OTE Dried Cherry Anytime Bar

When we review energy bars, we're often (but not always) bombarded with a list of complex-sounding ingredients that are designed to give the best energy boost possible. However, another school of thought has it that 'natural is best', and that's where OTE's Anytime Bar comes in.

To look at the ingredients, you could legitimately mistake these bars for any homemade flapjack – and probably piece together a recipe yourself. There's nothing artificial added, whatsoever. What's that? You want to know exactly what's actually in this here bar? Ok...

• Oats
• Golden Syrup
• Brown sugar
• Salted butter
• Honey
• Dried sweetened cherries
• Natural cherry flavouring

...and that's it. It's much the same (give or take a host flavour and some minor concentrations to balance the flavours) with the other bars too (caramel, cocoa nibs and banana), and more than that – the products are nut-free, wheat-free and suitable for vegetarians too.

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That's a lot of boxes ticked, and it's also well considered in the fat department too. Where homemade flapjacks can be greasy or stuffed with butter, OTE has kept the fat content as low as possible without losing the quintessential flapjack taste. These vary slightly between flavours (naturally), but the cherry ones we have include 7.9g of fat, of which 3.9g are saturates, per bar. That's set alongside 39.9g of carbs (24.5g are sugars), and 3.5g of protein.

That represents a well-balanced nutritional profile of the major nutrients you need to stay fuelled, which can sometimes run out of control when you make flapjacks or generic energy bars freehand at home, as can costs.

Now, you could of course argue that if you have your measurements set and can keep costs below the £1.30 per bar asking price (and I'm 100 per cent sure that it's easily achievable), then you've no reason to buy these. Fair play to you, but what these bars represent is convenience, as well as a decent use-by date thanks to sealed packaging.

That means it'll take the hassle out of making your own, and if that's what you want then these are great bars to integrate into not only your on-bike nutrition, but your general diet too if you need the extra energy to hit your goals. They have a texture on the oaty side of the oat-buttery mush flapjack continuum, and have a natural, tasty flavour without being sickly whatsoever.

I can verify the same experience with the cocoa nib flavour bars, having encountered them on a couple of occasions in the past year by chance – those give a deep, dark chocolate flavour without being heavy on the stomach, just like the cherry bars.

That's all there is to the OTE Anytime Bars – natural, tasty flavour and ingredients, relatively low in fat compared to most flapjacks, and well-suited to being eaten at anytime, just as it says on the box. If you already make your own energy bars or flapjacks for cycling and trust the nutrition within them, then the chances are these bars aren't for you. Otherwise, I can highly recommend them.

Verdict

Tasty, even moreish, healthy, natural flapjacks. What's not to like?