Kate’s Real Food Energy Bars

What it is

• A healthy and tasty energy bar for dirt bikers. And regular people too.

Kate’s Real Food is a small company hidden in the Idaho backcountry producing hand-made organic bars with all-natural ingredients. The company makes five different bar flavors in their Victor, Idaho location and sells them in a lot of specialty stores or directly through their web site. Rooted in outdoor play, company founder Kate Schade is an avid off-road rider and racer as well as being a ski bum.

Here is a breakdown of the bar names and flavors:

Tram Bar--peanut butter, milk chocolate and trail mix

Handle Bar-- smooth dark chocolate, tart cherries and crunchy almonds

Tiki Bar-- chewy coconut, sweet mango and crunchy cashew --is also peanut, dairy, soy and gluten free

Grizzly Bar-- smooth dark chocolate, sweet blossom honey, chewy dried fruit, and creamy peanut butter

Stash Bar--peanut butter, dark chocolate with flax and hemp seeds

How it works

• Tastes great and unlike some beers, filling too!
• Packs easily and handles abusive transport.
• Gives you more energy that you'd expect from a small bar.

My first encounter with Kate’s Bars was while still the editor at Dirt Rider and reading a DR Tested where one of my guys gave the bar a perfect score of 100. I said, “Nothing is perfect, there has to be something wrong with this energy bar.” Well an argument ensued and I said I’d be the judge (I was the boss after all) but the only way I could tell was if I had one to test. Yet they were all gone. A second shipment came to the office and quickly disappeared before I ever got a taste. The bars seemed to be so in demand that proper verification of the testing could not be completed.

So I ran into Kate at a riding event and finally found out what a Kate’s Bar tastes like. I understood immediately and now maybe there was an argument for perfection. We’ve all eaten a variety of energy or granola bars. Some are effective and others not so much. Some are tasty yet the benefits may not be as rewarding. Somehow Kate’s Bars balance the equation to a point that you crave eating a very tasty energy bar that does what it should. It gives you energy. And does not taste like a smashed chalk board eraser.

I have to come clean and reveal that Kate’s does support my riding school and provides me with as many bars as I can eat as well--which pretty much means one at breakfast every day and then when needing a boost during exercise, especially when out riding. But the bars are among the best products that I use which propels me to want to tell people about them.

The ingredients are all natural and organic and lots of other very hippy happy ways that food can be manufactured to make you feel better about what you eat. If you need that. There isn’t much other than pretty basic whole foods that are unprocessed in these bars stuck together with sticky stuff like honey, chocolate and peanut butter, depending on the bar. The only unnatural thing is that all these great flavors come together into one rectangular shaped bar that it is so easy to eat. The bars have a pretty long shelf life (about a year as determined by the best before dates on the package) and travel well, even in heat where they can get a little messy but we are not afraid to lick the wrapper either.

Some of the science behind the recipe is that the natural sugars and proteins provide sustained energy, while the amino acids from the hemp seeds help your body utilize it. Flax seeds give you an added boost of omega 3 and antioxidants. Like any food when you are hungry the Kate’s Bars will give you a boost of energy but not a rush. The satisfaction of eating something that is a little filling (but not too much) and keeps giving you energy without having to choke it down is welcoming. This makes any of the bars a very simple and complete package for your consumption at the tear of a wrapper. Kate’s Bars are so good that I started needing to have one or two with me any time I was going out for more than a few hours almost as an emergency backup. It allows me to skip meals and not worry about bonking. The larger bar, the Grizzly, packs roughly 360 calories into a single bar! Priced between $2.79 to $3.29 each or roughly $32 to $39 per dozen they are not the cheapest bars out there but definitely in line with other organic foods for sure. It may seem like a lot when paying for them but when you replace a meal and it tastes that good, it is really worth it.

Kate's has a special offer for viewers of Dirt Bike Test with a special 40% off promo code for a limited time. Click here for a direct link to Kate's Real Food's Online Store and use promo code  KRF0915.