Comparisons (Revised)

With Saturday's Power Balls having already been made, I thought it might be useful to gain some perspective on the nutritional value of them. So, I decided to compare the nutritional value of some popular power bars with a serving size of the Power Balls I've made so far. It turns out that the Power Balls are pretty nutritionally comparable, if not better, than leading brands given their smaller serving size. I was especially happy to see that most bars offer 8-10g of protein per serving and the Power Balls definitely come close to that, so with either a larger serving size or extra scoop of protein powder, I think we'll be there.

Here's some of the data:

	Clif Bars
Flavor	Chocolate Chip Peanut Crunch	Chocolate Brownie
Calories (cal)	240	240
Fat Calories (cal)	60	40
Protein (g)	10	9
Total Fat (g)	7	4.5
Saturated Fat (g)	1.5	1.5
Carbs (g)	41	45
Cholesterol (mg)	0	0

*Taken from: http://www.clifbar.com/food/products_clif_bar/

	Performance Energy Power Bars
Flavor	Peanut Butter	Milk Chocolate Brownie
Calories (cal)	240	240
Fat Calories (cal)	40	35
Protein (g)	9	8
Total Fat (g)	4	3.5
Saturated Fat (g)	1	0.5
Carbs (g)	44	45
Cholesterol (mg)	0	0

*Take from: http://www.powerbar.com/products/56/powerbar-performance.aspx

	Luna Bars
Flavor	Peanut Butter Cookie	Chocolate Chunk
Calories (cal)	180	180
Fat Calories (cal)	50	45
Protein (g)	9	9
Total Fat (g)	6	5
Saturated Fat (g)	2	1.5
Carbs (g)	26	26
Cholesterol (mg)	0	0

*Taken from: http://www.clifbar.com/food/products_luna_bar/

	Power Balls
Flavor	Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter	Coconut Banana Bread
Number of Balls	2	3
Calories (cal)	185.48	176.76
Fat Calories (cal)	59.46	31.05
Protein (g)	7.70	6.99
Total Fat (g)	6.84	3.69
Saturated Fat (g)	2.44	2.10
Carbs (g)	25.09	31.26
Cholesterol (mg)	6.25	7.98

Overall I'd say the Power Balls are most comparable to the Luna Bars made by Cliff Bar in terms of all the nutritional factors I've been calculating. I think the Power Balls could even surpass the Luna Bars by increasing the number of balls per serving or protein powder quantity. I tried to air on the more conservative side of serving size for now since I'm not entirely sure how many Power Balls someone will want to eat after a workout, but if the average ends up being higher than the serving size I've listed, I'll recalculate things. 

Another useful reference I found was this online article by CNN listing their top power bar picks in 2010 along with their nutritional facts.

A smart former team member pointed out that the Power Balls are the only ones to have cholesterol in them as well as higher levels of saturated fat. My main thinking is that this is because I'm still using fresh eggs in the Power Balls whereas the other power bars out there don't, but I've only been using egg whites, which shouldn't have cholesterol in them.

After looking back through what each ingredient nutritionally contributes to the Power Balls it turns out that for the Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana Balls the peanut butter, chocolate chips, protein powder, flaxseed meal and oats were the only ingredients with saturated fat. And the only contributor to cholesterol was the protein powder and dry nonfat milk (13:1 ratio). The Coconut Banana Bread Balls got their saturated fat from the oats, flaxseed meal, vanilla protein powder and coconut (coconut increased the amount 10 fold, so probably won't use that again). And again the sources of cholesterol were the vanilla protein powder and dry nonfat milk.

I don't think I'll be able to change too much about the amount of cholesterol in the Power Balls for a little bit since I just bought these giant containers of protein powder and dry nonfat milk, but I'll definitely try to do something about the levels of saturated fat. I think my next goal will be to work backwards/do some reverse engineering and have defined nutritional values I'm aiming for then see what ingredients will lead me there. I'll let you know how that turns out.