Energy bars

Before working out, many people choose to eat a quick snack. One food runners tend to enjoy is energy bars. I researched which energy bar would be the most effective to eat before a 5K run.  For my research, I compared a white chocolate macadamia nut cliff bar, a chocolate power bar, and an almond brownie balance bar. I assumed that the cliff bar is what would be the most effective because personally, I eat them after and before my workouts. I chose to research this topic because as an athlete, I am interested in finding out what is best for me.

A 5K run is only 3.1 miles, and most people who are good runners can run that distance in under 30 minutes. For most of those 30 minutes, the body will be burning energy from carbs. Out of the three bars, the power bar had the most carbs, with 45 grams. The cliff bar had 41, but the balance bar only had 21.The next macromolecule I looked at was fats. Fat is the next to be used up as energy during a run. In this category, the power bar was lacking with only 2 grams while both the cliff bar and the balance bar had 7. The last factor I took into consideration was the amount of sodium. Sodium is important because you lose it when you sweat, and these bars can help replenish you. The cliff bar was leading in sodium, with 240 grams, the power bar was slightly behind with 200 grams, and then came the balance bar with 170 grams of sodium. Taking these three factors into consideration, I feel that the most effective thing to eat before a 5K run would be the cliff bar. I came to this conclusion because although it did not have the most carbs, it was extremely close second and it was leading in both of the other categories. 

All three bars had a serving size of one bar. This is very accurate because most people only eat one bar at a time. Since these serving sizes are very similar, it did not have that much of an effect on the data I collected. One thing that I found interesting was that the balance bar claimed to be 40% carbs, 30% fat and 30% protein. When I did the calculations, I found that the numbers were very close, but they were not exactly these percentages. This research was very interesting and I learned that my hypothesis was correct, Cliff bars are very effective when eaten before a 5K run.