Need to know
- Muesli bars are a popular kids' snack with lots of options that vary in price, taste and nutritional value
- While they may seem like a healthy choice, it’s important to take into account things like added sugars and fat content
- In our blind taste test, the leading national brand beat the cheaper supermarket contenders
Muesli bars are a convenient option for everyday snacking or popping in the kids' lunchboxes. While they're often sold as a healthy option – many boast about being a source of fibre or whole grains – their health food claims should be taken with a grain of salt. Many can contain high amounts of saturated fat, added sugars and preservatives.
Nevertheless, there's no arguing their popularity, and there are plenty of varieties on offer. As many schools have a nut-free policy, one of the most popular flavours is strawberry and yoghurt, and there are options on offer from many brands, including Coles, Woolworths, Aldi and Uncle Tobys.
We asked a panel of experts (a group of CHOICE kids and teens) to tell us which version tastes best, and had a look at the health star ratings to help you decide which one to add to your shopping basket.
On this page:
- Which muesli bar tasted best?
- Which were the cheapest muesli bars in our comparison?
- How healthy are muesli bars?
- Tips for buying the best muesli bar
Which muesli bar tasted best?
Finding snacks that your children will actually eat is a continuous struggle for parents, so to find out which muesli bar tasted best, we went straight to the source. We enlisted the help of 28 kids to blind-taste each of these muesli bars and tell us which one they liked the best.
Uncle Toby's was the clear winner, with Aldi and Coles earning joint second place. The Woolworths version received the fewest votes.
We recruited the help of CHOICE kids for our blind taste test of four different yoghurt and strawbery flavoured muesli bars.
Which were the cheapest muesli bars in our comparison?
Packaged snacks for lunchboxes are just one of the items adding to the increasing cost of our groceries, and if you're adding a muesli bar to your kids' snack packs every other day, the cost can really add up.
If you have two kids who eat one muesli bar at school every day and you buy the most expensive bar in our test, you're looking at $6.70 per week or $26.80 per month, just for muesli bars! Alternatively, if you buy the cheapest bar, your kids' muesli bar habit will only cost you $15.20 per month, which is a little easier to stomach.
As with any groceries you're shopping for, it's important to not only pay attention to the price of the box and how many bars you're getting, but also unit pricing, which will tell you how much you're paying for each 100g of muesli bar.
While the Hillcrest Yoghurt and Strawberry bars from Aldi are the cheapest per box at just $2.49 they're actually the second most expensive when you look at how much each bar costs: $0.42. The Coles and Woolworths bars are the cheapest: $3 for a box of eight, equating to $0.38 for each bar.
The Uncle Tobys bars were the most expensive in our test: $4 per pack and $0.67 per bar.
How healthy are muesli bars?
While all of the muesli bars in our test make claims about the health qualities of their ingredients – three mention "wholegrains" on the front of the packaging – it's important to consider that this doesn't necessarily mean they're good for you, or the kids.
While you might not see sugar mentioned more than once in an ingredient list, it doesn't mean there aren't other similar sweeteners present. In Australia, there are more than 60 different names used for added sugars and nine of them can be found in the muesli bars in our test: Sugar, raw sugar, invert sugar, glucose, glucose syrup, fruit concentrates, juice concentrates, syrup and polydextrose were all found across the four products.
In Australia, there are more than 60 different names used for added sugars
While all of these bars should probably be considered an occasional treat rather than an everyday snack, if you are looking for the healthiest option, be mindful of the health star rating, which you can find on the front of every packet.
While the Uncle Tobys, Hillcrest and Woolworths bars all earned four stars, the Coles product has a 2.5 health star rating. With these results, it's not surprising that the Coles bars have the highest amount of saturated fat (more than 2g per bar), the highest sugar content (7.8g per bar) and the highest sodium content. In fact, the Coles bars have 23mg of sodium per serving – almost four times as much as the Uncle Tobys and Woolworths bars, which both have only 6mg of sodium in each bar.
Tips for buying the best muesli bar
Of course, it's no use buying the healthiest muesli bar in the world if your kid refuses to eat it. As well as taste, here are some things you might like to take into account when shopping:
- Energy per serve: A healthy snack should fill a hole without giving you too many unnecessary kilojoules. Nutritionists recommend that we limit our energy intake from snacks to 600kJ.
- Size: All the muesli bars in our test weighed around 31g (the Uncle Tobys and Hillcrest varieties were slightly less, just 30.83g. The Coles and Woolworths versions were exactly 31g each).
- Nut-free: Many schools have a nut-free policy, so you need to avoid bars with nuts in the ingredients. None of the ones we tested contained nuts but all came with the standard "may contain traces" warning.
- Ingredients list: These are listed by descending weight, meaning the ingredients listed first make up the largest amount of the product. Therefore, look for muesli bars that have more whole ingredients up front, such as rolled oats and whole-grain wheats and cereals, and less sugar.
- Cost: As we've already mentioned above, look for unit pricing to ensure you're getting the best value possible. If you have time, making your own muesli bars at home, using ingredients like bulk-bought muesli, seeds, oats and honey, could also be a more cost-effective alternative.
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Stock images: Getty, unless otherwise stated.
