Chocolate Chip Clif Bar Review – Should You Buy?

Chocolate Chip Clif Bar is on the table tonight after I went through the first eleven of them last week and figured it was time to review the last one. These are calorie-dense, usually taste pretty good, and offer a happy medium between a tasty snack and a super healthy bar.

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These aren’t the cheapest product out there, but, if you look at it from the standpoint of quality + amount + taste, they actually are a decent value. Plus, sometimes we see crazy flavors out there like pumpkin, those are pretty darn good.

This specific Clif bar also includes some info about a pro-soccer player named Megan Rapinoe who eats a lot of their bars to have energy on the field. Termed a “Clif Athlete,” there is a cartoon-type drawing of her on the front of the packaging.

On the Clif Bar & Company website, they describe this bar as a flavor that “brings to mind fresh, warm chocolate chip cookies straight from the oven.” We shall see.

The Company

Before the chocolate chip Clif bar hit shelves of grocery stores everywhere, there was only Gary Erickson. He was on a super long 175-mile bike ride, or “The Epiphany Ride” as he describes it. On that long ride, he realized that he was just not a fan of the sub-par 90s energy bars available back then.

Through that experience, he decided he could make a better bar. He grinded for 6 months in his ma’s kitchen making a huge mess until he finally got something that tasted pretty good to him. The bar/company itself is named after his dad Clifford.

By the time 1999 rolled around, they were humming along at a decent pace and released the Luna bar, which was aimed at their female customer base. It was well received.

They even passed up an acquisition offer for $120 million about 20 years ago now. That’s pretty wild! The company is now owned by husband-and-wife duo Gary Erickson & Kit Crawford.

One major lesson that Erickson learned in starting this company: don’t give a bunch of a business away just…because. He originally had a co-founder who he went in 50/50 with at the beginning. Then, when things started to take off, she wanted to say “yes” to an acquisition offer when he wanted to say “no.”

It took Erickson 10 years to fully buy-out the co-founder (with interest). Not a fun way to spend about $72 million bucks!

The Chocolate Chip Clif Bar Nutrition Facts

This does have a lot of nutrition in it. Mainly, it has carbs and protein. There is a lot of sugar in it, but, if you lift weights or do a lot of other intense exercise, it’s perfect. At least for me it is.

You’re looking at 15% of your daily calcium, 15% of your daily iron requirement, and 25% of your daily Niacin requirement. In addition to that, the chocolate chip Clif bar includes 25% of your vitamin B12 requirements, 20% of your daily phosphorus, and 20% of your daily magnesium requirements.

One bar packs 250 calories and 9 grams of protein. Again, that makes sense for me, but it may not make sense for you if you are not in a position to be burning that many calories. I can personally put away two of these chocolate chip Clif bars in a day and be fine.

The Chocolate Chip Clif Bar Ingredients

Okay, so, the ingredients look pretty healthy. You’ve got your organic brown rice syrup, organic rolled oats, and soy protein isolate. In addition to that, you got your organic roasted soybeans, rice flour, can sugar, unsweetened chocolate and organic soy flour.

That’s a lot of different things! If you have a soy, peanut, tree nut, milk or wheat allergy, these might not be for you. So, these aren’t necessarily healthy for everyone.

Preparation Instructions

The great thing about the chocolate chip Clif bar is that you don’t need to do anything to prepare them – just unwrap it and go nuts!

Chocolate Chip Clif Bar Review

These are always very moist. The calorie density is nice, too. You need to take your time eating these, that’s also probably a good thing.

I went through 11 of them before writing this review (box of 12) and I gotta say, they never seem to get old. The first ones and the last ones were all equally tasty. They filled in the sugar that I needed for my day pretty well. They were pretty sweet but not to the point where it was overbearing or anything like that.

The chocolate itself in this chocolate chip clif bar was okay but not super noticeable. The chips were packed in pretty tight with the other ingredients of this.

If you’re an athlete (and okay with the soy, gluten, peanuts, tree nuts, dairy, and wheat) then this Clif is for you. If you’re a regular person without a crazy restrictive diet like me and looking for a decent source of calories, they hit the spot.