Where to buy: Rise bar site
Key takeaways:
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- While most of Rise’s protein bars aren’t vegan, some, like the lemon one are.
- At best, it’s an acquired taste, despite having a decent texture.
Rise makes a line of super simple protein bars.
Some of them happen to be vegan, and I was able to find a box to buy and test.
This is part of my goal to find the best vegan protein bar. I have a standard testing process that I follow to fairly review and compare the bars.
That process involves 3 parts, all scored out of 10: protein content, taste, and cost.
You’ll get my honest opinions on the bar, and you can decide if it’s right for you or not.
Table of Contents
Ingredients in Rise Protein Bars
Most protein bars have fairly long lists of ingredients.
Rise bars are pretty cool in that they have a short ingredient list. Honestly, you could make them at home pretty easily if you have a good food processor.
I was only able to purchase the lemon cashew flavor, and here’s the full ingredient list for them:
Organic cashews, organic coconut nectar, pea protein, and organic lemon extract
The other flavors have similarly short lists of “real” (by that I mean you clearly know what they are) ingredients.
Protein Content of Rise Bars
Bringing this all together results in a bar with the following nutrition facts:
- Calories: 260
- Protein: 15 grams
- Carbs: 23 grams
- Sugar: 12 grams
- Fiber: 1 gram
The protein content is how I score and compare bars against each other. A good bar has a lot of protein, and as few calories from fat and carbs as possible (these aren’t meal replacement bars after all).
With 15 grams of protein (60 calories), the protein content of this bar is 23.1%.
When you compare that with other vegan protein bars (that get up to 40%), it’s quite low.
I have a simple formula that scales protein content to a score out of 10, and the rise bar gets a protein score of 5 out of 10.
The Taste of Lemon Cashew Rise Bars
The second most important part of protein bars is taste.
Who cares if a bar has a lot of protein if you can’t stomach it.
First off it’s a little strange how small the bar is. It’s about half the size of the wrapper.
It has a fairly nice consistency, pretty doughy.
But it’s also oily, it’ll get on your fingers if you touch the bar.
On to the taste test. Here’s what I thought about it:
- It’s a bit chalky
- The lemon flavor isn’t good (I like lemon on salads, but in a protein bar?)
- Good chewy texture.
I was not a huge fan. I gave it a score of 5/10, it’s edible, but not enjoyable.
Unfortunately, Canadians have a hard time buying certain products, and Rise bars are one of those products. There’s 2 other flavors of vegan rise bars:
- Lemon Cashew
- Sunflower Cinnamon
- Chocolatey Coconut
I was only able to get a box of the lemon cashew bars, even though the other 2 sound better.
If you do end us buying Rise bars, I’d definitely recommend trying one of the others, they might actually taste good. The flavor itself was balanced well
How Much Do Rise Bars Cost Compared to Others?
Prices fluctuate, but in general Rise protein bars cost about $2.3 per bar if you order a box.
I calculate a price score based on the cost per 10 grams of protein.
When you compare that to all the other vegan protein bars I tested, it actually scores an 8 out of 10 for cost, where a higher score means it’s cheaper.
Obviously a few dollars a bar is not “cheap”, but compared to the alternatives it’s pretty good.
Overall, How Good is the Rise Protein Bar?
If we add up those 3 scores, we get an overall score of 18/30.
That’s like a “D” for a school grade.
It’s not the worst by any means, but there are many bars that are better and I would recommend over it.
Alternatives to Rise Bars
Here are a few bars that I ranked much higher than Rise bars in my testing:
- Simply Protein – This is a healthy vegan protein bar that is my personal favorite after all the testing I’ve done. It’s high in protein, affordable, and tastes really good. My Simply Protein bar review outlines why I like it so much.
- No Cow Bars – These were tied for the top score overall in my testing. They have the most protein, are cheap, and taste pretty good. They have a similar texture to Rise bars. Here’s my No Cow vegan protein bar review if you’d like to read more.
- Sunwarrior Sol bars – This is arguably the best organic vegan protein bar if that’s important to you. It’s pretty average in the 3 main categories I test, but it’s a decent bar overall. See my Sunwarrior Sol Good vegan protein bar review if you’d like to see my full thoughts.
