Rise and Shine - On the Go Protein

I don't travel all the time like I used to in my last job, but there are still some business trips that have me on a plane.  I have low blood sugar (something that popped up when I hit menopause early at age 42) and find that if I don't get enough protein, I feel really crummy. If I skip meals or eat a carb heavy meal without adequate protein, I actually will get lightheaded and very nauseous. Add to that I eat meat-free 95% of the time and I'm sensitive to most artificial sweeteners so it's harder to find protein rich low calorie snacks and meal replacements that work for me.

So I've been looking and trying various protein and meal replacement and snack bars. Due to busy days I usually have one "portable" meal of a fruit/nut bar that I can eat quickly at my desk while on my job or working on the next book.  My favorite  for incredibly good taste and omegas continues to be the

• Alpsnack Bars

sometimes adding a container of coconut yogurt to it if I'm having it as my breakfast meal replacement.

After reading some review of the protein bars out there, I decided to try one of the top rated vegetarian/vegan (they have both, depending on sweetener and protein source type) bars - RISE, and ordered an assortment of flavors. They're made with only a few natural ingredients.  For example - the lemon cashew contains just cashews, coconut nectar, pea protein and lemon extract.

They look like big erasers but are actually much softer and easy to eat,  much less chewy than the "Quest" brand bar, which is very popular and had a TON of variety but had sugar alcohols to keep them low carb that didn't agree with my stomach.

If you eat "clean"  and like me, have a fussy stomach, you may really like the Rise bars.

Rise have "Breakfast" Energy" and "Protein" bars.  The breakfast and energy bars were the best tasting of all of them, but I was going for high protein for a travel food.

The Rise protein bar had protein ranging from 14 - 20 grams, which is really good.  Sugar was a bit higher than I'd like to see, but it was all natural sugars and not sucralose which you see in other popular protein bars such as Quest. Fat was high, but it was from the nuts - and that's a good kind of fat.(note - they manufacturer them in a peanut free facility)

My favorites were a tie -  the cacao banana and the honey almond, both of which were gluten-free and vegetarian. They have whey protein but whey doesn't have the issues for the dairy sensitive that you'd think as why protein isolate contains less than 1 percent lactose so the whey, with the honey sweetener, was easy to digest for me.

The Vegan Lemon cashew had the best taste (it was like soft, yummy lemon shortbread) but it had slightly less protein then the others so I'll rate it #2 .

Do check the ingredients - at least one of the flavors is sweetened with agave syrup. Some folks don't digest that well (I'm one of them).  One of the original medical uses of the plant the agave syrup comes from was a constipation remedy so I'll let you figure that one out.

The snickerdoodle was a pass for me personally, as the cinnamon flavor paired with the whey protein just tasted a bit odd to me but if you love cinnamon that may be your new favorite, as would the sunflower cinnamon.

Calories range from 260-310, a bit high for a snack for a female that's fairly sedentary but quite workable as a meal replacement. So on an airplane, when I needed a jolt of protein and had no meal options it would be great.

Overall - as a meal replacement on a daily basis, I think  I'll stick with my daily wheat free and vegan Alpsnack, with a yogurt and a bottle of water, but if you are an athlete or travel where you need a clean, healthy punch of protein in a simple to tote package, the Rise protein bars are  worth trying. I ordered mine direct from Rise company at  https://risebar.com/