, on the other hand, aim to fill the stomach with as few carbohydrates as possible.
What is the difference between an energy bar and a protein bar?
This is the most common confusion. The energy bar is designed to be consumed during exercise to provide carbohydrates and prevent glycogen depletion. The protein bar, on the other hand, is generally consumed after exercise to promote muscle recovery and tissue repair during the metabolic window.
It is worth noting, however, that many trail runners consume protein bars during very long events, such as the Millau 100 km race or the Diagonale des Fous.
When should you consume an energy bar for sports?
Food enables the human body to build up glycogen stores to provide energy to the organs and muscles. The more intense the activity, the more the body will use these stores, burning calories. This is why it is strongly recommended to consume suitable sports nutrition products, such as energy bars, during or after training or competition.
The human body does not respond well to imbalances and deficiencies—the famous energy crash or hunger pangs—which is why moderate, regular intake is recommended during exercise. For example, one bite every 15 to 20 minutes during a trail run, or one bar per hour, is a good frequency. Always remember to drink a little water immediately afterward to clear the sweet taste from your mouth and aid digestion.
You should never wait until you feel hungry or thirsty, let alone until your legs feel weak, before eating during exercise. By then, it is too late! Consuming too much energy when the body is depleted can even cause reactive hypoglycemia.
It generally occurs after consuming too much sugar, causing a sudden increase in blood glucose. In response to this hyperglycemia, the body triggers an excessive insulin spike (a hypoglycemic hormone that enables glucose storage in cells), which lowers blood sugar levels, sometimes too sharply.
As a general rule, a bar provides less energy, vitamins, and minerals than a properly formulated energy drink, which should remain the No. 1 source of carbohydrates during your workout. Nevertheless, the bar has the advantage of providing nourishment, which is important in endurance sports.
Which sports are energy bars suitable for?
There are, of course, sports where consuming an energy bar makes perfect sense. These are endurance sports in which it is necessary to eat because the activity lasts for hours or even days. This is the case with trail running and ultra-trail races such as the UTMB, the TOR des Géants, and the Grand Raid de la Réunion, where you need energy that is released over time. Cycling, mountain biking, hiking, golf, tennis, and others could also be mentioned—all these sports in which it is possible to chew.
It is much less practical during fast-paced running events such as half-marathons and marathons, as chewing and swallowing while running is very difficult. These activities favor energy gels, energy compotes, or drinks because they are more liquid and therefore easier to swallow while running.
How long does it take to feel the effects of an energy bar for sports?
While an energy gel or energy compote, which are very fluid, enters the bloodstream within 5 minutes of consumption, it takes at least a good twenty minutes for a solid food such as an energy bar to take effect and give you a boost of energy during exercise.
Mulebar bars contain an average of 140 kcal per 40 g. You shouldn't wait until you feel hungry before eating one.
The secret to performance: the ratio 2:1
Recent research in sports nutrition has shown that the body can absorb more carbohydrates when different sources are combined. The ideal ratio is 2 to 1 between glucose and fructose. Mulebar applies this principle by combining the glucose from brown rice syrup with the natural fructose in fruit (apricots, strawberries, dates), making it possible to consume up to 90 g of carbohydrates per hour without causing stomach problems.
What is the best energy bar for sports?
The Mulebar brand, created in 2008, offers a range of 10 vegan energy bars (6 of which are also certified organic) that revolutionized a market dominated by pharmaceutical laboratories offering products that are certainly effective (that is not the most difficult part), but not always natural and, above all, with no flavor or pleasant texture to chew during exercise.
Mulebar's DNA is to offer 100% natural products made with premium ingredients, featuring a soft texture that is easy to chew and highly original flavors. How many athletes tell us at trade shows or on social media that a Mulebar is a source of comfort during exercise, a reward for every goal achieved? Enjoyment is the most important thing during a race because when the body gives out, the mind takes over to get you to the finish line.
Mulebar: a unique manufacturing process!
Mulebar is one of the few sports nutrition brands to bake its bars, whereas the vast majority of bar brands (Clif Bar, Baouw, etc.) make raw bars by extrusion. Of course, that is much cheaper! Baking gives the bars an incomparable softness because the ingredients melt and blend together. The bar is therefore not at all brittle. How many times have you found a packet of bars reduced to crumbs at the bottom of your bag?
This is also why Mulebar bars were made in the United Kingdom, the home of snacking and energy bars until 2023. When we acquired the brand in 2015, after distributing it in France for six years, my partner Denis Gargaud-Chanut and I looked for a French factory. Unfortunately, none was equipped with a baking tunnel. An investment of over €100,000 was not justified given our small production volumes. We therefore preferred to preserve our true point of difference and competitive advantage rather than give in to the siren call of locavorism. The English factory was only 600 km from Paris, while many brands come from the United States or Canada by ship or plane.
The real revolution came at the end of 2023, when a French manufacturer offered to produce the range of bars for us using a unique process in France that even improves the bars' softness and texture. This had been our dream for a long time, as Brexit and hyperinflation in the UK had caused us quite a few problems. Mulebar energy bars are therefore now produced in France!
Are energy bars good for your health?
Most athletes are concerned about the glycemic index (GI) and ultra-processing. A good bar should prioritize natural ingredients. At Mulebar, using brown rice syrup is a strategic choice: although it has a high GI, it provides energy that the muscles can use immediately, without the chemical additives found in industrial glucose syrups. The key is still to read the ingredient list before buying.
Against ultra-processed foods!
When choosing a food, the simplest thing is to look at the list of ingredients. If there are any strange terms, stay away!
Some brands add extra vitamins or protein to the natural ingredients, even though those vitamins or proteins are already present in these foods. It's an effective marketing strategy that appeals to some nutritionists who only look at labels. Many of these vitamins need to be taken as a course of treatment to have a beneficial effect on our bodies; consuming a bar weighing just a few dozen grams at a few points during the year will not make any difference.
The small number of ingredients in our recipes, along with the absence of preservatives, colorants, and other artificial flavorings, makes our bars easy to digest, even for the most sensitive people. Naturally, they're made with 100% natural ingredients, and that's something we're proud of! Each product page on our website details the composition of each bar (brown rice syrup, fruit, protein, cereals, almonds, oats, vitamins, rapeseed oil...)
All our Mulebar bars also receive a very high rating on the Yuka app.
Discover our 10 original recipes?
Mulebar was a pioneer in the sports bar market, creating original recipes and unique fruit and seed combinations in a sports nutrition market dominated by bars with simple, even basic, vanilla, chocolate, and banana recipes.
We were the first brand to offer so much choice with these subtle flavors and combinations. It was a real innovation at the time, at the same price as the other sports nutrition bars.
Since then, we have been copied—the price of success—which confirms that, as early as 2008, our ideas and positioning around quality, enjoyment, choice, and natural ingredients were right!
Here are our 10 current bar recipes:
- Apricot walnut bar - organic and vegan
- Mango cashew bar - organic and vegan
- Chocolate orange bar - organic and vegan
- Apple cinnamon raisin bar - organic and vegan
- Lemon ginger bar - organic and vegan
- Pineapple coconut goji berry bar - organic and vegan
- Raspberry blackcurrant cranberry bar - vegan
- Peanut raspberry bar - vegan
- Strawberry almond protein bar - vegan
- Chocolate protein bar - vegan
If all this has not convinced you, I invite you to read the reviews on forums, social media, or our website, where you will see, straight from our customers, just how much better our bars are than anything else on the market, at an average price.
If you compete, you need to discover our energy gels, our energy fruit purées, and our Mulebar drinks (for exercise and hydration)—they are, of course, also the best in the world!
Mulebar sports nutrition product information:
Price: €2.60 including tax per 40 g energy bar
Available in packs of 4 or boxes of 15 with a 10% discount
Sign up for the Mulebar newsletter to receive a promo code
48-hour delivery and free delivery (pickup point) on orders over €70 in mainland France.
No preservatives, no artificial colors, no palm oil, vegan.
Six of our energy bars are organic. They contain gluten.
Mulebar energy bars are made in France.
