Tesco Protein bars (Our honest review)
The supermarket protein bar category is hotting up, with almost every major supermarket in the UK now offering its own take on a protein bar. We've already reviewed a few of these elsewhere on our website, including the excellent offerings from Lidl and Aldi, and we've even included some of these bars in our list of the best you can buy in the UK. So it was no surprise to us to see that Tesco, the biggest supermarket in the UK, has now jumped on the protein bar train. We obviously had to buy it and review it for our readers, so in this guide we'll be looking at the Tesco Active protein bar in close detail. Let's get into it:
What are the nutritional stats of the Tesco protein bar?
The nutritional stats of the Tesco Active protein bars are pretty good, but it's worth mentioning that of all the supermarket protein bars we've tried, these bars have the lowest amount of protein per bar at 18.6g. This isn't really low by any means, but it is quite a bit lower than the protein content of the bars from Aldi and Lidl (21g and 22.5g respectively).
In terms of sugar, this protein bar from Tesco is also nowhere near as impressive as the bars from Lidl and Aldi - the Tesco Cookies & Cream protein bar contains 10.2g of sugar, whereas the Aldi bar contains 1.9g of sugar and the Lidl bar contains less than 1g of sugar.
One thing we were impressed by is that the bars contained some additional goodness in the form of Vitamin B6 and Iron.
But there is one part of the Tesco protein bar nutritional breakdown that we really wanted to focus on - these bars are made with Hydrolysed Beef Protein, which is definitely quite surprising and obviously makes them unsuitable for vegetarians and vegans.
What do the Tesco protein bars taste like?
We wouldn't say the Active protein bars from Tesco taste incredible, but they're certainly not bad and quite passable. We'd put them somewhere between the taste of the Lidl and Aldi protein bars, with the main positive being that the texture is good (not too chewy). But what we'd say is that the taste is relatively bland, nothing to write home about.
How much do the Tesco Active protein bars cost?
A Tesco Active protein bar will cost you £1.75, which is actually pretty pricey, especially compared to the protein bars from Lidl and Aldi. In fact, it is almost twice as much as the protein bars from Lidl, with less protein content, and more sugar. Not great!
Final thoughts
We were really excited to learn that Tesco had started selling their own range of protein bars, but we have to say we're very disappointed. They're pretty expensive, they're too high in sugar, and we're actually not too happy about the use of beef protein. Overall, we probably wouldn't recommend these protein bars sadly!
Finn H
Finn is the editor of You Well and has been writing about travel, health, and more for over 10 years.