Originally published July 16 2008
Product Reviews of Bear Fruit Bar, FruitFast Bar and Organic Food Bar (transcription)
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
(NaturalNews) Welcome to the Health Ranger Show. It is a great day to talk about some new health food bar products. I am going to review them here on this show independently, and objectively. I do not have any financial stake in any of the products that I am going to comment on here. (This document is a transcription of Health Ranger Report #20. The original audio is available here: http://www.naturalnews.com/Index-Podcasts.ht... )
These are nutritional products, most of them. Some are superfoods. Occasionally I will review a green living product -- like a natural body care or natural soap or a natural shampoo -- something along those lines. But today I have some foods -- some superfoods, some health foods for you. We are going to start this segment with a fruit bar that I found about a year ago at a trade show. I talked to this company and they are doing some incredible things.
It is called the "Bear Fruit Bar" -- bear like the animal B-E-A-R -- Bear Fruit Bar. This is an organic fruit bar and you might say, well. what is interesting about a fruit bar? Check this out. You know how many fruit bars have many chemical-sounding ingredients, different additives, preservatives to give them shelf life.
Well, this fruit bar -- check this out -- here are the ingredients: organic apples, organic apple concentrate, and organic cherry concentrate. That is it. Three ingredients -- apples, apple concentrate, and cherry concentrate. That is a simple bar. Now, you might ask how it works. How can it stay on the shelf without the chemical additives and preservatives that are usually found in other bars? How does this bar have any kind of shelf life and not spoil? The answer is it is manufactured using a new technology licensed from the USDA, unbelievably.
I know it sounds strange but the USDA has a division that is involved in some interesting research about manufacturing low-moisture-content fruit concentrates and this company has used this technology to make this bar without any chemicals whatsoever. Unlike typical fruit bars that are really just candy bars mostly made with apple juice, often with artificial flavors and artificial colors. I mean, that is what you find in many of the other fruit bars on the market these days.
This bar, the Bear Fruit Bar, is made with only three ingredients, no additives, no preservatives, no junk. Now, the problem is you cannot find this bar in retail stores yet but you can find it online. Let me give you the website address here. It is www.MorFoods.com . Again, I do not have any financial stake in this company. I do not earn anything from recommending this product, but I love this bar. I have taken this traveling with me.
You can take them on an airplane or on a road trip. There are a number of different flavors, which have different kinds of fruits in them. Let me grab one here. It is organic apple blueberry, the first one was organic apple cherry, and they have a third one that is just organic apple.
Why this is interesting is because these fruits are medicinal. Blueberries and cherries in particular are medicinal. What do I mean by that? Well, they contain their own natural plant-based medicines. Blueberries for example have the effect of lowering high cholesterol. Did you know that? They do it, in fact, better than statin drugs.
Now I am not saying this bar replaces your statin drug but if you eat enough blueberries, it does have the effect of balancing your cholesterol, which under the supervision of a qualified healthcare practitioner may allow you to safely transition off those dangerous pharmaceuticals that you might be using right now to control your cholesterol. Would it not be nice to just control your cholesterol with food instead of dangerous, expensive pharmaceuticals with negative side effects?
I mean, some of those pharmaceuticals have side-effects that include death. That is a common side effect and kind of a drastic one too, I think you might agree. No one has ever been killed by blueberries. You have never looked in the newspaper obituary column and seen death by blueberries -- it does not happen. You can eat all the blueberries you want and the only thing you are going to do is get full and increase your anti-oxidants. You cannot die by eating too many blueberries -- believe me, I have tried it. It does not work, you just get full.
Now cherries are also medicine. Cherries contain a natural anti-inflammatory medicine, which works better than arthritis drugs at relieving arthritis pain and inflammation. Cherries also, by the way, eliminate gout. Did you know that? Yes, they do. They are real medicine. There are many cherry products on the market and I actually recommend lots of them.
The FruitFast bar
There are many companies that I recommend -- another cherry bar is made by a company called "Fruit Fast," which you can find online at www.FruitFast.com. That is another good choice for a cherry bar.
The Bear Fruit Bar organic apple cherry can be found at www.MorFoods.com. This is something that is worth knowing about. if you want to give healthy food to your children and you do not want to buy the junk food bars that they have at the grocery store, or even some of the junk that is sold at the health food store -- because not everything there is healthy in case you did not know that. Some of it is still junk even though here is a lot of good stuff there, too.
If you really want something that is honest, healthy, that contains just pure natural organic simple ingredients and you do not have to be chemistry major to decode the chemicals listed in the ingredients, then this is a good food bar to go with. We are going to review a lot of food bars on this show because there are many on the market and a lot of them are just junk.
Avoid cheap "energy" bars
One thing I want to mention to you right now is that when you are shopping for food bars in a grocery store or health food store watch out for the word "energy." Many bars are positioned as "energy bars." In the health industry, do you know what the word energy means? It means sugar. That is it.
When they say it is an energy bar what they mean is that it is made with refined sugars -- usually corn syrup or high fructose corn syrup -- both of which are, in my opinion, slow- acting dietary poison that promote diabetes, that promote nutritional deficiencies, that promote obesity and osteoporosis and even depression. They are dangerous ingredients that I think should never be used in foods -- not for humans, not for animals, and certainly not for children, but you will find that in many bars that say they are energy bars.
The other thing to watch out for are "sugar-free" or even "low carb." Do you know why? Because on many of the so-called sugar-free bars or low-carb bars you are going to find contain artificial synthetic chemical sweeteners? Yes, chemical sweeteners like aspartame or saccharin or the big favorite now, sucralose, which is claimed to be made from sugar but actually contains a chlorine atom.
Yes, the same type of molecule that they use to disinfect the pool in your backyard -- chlorine. The same molecule they drip into the water supply to kill anything that might be living in the water -- chlorine. There is a chlorine atom on sucralose. You have to watch out for that. Those are two tips right there. Watch out for the word energy on food bars as well as low-carb or low-sugar.
You have to really read the ingredients and find out what is in them. If you are not reading the ingredients, then you trust the front label of that food bar and the label is usually a place where the food companies deceive consumers. They are not telling you the truth on the label unless you get to the ingredients. Even there they try to play games and hide things from you and we will talk about that even more in this segment. How they distort their ingredients and deceive consumers.
Living, Raw Foods
Now in this segment I am going to tell you about another company that you probably never heard of. It is called Everything Raw, that is www.EverythingRaw.com. This company is actually pretty well-known in the raw foods industry. You may not be familiar with it but there is a specialty segment of the health industry that is all focused on raw foods.
By that, I mean living foods -- foods that have not been overly processed, cooked, or heated above a certain temperature, usually 110� or 115�. The reason they do this, and we are going to do an entire show on this topic later, is because raw foods have more nutritional value than cooked foods in almost every case. If you take green leafy vegetables, for example, and you cook them, you destroy about half of the nutritional content. In some cases you destroy 80% or 90% of certain nutrients.
Many of those nutrients are the very medicines that help those plants prevent heart disease, prevent cancer and protect your eyes, for example, and protect your cardiovascular system from heart disease. You want those nutrients. When you cook many of these foods, you destroy those nutrients.
Many people are pursuing what is called a raw foods diet or a living foods diet. I call it just a living-plant-based diet and I pursue it to a very great degree. I do not eat everything raw for sure. I do not eat raw meat in case you are curious about that although I have been known to blend up some raw eggs from time to time in my own smoothies because I do not like to cook egg yolks. I think they are healthier raw.
EverythingRaw chocolate bars
Anyway, let us get back to this company -- www.EverythingRaw.com. They have some fantastic food bars. I want to read you the ingredients of this food bar called "Raw Decadence." It is an organic dark chocolate flavored bar. You might wonder why it is called "flavored?" Well, let me read you the ingredients and it will all make sense.
The ingredients are very simple -- organic dates, organic agave syrup -- that is the sweetener. It is a very low glycemic sweetener. Organic raw cacao nibs -- that is the natural unprocessed chocolate, organic raw cacao powder, organic raw pistachios, organic pecans, organic raw cashews, organic vanilla beans. Um, that sounds good. Organic coconut oil -- that is the wonderful fat in the bar -- and organic cinnamon.
That is it. Now, what would a cheap chocolate bar look like? Instead of organic coconut oil, which is an expensive form of plant-based fats that are very, very healthy for you, a cheap bar would use milk fat. They would use dairy fats or they might even use hydrogenated soybean oil. They would use a cheap plant-based fat, and instead of organic raw cacao nibs, which are the actual pieces of cacao that are not processed and not cooked, they would just use chocolate flavoring or chocolate extract.
They would use a sweetened form of chocolate that has all the bitter alkaloids removed. You see, alkaloids are just a fancy name for a certain class of plant-based medicines found in the chocolate plant. Alkaloids are responsible for many of the health benefits of eating chocolate.
You have probably seen a lot of the research out there where they talk about chocolate being good for your heart. Chocolate is good for your liver. It actually protects the liver -- helps to detoxify your liver. Chocolate may even help prevent cancer. There are many, many natural medicines found in chocolate. Chocolate even enhances your mood. It makes you feel good. That is why we love chocolate so much, because it actually alters our mood. It makes us feel better.
In fact, chocolate was, for many, many years in previous civilizations -- the Incan civilization, the Mayan civilization and pre-Incan South American civilizations -- considered the food of the gods. Food of the gods, actually the name for the phytonutrients. The so-called active chemical constituent in chocolate is theobromine. Theo is spelled T-H-E-O and it is the same Latin root for the word theology, which means, of course, the study of religion or the study of God.
Thus, theobromine means the bromine of the gods or the chemical of the gods found in the chocolate plant. That is an interesting bit of history about how chocolate has long since been considered food of the gods and I think many people alive today would agree. When you get good chocolate, you feel like you are in heaven, right -- cannot argue with that.
Heavenly Yoga Bars
Well, this company, www.EverythingRaw.com has some great chocolate bars. Really some of the best that I have tasted and the one I love the most is called "Yoga Bar." It is a weird name, I agree and it does not make you do yoga any better. There is nothing yoga about it. It is just called Yoga Bar for some reason that I cannot explain but the owner, Paul, may have a better explanation for you. Maybe we will have him on the show some day to answer that question.
Anyway, it is a white chocolate bar and it is made with cacao fat or cacao oil. It is a natural fatty acid from the cacao plant and it tastes unbelievable. You have never had a white chocolate bar like that and of course, it is all organic. There are no chemical additives in it whatsoever. It is all organic. It is all natural. It is all sourced from plants and the health benefits are just outstanding on that bar.
Check them out at www.EverythingRaw.com and remember too, by the way, that I do not have any financial ties with these companies. This is not a paid infomercial. They have not paid me to talk about their product. This is just what I do. I go around and I find great products. I go to the trade shows. I interview these people. I have done hundreds of interviews with the top health companies in the industry. I have reviewed hundreds of different products over the last four or five years now.
Occasionally, I will bring you a product on this show that I am not too thrilled about and in fact, we may do that here in the next segment. I am going to talk to you about a product that I think is just hype. Yes, I am going to do that. I am holding a bottle of this over-hyped product in my hand right now. We are going to do that in the next segment, but for the most part, I want to bring you products that I like to recommend. I would rather let you know what I think you should pursue -- what products would be good to have in your life and in your diet rather than focusing on products that are bad.
Occasionally, I will review a "bad product" because I want to warn you about those products and I do not want you to waste your money on a bunch of hype -- and there is a lot of hype in this industry. There are a lot of companies claiming to have health benefits in their products and they do not even have enough ingredients in the product to create any kind of health benefit -- there are all kinds of things like that you want to avoid.
Organic Food Bar -- Our Editor's Choice My company, www.NaturalNews.com has given an award to this company that I am about to tell you about. The award is the Best Raw Food Bar Award Editor's Choice and I do not give that away lightly, believe me. A company has to earn it.
Well, what company is this? It is called the Organic Food Bar Company. It is a very simple name, very simple ingredients, and outstanding product. I interviewed the founder and president of this company and you are going to hear that interview, by the way, in another show here.
His name is Jack Singh and he is a naturopath. He created these bars because he wanted to be able to give his clients, his family, his friends and his children, healthy food that was also convenient and portable because sometimes you are traveling and you want healthy food, right. It also has to taste good and it has to be made with pure organic ingredients so he founded this company called Organic Food Bar. You can find them online at www.OrganicFoodBar.com.
When I talked to him, I said, "You know what. Our listeners need a special offer if they are going to go buy your food bar. I think they should get a discount just for being our listeners and our readers over at www.NaturalNews.com."
I negotiated with this company for a discount on your behalf -- for you. I earn nothing on this. I have not been paid to do this. It is the best price you can find on these bars and it includes free shipping anywhere in the United States. You can find that discount because there is a special code for that discount. They have not sent it to me yet but when they do, I am going to post it up on www.NaturalNews.com.
Go to www.NaturalNews.com, search for Organic Food Bar and look for the coupon code where you will find a special coupon code and a special link where you can order these bars at the best price anywhere. You will not find a better price. They assured me of that and you will get free delivery.
Now, what is so great about these food bars -- oh, and by the way, remember I do not earn any money on this so I do not have any financial involvement. I have to keep repeating that because people always assume it. There are so few actual honest people in an industry that people always assume you are on the take. I have to keep reminding people that I am not.
All right, let us look at the ingredients. Organic almond butter made from ground organic almonds -- very delicious, highly nutritious and has an anti-cancer effect.
Raw organic almonds are anti-cancer. They also help prevent heart disease. They protect the nervous system have many other benefits. Organic dates, organic agave nectar -- that is the sweetener, organic brown rice protein� this sounds good already. By the way, I am reading the ingredients from one of their flavors called Active Greens.
They have many different flavors. They even have a high-protein bar made with a brown rice protein powder that I really like. That is my favorite bar of theirs but let me continue with the ingredients on this Active Greens bar.
Here we go -- organic biodynamic raisins, organic bio-sprouts -- that means sprouted flax. Sprouted flax is much better than non-sprouted flax because once it is sprouted it activates the enzymes and the flax seed actually begins to synthesize its own vitamins. When you sprout the flax and then you eat it raw, you get huge nutritional benefits.
The nutritional density is just off the charts versus dead dormant flax seeds. Most everybody out there that is making cereal and products with Omega-3 in them, using dead or dormant flax seeds, and that does not give you near the benefits of this sprouted flax. That is one good reason why this product is so powerful; the Omega-3's really prevent disease. They prevent heart disease. They prevent depression. They even help stabilize blood sugar and prevent diabetes. I mean, real nutrition in this bar is why I get so excited when I see products like this in the marketplace.
All right, next we have organic bio-sprouted quinoa. Quinoa is a wonderful South American grain that is a complete form of protein. It has all eight essential amino acids in other words. It is not an imbalanced protein like you might get from beans and rice for example. It is a complete protein. It is naturally high in fiber. It is naturally high in magnesium. This was a food consumed for thousands of years by the South Americans before the Conquistadors came over and outlawed the growing of spirulina, but that is a different story.
All right, next we have the greens. We have organic wheat grass juice powder, barley grass juice powder -- all of these are organic by the way -- sesame seeds, spirulina and then blueberry, raspberry, broccoli sprouts, beet juice, carrot juice -- these are all organic ingredients and these are loaded with natural plant-based medicines. I mean there are literally thousands of phytonutrients or what we call plant-based nutrients in this bar.
Modern science has not even begun to catalog all of the nutritional benefits of these thousands of different phytonutrients. The technology in this bar -- the technology that is synthesized by Mother Nature and grown naturally by the plants and then harvested and put together by this company into this one bar -- exceeds all medical technology known by man.
Far exceeds it because nature's wisdom greatly exceeds man's wisdom. Man has just barely begun to understand biology and physiology and it cannot even grasp concepts like holistic healing, holistic health, mind-body interactions, and so on. I mean, in fact, modern medical science is so far behind in the times that it does not even understand the difference between dead foods and living foods -- thinks they are exactly the same.
It is an absurd idea, but all the nutrition books out there that are conventional do not even distinguish between living and dead. We know living foods have far more nutritional energy and potency and they deliver far more disease-fighting nutrients -- and that is what is in this bar. This is all in one bar called the Organic Food Bar.
Again, you can learn about them online at www.OrganicFoodBar.com. You can also get a discount that we have negotiated on your behalf at www.NaturalNews.com so check that out. Take part in that. They have bars for kids. There are different flavors such as blueberry. They have a protein bar. I recommend this company openly, without any compensation whatsoever. I love what this company is doing and I recommend them strongly to anyone who wants to be healthy.
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