Where to buy: Amazon
Vega makes 3 types of vegan protein bars.
The “snack” bar is essentially the lite version, with the least amount of protein.
Still, I wanted to review it because it’s so easy to find both online and in stores.
I’ve tested around 20 bars so far, and for each of them I look at 3 things: protein content, taste, and cost.
This review is divided into those 3 categories.
Table of Contents
Protein Content and Nutrition
To compare protein bars against each other, the only fair way I could come up with was to look at protein content.
In other words, what percent of the total calories come from protein?
This value can be calculated straight from the nutritional facts for the bar:
- 180 calories
- 10 grams of protein
- 21 grams carbohydrates
- 11 grams of sugar
- 4 grams of fiber
With 40 calories from protein and 180 calories overall, that gives us a protein content of 22.2%.
When compared to the other bars I tested, this is less than average. This translates to a score of 5 out of 10 (7 is the average for reference).
Ingredients List
Here’s the full ingredient list for a typical Vega protein snack bar for convenience:
Pea protein crisps [pea protein, rice starch], organic brown rice syrup, almond butter, inulin [from chicory root], brown rice protein, cane sugar, rolled oats, organic tapioca syrup, pea protein, palm kernel oil, dried blueberries [blueberries, apple juice concentrate, sunflower oil], sacha inchi oil, sunflower oil, natural flavors, brown rice crisps, date paste, sea salt, sunflower lecithin, organic vanilla extract, organic buckwheat, chia seeds, hemp seeds.
For the most part they’re pretty standard, but there’s one that I highlight: palm kernel oil.
While palm oil is technically vegan since it comes from a plant, many vegans don’t eat palm oil. I thought I’d point it out and let you make up your own mind about it.
Vega Snack Bar Taste Test
Vega is well-known because most of their products taste good, where other vegan alternatives don’t.
Here’s what the full bar looks like (depending on flavor):
And here’s what the inside looks like:
This was easy to grade, since it was about as good as it gets.
It’s quite chewy with a nice bit of crunch, very similar to a granola bar.
It had a great flavor, and deserves a 10/10 here.
Flavor Varieties
There are 4 flavors of the Vega protein snack bar:
- Chocolate Caramel
- Chocolate Peanut Butter
- Blueberry Oat
- Coconut Almond
I haven’t tried the non-chocolate ones, but I imagine they’re still good.
Cost of Vega Snack Bar Compared to Other Bars
But here’s the big downside of Vega: their products are expensive.
Even if you buy a box, they still cost over $3 per bar. If you buy them individually they cost even more.
This is actually less than the other Vega bars, but there’s a trade-off, it has half the protein of the others.
So not only are they pretty expensive, but you don’t get too much protein for that cost. My price score formula takes into account the price per 10 grams of protein. When you compare that to other bars, the price score for Vega’s snack bar is 1/10.
How Does Vega’s Protein Snack Bar Stack Up?
Overall that’s a score of 16/30.
There are only a few bars with a worse score than that.
They’re very expensive and have a relatively low protein content, the one big upside is that they taste great.
I highly recommend going to my page where I ranked the best vegan protein bars and finding an alternative.
The only time I’d recommend it is if you needed a bar in a pinch, as it’s a pretty easy one to find at many grocery and health food stores. Otherwise you should probably go with a different bar.
Alternatives to the Vega Snack Bar
- Simply Protein Bar – Depending on where you live, the Simply Bar can be just as easy to find in stores as Vega bars. It is my top rated bar overall, with great scores in taste, cost, and protein content. Here’s my full Simply vegan protein bar review.
- Vega 20g Protein Bar – Of all the Vega bars that I tested, this had the highest ranking. It tastes great as well, but has a high protein content than the other bars. See my Vega 20g Protein bar review for the full breakdown.
- Vega Sport Protein Bar – This Vega Bar scored 23/30, which is considerably better than the snack bar. It still tastes great, and has a better price per gram of protein. Here’s my full Vega Sport bar review.
