The Living Healthy in the Real World Guide to Grocery Shopping will resume on Friday!

The people at YouBar generously agreed to let me sample and review some of their products recently. I was given the opportunity to try a variety of YouShakes, YouBars, and YouTrailMix. The great thing about the “You” line of products is that they use all-natural ingredients and custom-make a variety of products to meet your particulars. They also have some mixes already designed, and those were the ones that the YouBar company sent me.

The YouShakes (which is basically protein powder) were fantastic. I loved the Breakfast Shake. I added these powders to my morning green smoothie and it was delicious. The YouShake powder adds a very tasty flavour and also made the smoothie wonderfully frothy in a way that regular protein powder just doesn’t. This is my personal recipe for a fantastic Green YouShake:

Place in the blender 1.5 cups cold water, 2 cups fresh spinach, 0.5 frozen banana, and 0.5 portion YouShake powder. Blend for several minutes until it’s smooth and frothy. Enjoy! Note: One day I made this and took it to school. Several hours later I went to drink it; it had turned to room temperature and all the froth had disappeared. It was not good. Drink this within 15 minutes of making it- though it probably won’t last even that long!

I wasn’t quite as big a fan of the YouBars. The “Great Date with Chocolate” YouBar was chocolatey but tasted too much like an artificial, commercial bar for my liking (even though all the ingredients are all-natural). The “Honey Cashew”, on the other hand, was very tasty. I loved the creaminess from the combination of honey and cashews, as well as the crunch that came with the crispy rice cereal incorporated into the bar.

One of the popular trail mixes listed on the YouBar website is “The Best Trail Mix”, and that’s the perfect name for this trail mix. It combines just the right amount of almonds with chocolate candies and deliciously plump blueberries. I also quite liked the “Chocolate Trails” trail mix, though I think it was a tiny bit stingy on the pretzels- I would have liked more pretzels and less peanuts. There was an abundance of tasty chocolate-covered raisins, though, which I definitely approved of.

Overall, the concept of YouBar products is great. If you really love bars and shakes but hate the commercial aspect of a lot of them, then this is the way to go. You get to control what goes in there without the bother of cooking for yourself (hehe). I’m picky with my sugar so I found it a little bit high in some of their products (for example, that delicious Breakfast Shake I was telling you about has 9 grams of sugar- the equivalent to just a little over 2 tsp- per serving. It also provides 15 grams of protein, which is awesome, so I found it useful to cut the portion in half when you add it to your smoothie. You still get plenty of protein with a little less sugar). However, these products use all-natural ingredients, most of which are organic, so they are significantly healthier than what you’ll find on most grocery store shelves. And it’s always better if you’re the one determining what goes into your food.

And speaking of grocery stores… shopping for your food online is an easy way to do your shopping without the hassle of dragging yourself to the store! The YouBar website also sells custom-made cereals and cookies which look perfectly delectable.

Want to try YouBar products for yourself? Enter coupon code “livinghealthy” to receive 5% off your purchase! Happy mixing 🙂