The Bottom Line
Pros
- Natural ingredients and no trans fat
- Totally portable so no need to ignore hunger or skip snacks when you're out and about
- Tailor-made for moms in all stages -- before, during and after pregnancy
- Tastes great, more like "real food" than other bars
- Fortified with folic acid and other essential vitamins that mom and baby need
Cons
- Chocolate coating on "Baby Needs Chocolate" bar melts
- More expensive than conventional bars
Description
- Flavors are Baby Needs Chocolate, Berry Nutty Cravings and Mellow Oat.
- Can be stowed away in purse, diaper bag or anywhere you need a quick snack.
- Web site has convenient store finder and online retailers.
- Each bar has about 170-180 calories.
Guide Review - Nutrabella Belly Bar
My favorite was Baby Needs Chocolate. I actually ate it "on the go" and it had been in my purse in the Texas heat, so one con I have is that the chocolate melted, causing an ooey-gooey mess. (Still edible!) Another sample I had at room temperature, however, was fine with no melting.The taste of these bars compared to other bars I've had was really astounding. It wasn't dry and chalky or hard as a brick. It was a perfect blend of chewy and crunchy and I could actually distinguish the tastes of the different ingredients like graham cracker and big chunks of almond.
There's nothing more discouraging than label reading when trying to move toward a diet free of harmful trans fat. What I found here was no trans fat, and ingredients that had names I could pronounce and recognize as "real food." Here's what you get in a Mellow Oat BellyBar, for example:
Brown Rice Syrup, Toasted Oats (Rolled Oats, Honey, Soybean Oil), Soy Crisp (Soy Protein Isolate, Rice Flour, Calcium Carbonate), Crisp Rice (Rice Flour, Malt Extract, Rice Bran, Calcium Carbonate), Almonds, Soynuts (Soybeans, Sugar, Natural Flavors, Sunflower Oil, Salt, Caramel Color), Graham Pieces (Wheat Flour, Sugar, Canola Oil, Salt, Sodium Bicarbonate), Nonfat Milk Powder, Palm Kernel Oil, Milled Flaxseeds.
So if you're looking for a healthy snack that will last from prepregnancy through postpartum and breastfeeding, you can't go wrong with the Nutrabella BellyBar. A bit expensive, yes, but the quality is well worth the price.
