The short answer
Plain oat granola bars and fruit-and-nut bars had the least saturated fat, at 2g or less per bar. Protein bars with a chocolate-style coating had the most: five bars had over 5g, and an Eat Natural yoghurt-coated bar had 9.4g, nearly three-quarters of a 13g daily limit.
Quick picks from our table:
- Best overall: Nature Valley Crunchy Oats & Honey, 0.9g (UK) and 1g (US) per twin pack, made mainly from wholegrain oats with sunflower or canola oil
- Best US pick: Nature Valley Crunchy Oats 'n Honey (1g); for protein, RXBAR Chocolate Sea Salt (2g, egg whites, nuts and dates)
- Best UK pick: Nature Valley Crunchy Oats & Honey (0.9g); with no added sugar, Nakd Cacao Orange (1.5g)
- What to limit: Eat Natural Almond & Apricot with yoghurt coating (9.4g), ONE Birthday Cake and Clif Builders (6g each), Grenade (5.5g) and Trek Cocoa Oat (5.2g)
Label data only, not medical advice
This ranking compares what each bar's nutrition label says about saturated fat and sugar. It isn't a health rating of any brand, and no bar here is a cholesterol-lowering food. Recipes change, so check the label on the pack you buy. If your doctor or dietitian has given you specific limits, follow those.
19 bars ranked by saturated fat
Bars are eaten whole, so each one is compared on one bar as sold, using the weight on its own label. That ranges from a 24g Quaker Chewy bar to a 68g Clif Bar, so the per 100g column is there if you want a like-for-like comparison by weight. Nature Valley Crunchy comes as a twin pack, so its serving is both bars (42g). Bands: Better 2g or less per bar, Occasional over 2g up to 4.5g, Treat over 4.5g.
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| Kellogg's Nutri-Grain Soft Baked Breakfast Bar | 0.5g | Better |
| Nature Valley Crunchy Oats & Honey | 0.9g | Better |
| Nature Valley Crunchy Oats 'n Honey | 1g | Better |
| Kellogg's Nutri-Grain Strawberry | 1.1g | Better |
| Nakd Cacao Orange | 1.5g | Better |
| Quaker Chewy Chocolate Chip | 1.5g | Better |
| Clif Bar Chocolate Chip | 2g | Better |
| RXBAR Chocolate Sea Salt | 2g | Better |
| Quest Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough | 2.5g | Occasional |
| Nature Valley Sweet & Salty Nut Peanut | 2.6g | Occasional |
| Larabar Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip | 3g | Occasional |
| KIND Dark Chocolate Nuts & Sea Salt | 3g | Occasional |
| Barebells Salty Peanut | 3.5g | Occasional |
| Fulfil Peanut & Caramel | 4.3g | Occasional |
| Trek Cocoa Oat Protein Flapjack | 5.2g | Treat |
| Grenade Chocolate Chip Salted Caramel | 5.5g | Treat |
| Clif Builders Protein Bar | 6g | Treat |
| ONE Birthday Cake | 6g | Treat |
| Eat Natural Almond & Apricot with Yoghurt Coating | 9.4g | Treat |
Nutrition data from Open Food Facts, available under the Open Database License (ODbL). Product names link to each product's Open Food Facts page.
What the ranking shows
- The coating carries the saturated fat. The five bars in the Treat band all have a chocolate-style or yoghurt-style coating or a palm-based fat: ONE Birthday Cake and Clif Builders list palm kernel oil, Trek Cocoa Oat lists palm and coconut oil plus a palm oil coating, and the Eat Natural bar's yoghurt coating is made from palm kernel and palm fat. Its 18.8g of saturated fat per 100g is more than many milk chocolate bars.
- "High protein" doesn't mean heart-friendly. Grenade (5.5g), ONE (6g) and Clif Builders (6g) are sold on their protein, but each also had 40 to 46% of a day's saturated fat limit. Protein bars that skip the coating, like RXBAR (2g) and Quest Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough (2.5g), had far less.
- Plain oat bars were lowest. Nature Valley Crunchy is mostly wholegrain oats with sunflower, rapeseed or canola oil, and had 0.9 to 1g per pack. Quaker Chewy Chocolate Chip (1.5g) is a smaller bar with a little coconut and chocolate.
- Nut bars sit in the middle. KIND Dark Chocolate Nuts & Sea Salt and Larabar Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip had 3g each. Nuts are mainly unsaturated fat, but a 40 to 45g bar of them still adds up, and the chocolate adds more.
- Low saturated fat often means more sugar. Clif Bar Chocolate Chip had 17g of sugar, Larabar 16g, RXBAR 14g and Nakd Cacao Orange 13.6g (from dates and raisins). The low-sugar protein bars, like Barebells (1.5g, sweetened with maltitol and sucralose) and Fulfil (1.8g), had 3.5 to 4.3g of saturated fat instead.
What to look for on the label
- Check for palm oil, palm kernel oil and coconut. These are the fats most likely to push a bar over 4.5g. In the UK they're often listed as "vegetable fats (palm kernel, palm)" inside the coating.
- Be wary of coatings and drizzles. A "yoghurt", "white chocolate" or "chocolate flavour" coating is usually sugar and hard fat. An uncoated version of the same bar is often much lower.
- Look for oats or nuts first in the ingredients. Wholegrain oats add soluble fibre, and nuts add mainly unsaturated fat. Both are better building blocks than syrups and protein crisps.
- Read the saturates line per bar. In the UK, more than 5g per 100g is high and 1.5g or less is low. On US labels, use the per bar figure: under 2g is a good target for a snack.
- Mind the sugar. Many lower-fat bars make up for it with syrups. The NHS suggests no more than 30g of free sugars a day for adults, and one bar can be half of that.
Easy swaps
Swapping a coated protein bar (around 6g) for a twin pack of plain oat bars (about 1g) saves 5g of saturated fat, over a third of a 13g daily limit. If you want protein, a small handful of unsalted nuts with a piece of fruit, or a pot of plain yoghurt, does the same job. Our low-cholesterol snacks guide has 20 more ideas, and if a bar is really a chocolate craving, see our chocolate bar ranking.
Check any bar before you buy it
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How we ranked them
We picked best-selling bars in the US and UK, from Clif, KIND, Nature Valley and Quest to Barebells, Grenade, Nakd and Trek, and took each one's nutrition data from Open Food Facts, an open database built from product labels. To catch mistakes, we compared each product's current record with an earlier copy and left out any where the saturated fat, fat or sugar didn't match, which excluded Nakd Berry Delight. We also left out records whose per 100g figures looked like per bar figures, which excluded Alpen Light Summer Fruits.
Each bar is compared on its own label weight, calculated from the per 100g values. Percentages are of 13g, the American Heart Association's suggested daily limit for saturated fat on a 2,000 calorie diet. The NHS upper limit is 20g a day for women and 30g for men. The full dataset and the script that builds it are kept with this page and refreshed periodically.
Protein bars, granola bars and cholesterol: quick answers
Are protein bars good for cholesterol?
Many aren't. Protein bars with a chocolate-style coating are often made with palm kernel or palm oil, and in our comparison ONE Birthday Cake and Clif Builders had 6g of saturated fat per bar, Grenade 5.5g and Fulfil 4.3g. That is a third to almost half of a 13g daily limit. Lower options were RXBAR Chocolate Sea Salt (2g) and Quest Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough (2.5g).
Are KIND bars good for cholesterol?
KIND Dark Chocolate Nuts & Sea Salt had 3g of saturated fat per 40g bar, about 23% of a 13g daily limit, and 5g of sugar. Most of its fat comes from nuts, which are mostly unsaturated, but the chocolate adds saturated fat. It is a reasonable occasional snack, not a cholesterol-lowering food.
Are granola bars good for high cholesterol?
Plain oat granola bars were the lowest in saturated fat in our table: Nature Valley Crunchy Oats & Honey had 0.9 to 1g per twin pack and Quaker Chewy Chocolate Chip 1.5g. They do contain added sugar (about 11g in a Nature Valley pack), and bars with a coating or a nut-and-palm-oil binder, like Nature Valley Sweet & Salty Nut (2.6g), had more.
Which protein bar has the least saturated fat?
Of the protein bars we compared, RXBAR Chocolate Sea Salt (2g per 52g bar, made from egg whites, nuts and dates) and Quest Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough (2.5g per 60g bar) had the least. Barebells Salty Peanut had 3.5g, and Grenade, ONE and Clif Builders 5.5 to 6g.
Are Nakd bars good for cholesterol?
Nakd Cacao Orange, made from dates, cashews, raisins and cocoa, had 1.5g of saturated fat per 35g bar, in our lowest band. Its 13.6g of sugar comes from the fruit rather than added sugar, but it still counts towards your sugar for the day.
Sources
- Open Food Facts (product nutrition data, ODbL)
- American Heart Association: Saturated fat
- NHS: Fat, the facts
- NHS: Sugar, the facts (30g a day of free sugars for adults)
- UK Department of Health: Front of pack nutrition labelling guidance (high and low saturates thresholds)