Anthony co-founded You Bar in May 2006 with his mother Ava Bise after finding the mass-produced commercial energy bars unappealing and full of ingredients that didn’t support their health and lifestyle.  The innovative company lets customers design their own nutrition bars that are free from preservatives and corn syrup.

You Bar gives consumers the opportunity to choose what goes into their bar and their bodies.  By visiting the company’s website, consumers can create their own bar by following the easy step-by-step process.  As you add or take away ingredients to your bar the nutritional content of the bar featured at right changes to reflect the changes you make.  Taking personalization even further, You Bar lets consumers give their bar a name or phrases and greetings for special events.  For the timid, You Bar offers several proven ingredient combinations such as “The Best” bar and “Honey Cashew”…the latter being my personal “proven” favorite.

Upon my review I noticed that each bar has an “Enjoy By” date, something most mass produced commercial bars do not have.  Although I felt I knew why there was such a date labeled on the bars I wanted to hear the explanation from the CEO himself, so I asked Anthony.

“As for the enjoy by date, we try to keep our products as healthy as possible so we do not use products that contain the preservatives that allow other brands to have an 11 month shelf life. Also because of the customized aspect of our bars it is impossible for us to test the shelf life of every combination of products. Two months is the shortest shelf life we have seen in our products so while many of our bars last longer than the enjoy by date we always put the soonest possible date they could go bad.”

The average life span of a mass-produced commercial bar is 11 months.  Per Anthony’s suggestion for a fun activity, I went to the local REI and looked at the expiration date of various bars, then subtracted 11 months from that date to determine the date the bar was baked.  Most bars on the shelves were 3 and 4 months old.  I then looked in the pack that I carry with me on all mountain biking rides…the two bars I had inside were over 6 months old!

As for the taste test…no other bar comes close.  The bars taste as if you mixed them in your own kitchen just mintues earlier.  I have never tasted a bar that features the freshness and flavor of these bars.  For this review I only tested some of the proven favorites, so as you can imagine it can only get better by choosing your own favorite ingredients.  A truely innovative product that this reviewer thinks will change the way you buy energy bars.  In case you were wondering, You Bars start at just over $30 for a box of 13, give them a try, you’ll soon be hooked.

To receive 10% off your first order simply put in the promotion code, “mtobikes” when placing your order.

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