Healthy Peanut Butter Granola Bars

Nature Valley, eat your heart out. These healthy peanut butter granola bars are awesome! They're sweet, crunchy, crumbly, and peanut buttery while also being more nutritious than many store-bought granola bars! These boast 5 grams of fiber and 13 grams of protein with only 10 grams of sugar. Speaking of fiber, these call for both rolled oats and oat bran. Both of which are high in soluble fibers like beta-glucan. Beta-glucan is super good for you. One of its evidence-based benefits is lowering cholesterol. Beta-glucan binds to bile, which is 70% cholesterol, in your digestive system and shuttles it out of your body! This forces your body to make more bile, pulling cholesterol from your blood to do so. Neat, huh? Now, onto the protein. Peanuts are a pretty good source of protein. But, to boost it even more this recipe calls for protein powder. I used Purely Inspired organic protein powder in my bars, but any protein powder should work. I recommend using vanilla protein powder, but you're free to switch it up! Peanut butter flavored protein powder would make these extra peanut buttery. If it's a flavor that pairs well with peanut butter it will probably be good in these bars. But, I've only tried this recipe with vanilla so it's the only one I can recommend. These healthy peanut butter granola bars are quick and easy to prepare. They take less than an hour from start to finish and are fun to make. To mix them all together you'll want to get in there with your hands, making these a great treat to bake with kids! Speaking of kids, these bars are perfect for lunchboxes! Well, they're good for grown-up's lunch boxes too, but you know what I mean. Humans of all ages will like them. Birds too, probably.