Where to buy: Amazon
It’s easy to get bored of eating the same vegan paleo protein sources over and over, so the pegan bar (paleo and vegan) caught my eye when looking for protein bars.
I’ve tested several at this point, and wanted to see how the pegan bar stacks up.
Each bar I review is scored out of 30 overall, with individual scores out of 10 for protein content, taste, and price.
I’ll walk you through the most important things to know about the Pegan bar if you’re considering trying it.
Table of Contents
The Pegan Bar Has a Really High Protein Content
Of all the bars I’ve looked at, the Pegan bar has the highest protein content of all of them.
In each bar, there is:
- 190 calories
- 20 grams of protein (80 calories)
- 27 grams of carbohydrates
- 1 gram of sugar
- 26 grams of fiber
That means that 42.1% of the calories come from protein.
Only a few other bars come even close to that.
Ingredients
The ingredient list is fairly simple, here it is for the chocolate lava bar:
Organic Sacha Inchi, Organic Prebiotic Digestive Resistant Tapioca Fiber, Organic Sunflower Butter, Organic Cacao, Chocolate Extract Flavor, Lou Han Guo (Monk Fruit Extract), ProDura (Probiotic), Sunflower Lecithin.
The protein mainly comes from the “sacha inchi,” which apparently is a type of mountain peanut.
The other aspect that stands out are the probiotic ingredients, which leads to the veryhigh amount of fiber in this bar.
How Does the Pegan Bar Look and Taste?
The first thing you’ll notice is that the bar is relatively small compared the wrapper:
I’m not sure why they don’t use a smaller one.
Here’s what the full bar looks like:
It looks a bit shiny there, that’s because it’s fairly oily on the outside. You don’t really want to be handling it.
That doesn’t matter too much, just a note.
Let’s open up the bar to take a better look at the texture:
It looks pretty good at first glance to me. I expected it to be fairly doughy and chewy based on seeing it.
What about the actual taste though?
I bought 2 different flavors and had mixed experiences.
The first one was Sweet Sunflower, and I was not a fan. It was edible, but a bit of a struggle. It would be a 4 out of 10 for me.
But I also had the Chocolate Lava bar to taste, and liked it a lot more.
If I can get multiple flavors of a bar, I typically judge the best one, so here’s more detail on my thoughts of the chocolate version:
- Small bar, oily on outside.
- Quite firm and chewy.
- Pretty dry.
- Flavor is decent, very little sweetness, but a little strange at first.
You’re probably not going to love it, it’s far from a candy bar. However, it’s easily edible and there’s no real struggle.
That’s why I gave this bar a 7 out of 10 for taste.
Full Flavor List
There are 5 flavors total, although some are easier to find than others:
- Vanilla Cinnamon Twist
- Chocolate Lava
- Sweet Sunflower
- Cinnamon Raisin
- Ginger Spice
I’d probably recommend trying the chocolate first, and if you really like it, maybe try others.
Is the Pegan Bar Affordable?
If you buy a box with no discount, it’ll work out to somewhere around $2.5 per bar depending on the day.
For a vegan protein bar, that’s almost dead average.
I use a basic formula to scale the price per 10 grams of protein to a score out of 10, where a higher score means that it costs less.
In this case, the Pegan bar scored 9/10. In terms of maximizing how much protein you’re getting, it’s a very cost-effective option. It’s not hard to get fats or carbs elsewhere.
So, Is the Pegan Bar the Best Vegan Protein Bar?
There’s a lot to like about this bar, and it is a really good bar.
It’s the only bar that I’ve come across specifically made for vegans on a paleo diet.
However, with an overall score of 26/30, the Pegan bar isn’t quite the best overall vegan protein bar (although it ranks pretty highly).
Alternatives to the Pegan Bar
Most other bars aren’t Paleo (depending on your definition), so if you really need a paleo bar, you don’t really have any other choices.
But if you’re open to other bars, here are a few that I rated slightly higher than the Pegan bar:
- Simply Bar – While they have a similar cost and protein content, the Simply bar tastes significantly better in my opinion. See my full Simply bar review for a detailed breakdown.
- No Cow Bar – The No Cow bar is the only other bar to match the protein content of the Pegan bar. It’s also affordable and tastes slightly better in my opinion. Here’s my complete No Cow vegan protein bar review.
