In this article:

• Lunchbox hits
• Lunchbox misses
• Gluten-free options
• Treacherous for teeth
• How we assessed
• Product table – 95 lunchbox-friendly snack bars compared

Lunchbox hits

Most schools have a nut-free policy, which means a lot of snack bars you can buy aren't suitable to pack in your child's lunchbox. In 2016 we sifted through more than 200 products and found 95 snack bars that don't include nuts in their ingredients list – see the table. We then compared these lunchbox-friendly options to find the healthiest. 

The following 14 nut-free products received a health star rating of 4 or more, and met our criteria for energy and wholegrains per serve:

• Goodness Superfoods Better for U Cereal Bars Wild Berries & Yoghurt
• Freedom Foods Apples and Cinnamon Crunchola Chewy
• Freedom Foods Apricot, Coconut and Chia Crunchola Chewy
• Freedom Foods Choc Chip Crunchola Chewy
• Uncle Toby's Chewy Apricot
• Uncle Toby's Chewy Choc Chip
• Uncle Toby's Chewy Forest Fruits
• Uncle Toby's Chewy White Choc Chip & Raspberry
• Uncle Toby's Chewy White Choc Chip
• Uncle Toby's Chewy Yoghurt Apricot
• Uncle Toby's Chewy Yoghurt Honeycomb
• Uncle Toby's Chewy Yoghurt Raspberry
• Uncle Toby's Chewy Yoghurt Strawberry
• Uncle Toby's Chewy Yoghurt Mango Passionfruit

Bear in mind that many of these products are still relatively high in sugars – both added, and from dried fruit that can stick to teeth – and can contribute to tooth decay. Fresh fruit together with a serve of wholegrain crackers such as corn thins would make a healthier lunchbox snack.

Lunchbox misses

• Kellogg's may promote their LCM bars as "a sure-fire lunchbox hit", but they're a miss when it comes to nutrition. Kellogg's LCMs Split Stix Yoghurty, for example, have a health star rating of just 0.5. And while they're only small (23g a bar), they're high in saturated fat, pack a sugar punch and are among the saltiest products reviewed. Kellogg's Nutri-Grain Bars (1 star) aren't much better.
• Fontelle Oven Baked Mini Meal Choc Chip (1 star) is true to its name; a 120g bar provides 2412kJ – as much as a meal, and more than a quarter of the recommended daily energy intake for an adult. Not to mention the 8.5 teaspoons of sugar it crams in too.
• Coconut and butter feature high up in the ingredients list of Carman's Oat Slice Belgian Chocolate Brownie, Carman's Oat Slice Cranberry & Blueberry and Carman's Oat Slice Golden Oat and Coconut (all 1 star) which may make them tasty but also bring saturated fat to the party. Carman's Oat Slice Golden Oat and Coconut tops the chart, with 19.7% saturated fat. The oat slices in our review were higher in saturated fat and contained more kilojoules per serve on average than other bars, so it's a category best avoided if you're after a healthy choice.

Gluten-free options

While they don't meet our wholegrains criteria, the following gluten-free bars also receive 4 or more stars and meet our energy criteria, so are worth considering for schoolkids who need gluten-free options:

• Freedom Foods Crafted Blends with Superfoods Pepitas, Spinach & Chickpeas
• Soma Bite Apple and Superseed
• Food For Health Cranberry, Apple & Amaranth Bars
• Freedom Foods Ancient Grains Muesli Bar Cranberries, Apple & Grains
• Freedom Foods Crafted Blends with Superfoods Cranberries, Pomegranate & Goji Berries
• Golden Days Seed Bar with Quinoa Apricot & Coconut
• Golden Days Seed Bar with Quinoa Cranberry
• Kez's Free & Naked Lamington Bars
• Kez's Free & Naked Banana Cake Bars

Treacherous for teeth

Eating sugary snacks can be harmful to teeth. The bacteria in our mouths use these sugars to make acid, and if teeth are exposed to this acid long enough it can cause decay. Snack bars, especially the stickier ones, are bad news because the sugar sticks to your teeth. The Australian Dental Association suggests we help stop decay by limiting our intake of these types of snack foods.

How we assessed

We bought all the snack bars we could find in one large Coles, Woolworths and Aldi supermarket in Sydney in March and April 2016, separated those with no nuts on their ingredient list, and evaluated the ingredients and nutrition information on the labels. When choosing bars to recommend, we took into account the following criteria:

• Health star rating (HSR). The HSR is based on an algorithm which takes into consideration kilojoules and ‘negative’ nutrients (sugars, saturated fat and sodium) associated with increasing the risk factors for chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes, heart disease and obesity, and balances them against the 'positive' aspects of a food – its fruit, vegetable, nuts or legumes content (all valuable sources of a range of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants), as well as protein and dietary fibre content. The data used is per 100g of food. The higher the HSR, the healthier the product.
• Energy per serve. A healthy snack should fill a hole without giving you too many extra fattening kilojoules. Nutritionists recommend that we limit our energy intake from snacks to 600kJ.
• Wholegrains per serve. Australian Dietary Guidelines recommend we choose wholegrain foods most of the time because they contain a range of protective components, such as phytonutrients, which are thought to play an important role in the prevention of disease. The Grains & Legumes Nutrition Council says foods must contain a minimum of 8g of wholegrain per serve in order to make a claim about its wholegrain content. (This criteria wasn't used in the assessment of nut bars, raw bars and seed bars.)

Lunchbox-friendly snack bars compared

We compared 95 lunchbox-friendly snack bars in 2016. We've listed them below in order of health star rating (highest to lowest). To order by another criteria, simply click on the column headings.

TABLE NOTES

• *Price is per bar, based on price paid per bar/pack in Sydney supermarkets in March/April 2016. 
• na information not available or not applicable
• ns not stated 
• np not purchased