So, I went to the Costco on-line store and crunched the macros for just about every bar they had. What I was looking for was:
- Carbohydrate
- Lean packaging per calorie
- Not too much saturated fat
- Least sweet possible
- Reasonably priced
The winner, and by a decent amount, was the Belvita Breakfast Biscuit: with 230 calories per thin foil wrapper, the ratio of sugar-carbohydrate to other-carbohydrate was 20%, rather than closer to 30% or sometimes beyond as many other contenders would be.
Costco sells two varieties, Amazon sells some of the others at a not-quite-as-good price, thirty to a box. I think branching out to multiple flavors is a good move given the calorie requirements in backpacking, i.e. lots of biscuits.
I’ve been using these both as hiking fuel and for quick breakfasts with coffee. Overall, a decent product. But, within these rough parameters, have you found better?
The things I’m looking for are an even-better sweetish snack fuel (always, right?), and also something that is well designed on the savory side. So far, I’ve been weighing out bags of Utz pub mix for that side of things, and it’s acceptable, but I somehow feel the carbohydrate is probably high on glycemic index relative to the overall composition of Belvita, which is probably not optimal if you take calories once per hour or so.


