What About the Clif Mojo Sweet and Salty Bars from Costco?

On the one hand, I have been eating ‘energy’ or ‘protein’ snack bars for over 40 years. I used to buy the old Balance Bars back when I was working as a reporter and couldn’t get away for lunch. So, I have a lot of experience with them. Likewise, today after retirement, while riding my bike daily and logging lots of miles, I rely on bars for my energy breaks and for fuel to keep me going. All this is a prelude to my having just discovered the Clif Mojo Sweet and Salty Bars on my last visit to, you guessed it – Costco.

I’m sure regular readers are experiencing some deja vu here, as I have time and again written about my latest discovery from Costco. I must confess that while the Mojo bars are new to me, I may be like the husband, the last to know. I’m not sure how long they have actually been around.

Going back to my early experience with energy bars, I have eaten more than one that tasted a lot like flavored sawdust. Nowadays, however, particularly with this Mojo bar, the old Virginia Slims slogan applies, “You’ve come a long way, Baby.”

These new bars hit me right in the taste buds – sweet and salty. Everything I love. Before I got control of my weight, my appetite for both the sweet and salty treats contributed to my undoing. In the evenings, I used to snack on salty potato chips and pretzels and then finish off with ice cream or chocolate. That’s how I got  up to plus 220 pounds and a plus 4o inch waist. You can read about how I lost 50 pounds in 52 weeks. Now comes a healthy treat that is both sweet and salty from the noted Clif kitchens. I love the taste as well as the texture of these bars.

The box I bought from Costco was a “24 bar variety pack,” including eight mountain mix, eight dark chocolate almond coconut and eight peanut butter pretzel. The box reads, “70% Organic; 8-9 grams of protein and low glycemic.”

The nutritional breakdown among the three bars is very close:

Serving size: one bar, 45 grams, about 1.5 ounces.
Calories 180
Total Fat 9 grams
Saturated Fat 1.5 grams
No cholesterol
Sodium 200 mg
Potassium 180 mg
Carbohydrates, 21 grams
Fiber 2 grams
Protein 8 grams

To add a sliver of objectivity to this writeup I want to quote from a National Institutes of Health study on protein bars, “The replacement in the diet of refined carbohydrate and fat with fiber and protein has been shown to promote satiety and improve glucose and insulin profiles…. Altering the macronutrient composition of a snack bar can assist in reducing the energy intake at a subsequent meal and improve short term glucose and insulin profiles.”

Check them out and let me know what you think.

Tony