The biggest low carb nutrition companies maintaining dominance over the marketplace are Atkins and Quest. Atkins has an advantage in terms of name recognition, but Quest bars have gained an advantage with the variety of flavors they’ve introduced. They all sound very tempting—yet they also sound like they shouldn’t be allowed on a low carbohydrate diet plan. For example, they have flavors like Cookies & Cream, Apple Pie, Strawberry Cheesecake, Banana Nut Muffin and several other decadent sounding bars.
Each of these products contain somewhere between 3-5 gm of net carbs per bar. They achieve these low levels of carbs through the use of various sugar alcohols including erythritol, steviol and sucralose.
They’ve done a pretty good job at controlling the glycemic index of their foods. Our average blood sugar level rose by 25 mg/dL during the first 30 minutes after eating the bar. That’s compared to a change of 8 mg/dL for the Atkins Peanut Caramel Cluster Bar.
It’s also interesting to note that the peak rise in blood sugar for the Atkins bar occurred about 30 minutes later than the peak for the Quest bar. Given these results, I would say that the Atkins bar has an advantage over the Quest product in being more low carb.
As for taste, the Quest bar was quite good. We gave the bar a favorable score. It should be noted that all the Quest bars I have tried have the same texture and consistency. They are a soft, somewhat mushy consistency that people may tire of eventually.
