While I was trekking through miles and miles of booths at the Natural Products Expo West this past Spring, I discovered a great company with a very awesome product. Element Bars, based in Chicago, offers tasty energy bars made with natural, whole ingredients. What’s really cool about this company is that they have built an online portal where you can design your own energy bar— completely customized to your tastes. Sweet!

I’ve spent some time on their website and it’s surprisingly fun (and easy) to build your own bar. The site takes you through a step-by-step process, during which you select your base (chewy, crispy, oaty or datey), then you can choose form a variety of fruits and nuts, and if you want, there’s an entire selection of sweets— super-yummy, delicious things like agave, honey, SunDrops, and even pumpkin spice. Who doesn’t love chocolate chips in their energy bar? At the last step in the process you’ve got the option to add a booster— choose from whey protein, soy protein, immunity, omega-3, and fiber. Oh, and did I mention that many of the ingredients are organic. Yay!

With so many great ingredients at your fingertips, you might be worried that you’ll venture over that very fine line between a healthy energy bar and a candy bar. Fortunately, one of the very cool features of the web site is that the nutrition label is in plain sight and updated in real time with every added (and sometimes subtracted) ingredient. This is SO cool for a foodie, health nut like me. You add or subtract ingredients until you have created your perfectly personalized concoction.

The fine folks at Element Bars sent me several samples to try (Thank you Element Bars!). I sat down with 7 different flavors and here’s what I discovered:

• I didn’t meet one flavor I didn’t like.
• Each bar was completely unique. Whether you like lots of nuts, chewy textures, or tons of fruit, there is definitely a bar with your name on it. Literally. (That’s becuase Element Bars lets you name your own bar.)
• The Datey base is very dense (in a good way) and the texture reminded me of some of the raw bars on the market— very wholesome— yet not as raw. If you like a bar that has some umph, try the Datey base.
• If Datey base is earth, then Crispy base is sky. The first bar I tried was Cranberry Crunch— a deliciously light and lofty bar. It was like a rice krispy treat — only better for you.
• The Oaty base and the Chewy base are fantastic too— it just depends on what you’re in the mood for. My favorite is the Oaty base.

Here’s some other good stuff to know:

• Element Bars has a line of endurance bars— designed specifically for athletes— that offers unique ingredients, like B-vitamin boost, and specialty base blends for endurance athletes.
• The company is committed to using unprocessed or minimally processed ingredients.
• The bars are quite affordable— so there’s really no excuse not to try them out.
• If you aren’t sure what you want, they have variety packs and standard flavors that you can try.
• They have a taste guarantee— woohoo!
• These bars are wholesome and delicious. Just look at all the yummy goodness in these photos (Note: these photos only show half the bars—I ate the other half. :)

The whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Since my blog is relatively new, and this is the first product I’ve endorsed, I’d like to set the record straight. I will never write about a product I don’t personally endorse. I don’t care if a company offers me a million dollars to talk about their product— if I don’t like, and if it doesn’t align with my philosophies about wellness and life in general, you won’t read about it here. End of story. With that said, you should know that Element Bars does have an affiliate program, which is actually pretty cool for both you and me. Here’s how it works: You want to build your own bar, or try some of the standard flavors, so you click here to go to their site. Because you are one of my biggest supporters (you must be if you’ve read all the way to the bottom of this post), you will get a 15% discount on your bar purchase. And yes, in the spirit of full disclosure, a teeny percentage of your purchase will make it back to me. I will put it in a jar and save it to buy really cool things at the farmer’s market! We’ll call my jar the Element Jar and I’ll write future blog posts about how I spent your money. Okay?  Okay.

One more thing, when you create your own bar, I’d love to hear from you. Feel free to post a comment here and let us know about your favorite custom bar. I’ll be working with Element Bars to create my special bar and will keep you all posted.

Special discount for friends of The Whole Chef

In case you skipped the fine print in the paragraph above, I’ve decided to give it to you again with it’s own heading so you can’t miss it next time you’re looking for it. Here it is: when you order your Element Bars, use the coupon code thewholechef when you check out and you’ll save 15%.

Or, just follow this link and place your order. You’ll automatically see the 15% discount when you check-out.