Product Review: gRAWnola Gluten-free Bars

The first time I heard of gRAWnola bars was from my husband who said the sample bar he tasted at the Atlanta GF Vendor Fair in 2009 was the best gluten-free bar he’d ever tried. Keep in mind that he can eat gluten. I didn’t get to sample them because I was busy working and just never got around to looking for them in the only store that carried them here at the time, Return to Eden.

While in SC recently, I finally picked up a gRAWnola bar. I was rather skeptical about the taste at first, because the bar seems to be free of everything – gluten, wheat, soy, peanuts and processed sugar. There are no dairy ingredients listed either and the owner of the company confirmed the bars are also dairy-free. Not sure why that important distinction is not on the gRAWnola website.  As you can see from the all natural, whole, raw ingredients listed below, this is a pretty clean bar.

Ingredients: pumpkin seeds*^¤, apples*, pecans^¤, dates*, almonds^¤, walnuts^¤, raisins*, buckwheat*^¤, agave*, lemon*, lime*, cinnamon*, Celtic sea salt*, orange oil*, vanilla bean*  *Organic  ^¤Sprouted

Buckwheat is really healthy, but I find that I rarely like it in gluten-free replacement products like pancakes or breads. It’s not as bad as the flavor of flaxseed to me but it’s close. It’s terrible when you don’t like healthy things like flax and buckwheat, but life is short and I try and avoid foods that have unappealing flavors to me. Flax can be hidden in some things for me, but my husband can spot flax from a mile away. He can almost look at something and figure out there is flax in it. Several times I’ve had him try something, not telling him it contained flax and at first bite he says “this has flax in it, doesn’t it?”.

The first thing I noticed when holding the gRAWnola bar was that is was not hard which is a big plus for me. When I opened it there was a familiar smell that I could not place right away. The first bite actually took me back in time, when I routinely snacked on Fig Newton cookies as a child.  There is no cookie coating to the bar so it’s not exactly like the traditional gluten cookie. However, the flavor is pretty much as I remember the old fashioned Fig Newtons to be. Since there are nuts in the bar, the texture is somewhat different from Fig Newtons as well. gRAWnola bars are healthy, delicious and really more of a treat type bar than any I’ve tried before. It’s like getting to enjoy a gluten-free version of a Fig Newton, without loading up on fake ingredients or loads of sodium. Oh, and I can not taste the buckwheat in them, which scores really big points with this taste tester.

To find out where you can find gRAWola bars near you, check this listing. The store locator on the company’s website is not complete at this time. In the Atlanta area you can find the bars at Natural Foods Warehouse (only Alpharetta), Sevananda, Nuts-N-Berries and Return to Eden.  The Chef at The Shed at Glenwood told me about Sevananda recently and said it’s worth checking out but I have not gotten over there yet. gRAWnola bars are available in various stores in 14 states presently but my guess is they’ll be available nationwide very soon.