Awhile back I reviewed Exo and Chapul, cricket flour based protein bars, and compared the two since they both were very similar product offerings. At the time I had harsh words to say about Chapul because they had way too much sugar, barely any fat and a minimal amount of protein. Here is a quote from my last review:
Chapul has very little fat since there are no nuts and coconut. Therefore leaving the Chapul bar a very high carb snack that will leave you with with a sugar crash quickly after consuming it.
You can read the full review here, but that all sounds pretty terrible for Chapul. However, I was recently contacted by a Chapul representative and was told that they’ve taken in a bunch of feedback from customers and critics and have totally reformulated their recipes to contain more protein and less sugar. I was told that the changes were made to improve the nutritional benefits of the bars and to follow consumer health trends. That was the pitch I was told, so let’s take a closer look at how these bars have reinvented themselves and to see if they’ve redeemed themselves in my eyes from being a low fat, high sugar, low protein bar!
As always we will be reviewing these reformulated bars for: Nutritional Profile, Affordability, Taste. Let’s get to it!
Nutritional Profile
Now this is where the rubber meets the road, or the cricket meets the… grass? Bad joke sorry. Ok so they sent me their sampler pack which has one of each of their bars. I’ve listed below the new nutritional profiles for each of their bars:
Chapul Matcha Green Tea & Banana
Total Fat: 10g
Total Carbohydrate: 14g (Dietary Fiber 3g, Sugars 8g)
Protein: 10g
Ingredients: Coconut Nectar, Chapul Protein Blend (Chapul Cricekt Flour[Brown Crickets, Acheta Domesticus], Pea Protein, Rice Protein), Almond Butter, Tahini, Dried Bananas, Date Paste, *Sesame Seeds, Pea Protein Crisps, Green Tea Extract, Matcha Tea Powder, Vanilla Extract, Natural Banana Flavor, Salt, Monk Fruit Extract. *Organic
Chapul Chaco: Peanut Butter & Chocolate
Total Fat: 13g
Total Carbohydrate: 15g (Dietary Fiber 5g, Sugars 8g)
Protein: 10g
Ingredients: Coconut Nectar, Peanuts, Date Paste (Chapul Cricket Flour[Brown Crickets, Acheta Domesticus], Pea Protein, Rice Protein), Cocoa Powder, Sunflower Butter, Cacao Nibs, Salt, Vanilla Extract, Monk Fruit Extract. *Organic
Chapul Thai: Coconut & Ginger with Lime
Total Fat: 15g
Total Carbohydrate: 15g (Dietary Fiber 4g, Sugars 9g)
Protein: 11g
Ingredients: Coconut Nectar, Date Paste, Sunbutter, Almond Butter, Almond Pieces, Chapul Protein Blend (Chapul Cricekt Flour[Brown Crickets, Acheta Domesticus], Pea Protein, Rice Protein), Coconut Flakes, Powdered Ginger, Vanilla Extract, Salt, Monk Fruit Extract, Lime Oil. *Organic
Chapul Aztec: Dark Chocolate, Coffee & Cayenne
Total Fat: 10g
Total Carbohydrate: 18g (Dietary Fiber 6g, Sugars 9g)
Protein: 10g
Ingredients: Sunbutter, Coconut Nectar, Date Paste, Chapul Protein Blend (Chapul Cricket Flour[Brown Crickets, Acheta Domesticus], Pea Protein, Rice Protein), Cocoa Powder, Cocao Nibs, Pea Protein Crisps, Coffee Grounds, Vanilla Extract, Salt, Ground Cinnamon, Ground Nutmeg, Cayenne Powder, Monk Fruit Extract. *Organic
Ok so that’s a lot to look at but I wanted to get each bars new formulation listed here so we can take a look at a few things. I want to see how this new formula stacks up to their old formula and how it stacks up to my all time favorite primal protein bar: Exo. First let’s take a look at what they’ve done new here. Here is their old formula from my previous review of the Chapul Aztec: Dark Chocolate, Coffee & Cayenne bar:
Old Chapul Aztec: Dark Chocolate, Coffee & Cayenne
Total Fat: 2g
Total Carbohydrate: 36g (Dietary Fiber 7g, Sugars 25g)
Protein: 5g
Ingredients: Organic Dates, Cocoa, Chapul Cricket Flour (Brown Cricket, Acheta Domestica), Organic Espresso Roast Coffee Beans, Cayenne.
WOW. First off congratulations to Chapul for seriously changing up the nutritional profile of these bars. Honestly, this is a pretty substantial change. Just looking at the fat, carbs and protein what do we see? First off this is no longer a low fat bar. This bar now has a pretty substantial amount of fat in it which will be good for your fat burning beast energy needs. Second we see the carbs drop WAY down from 36g to 16g. Amazing they cut it in half, with now only 9g of sugar per bar. That’s pretty great. Third is the protein… Now by the numbers this is great, they’ve doubled the protein from 5g to 10g. How did they go about doing this? Well, by the ingredients you can now see they’re doing a “Chapul Protein Blend” which is Cricket Flour, Pea Protein and Rice Protein. When I first saw this I reached out to Chapul and asked why they made this change and they said they “added a blend of other protein sources to increase the protein and the taste of our products.” It would’ve been nice to see these bars use 100% cricket protein for their protein source but I see the reasons they incorporated this blend – also I’m sure it’s cheaper to use a blend like this instead of pure cricket flour which helps brings the cost of the bars down or improves their profit margins.
Now let’s see how this new recipe compares to my all time favorite protein bar by Exo:
Exo Cocoa Nut
Total Fat: 20g
Total Carbohydrate: 23g (Dietary Fiber 7g, Sugars 13g)
Protein: 10g
Ingredients: Almonds, Dates, Coconut, Honey, Cricket Flour (Acheta Domesticus), Cacao Nibs, Cacao Powder, Ground Flaxseeds, Vanilla Extract, Sea Salt.
What I love about Exo is they taste great, have 10g of protein, have a good amount of fat to sustain your energy needs and are relatively low in sugar. Chapul’s new recipe however almost gives my favorite Exo bar a run for it’s money! It doesn’t have nearly as much fat but it’s still a great improvement from before. The protein is matched at 10g granted it’s now a blend instead of pure cricket flour like Exo – but it has fewer carbs and sugar than Exo. Definitely a worthy competitor to my favorite Exo bar.
All of these bars have varying ingredients like ginger and coffee and matcha to get those variations in the bar flavors, but I like how they’ve added more nuts and seeds to each of their bars. I like the sunflower butter and almond butter additions to these bars to bring up their fat content. Also the fact that they add in Monk fruit is a good way to make the bars still taste sweet while keeping them low in sugar. Kudos Chapul.
Overall, great job Chapul on the new recipes!
Affordability
New Chapul Aztec: Dark Chocolate, Coffee & Cayenne
Price per bar: $2.55 (subscription)
Price per 12 bar box: $30.60 (subscription)
Old Chapul Aztec: Dark Chocolate, Coffee & Cayenne
Price per bar: $2.83
Price per 12 bar box: $34.00
Exo Cocoa Nut
Price per bar: $2.66 (subscription)
Price per 12 bar box: $32.00 (subscription)
There really isn’t too much to say here regarding price. They stack up more or less the same to a bar this quality. I’ve included their pricing from my previous review because I think they now have a subscription model like Exo which brings their price per bar down. I haven’t seen the price of these in my local health food store but they may be slightly cheaper there especially if they’re on sale.
As I’ve said before, I’m willing to pay almost $3 per bar for something like this because it’s a pretty substantial snack. It’s not just some high carb-no protein-low fat bar like Nutrigrain bars or something. You’re going to have to pay slightly more for a bar made with real food – and I’m ok with that.
Taste
With these new recipes these really are brand new bars. Granted they have the same names, they have so many different ingredients that I was really excited to see how they taste. I ate these over the course of a week so I could eat it after working out and swimming and see how long it kept me satiated, as well as really getting a sense of what each bar tastes like. I didn’t want to just bite a piece off of each and tell you how they kinda taste. And just to get it out of the way, no, none of these bars had cricket legs or antennas in them. The crickets are not noticeable. Specifically because it’s a powder/flour from ground up crickets. If you’ve never had a bar made out of crickets, you should try these bars. It’s not a big deal. Now that we got the cricket thing out of the way. Let’s see what each bar tastes like:
Chapul Matcha Green Tea & Banana
You really taste the banana in this bar. It has a nice crunch from the sesame seeds and pea protein crisps but the texture is kind of grainy for some reason? I’m not exactly sure why. The bar is significantly sweeter than the others. I do like the taste though, it just really leaves a banana taste in your mouth. So if you don’t like bananas probably stay away from this bar. I like bananas though so I really enjoyed this bar.
Chapul Chaco: Peanut Butter & Chocolate
This one is more chocolatey than it is peanut butterey. Very filling bar. Though peanut putter isn’t Paleo, I still enjoyed this bar very much. It has a little bit of a crunch with the bits of peanut pieces. This bar was slightly more chewy than the others but that may be because it was a colder day when I ate it. If I left this in my car on a warm day I imagine it would be very soft and gooey. Mmm.
Chapul Thai: Coconut & Ginger with Lime
This one is probably my second favorite bar. It has a really good ginger taste at first and then and once you start chewing you really taste the coconut. The texture of this bar is good, it doesn’t have too much crunch nor is it too grainy. I really like the taste of this one, there isn’t one flavor that’s too overpowering which I like. All the flavors go together very well including the hint of lime.
Chapul Aztec: Dark Chocolate, Coffee & Cayenne
This one is probably my most favorite bar. I really like the taste. Just a little hint of the cayenne. Definitely more filling with the seed butter. Nice texture not too chewy. Similar texture to a Larabar. You can taste the crunch of the crisps and some coffee bean flakes.
Conclusion
I really think Chapul has a done a great job at improving the nutritional profile of their bars while still tasting amazing and I’m so glad they took the time to reach out to me and let me know they reformulated their bars. To be honest I kind of wrote them off in my mind because I was never too excited to eat a 36g carb protein bar with low fat and low protein. So thank you Chapul for the samples, reaching out to me and for reinventing your cricket protein bars!
Buy some samples and decide for yourself:*
Chapul Sampler Pack
*After you figure out which flavor of Chapul you like I suggest you sign up for a subscription.
Buy some Exo too to compare yourself
