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If you’re trying to stock your pantry with some healthier, shelf-stable snacks this year, you probably want to avoid a lot of traditional granola bars that are loaded with sugar and carbs. While Aldi sells plenty of sugary granola bars, they also sell a whole line of protein bars that are imitations of name brands such as Clif Bars, LUNA Bars, Lärabars, and KIND bars.
These products are all sold under the Elevation brand at Aldi. Elevation is not a company. Rather, it’s the private label Aldi uses for the various protein bars and protein shakes they sell.
Aldi markets most of its Elevation bars, shakes, and protein powders as ways to help you recover after a workout or athletic training, although some products in this line are also promoted simply as snacks.
Today, I’m looking specifically at the Elevation Only Bars at Aldi. These look like a dupe of name-brand KIND bars. They come in three flavors: Peanut Butter with Dark Chocolate, Nuts & Sea Salt with Dark Chocolate, and Cashew, Cherry with Dark Chocolate. They advertise that their #1 ingredient is either peanuts, almonds, or cashews.
Elevation Only Bars are a Regular Buy, which means you should be able to buy them year round at Aldi.
These cost $2.79 for a 5.6-ounce box containing four bars. That comes out to about 70 cents per bar, or about 50 cents per ounce.
For comparison, a 16.8-ounce value pack box of 12 KIND Peanut Butter Dark Chocolate Snack Bars at Walmart cost about $1.23 per bar at the time of writing, or about 88 cents per ounce. That makes the Aldi bars a great deal.
The Aldi bars are advertised as gluten free, are kosher certified, and are certified non-GMO by The Non-GMO Project. These are all a product of Canada.
These all have a fair amount of saturated fat, but I think that comes from the nuts, which also contain healthy polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats, which may lower cholesterol. They also contain between 3 and 7 grams of dietary fiber, which helps lower cholesterol and helps you feel full.
These Elevation Only Bars are only sweetened with ingredients including cane sugar and honey. They contain between 5 and 8 grams of added sugar per serving, which is less than a lot of popular traditional granola bars.
From left to right: Elevation Peanut Butter with Dark Chocolate; Elevation Nuts & Sea Salt with Dark Chocolate; Elevation Cashew, Cherry with Dark Chocolate.
Keep reading for more information about each flavor.
Elevation Only Peanut Butter with Dark Chocolate Nut Bar:
Name-brand KIND bars on the left, Aldi Elevation bars on the right.
This flavor is my favorite among the bunch. It doesn’t have the strongest peanut butter flavor, but it has plenty of peanuts and chocolate, with a few almonds for good measure. We tasted the Elevation peanut butter and chocolate bars alongside their KIND name-brand counterpart and couldn’t tell much of a difference. The KIND bars are a little lighter in color, a little shorter in height, and a little longer compared to the Aldi Elevation bars.
Name-brand KIND bar on the right, Aldi Elevation bar on the left.
If you’re looking out for allergens, the Elevation Peanut Butter with Dark Chocolate Nut Bars contain soy, peanuts, and almonds. They may contain walnuts, pecans, cashews, Brazil nuts, coconut, milk, sesame, and eggs. They also may contain nut shells.
The Elevation box advertises 52% nuts per serving.
Nutrition information and ingredients are pretty similar between the KIND bars and the Elevation bars, as shown below.
Nutrition information and ingredients for KIND Peanut Butter and Chocolate Bars on the left, Elevation Peanut Butter and Chocolate Bars on the right. (Click to enlarge.)
The Elevation ingredients list includes: peanuts, cane sugar, semisweet chocolate, almonds, soy protein isolate, palm oil, cocoa powder, chicory root fiber, peanut butter, natural flavor, tapioca starch, honey, soy lecithin, sea salt, and agar.
One 40-gram Elevation bar has 210 calories, 14 grams of total fat (18% DV), 3.5 grams of saturated fat (18% DV), 35 mg of sodium (2% DV), 15 grams of total carbohydrates (5% DV), 3 grams of dietary fiber (11% DV), 9 grams of total sugars, 8 grams of added sugars, no sugar alcohols, and 8 grams of protein.
Elevation Only Nuts & Sea Salt with Dark Chocolate Nut Bar:
Name-brand KIND bars on the left, Aldi Elevation bars on the right.
Not surprisingly, this is the saltiest-tasting flavor of all of these bars, but it’s not overly salty tasting. If chocolate and sea salt is one of your favorite flavor combos, you’ll probably like this. It does have the most sodium of any of these bars, coming in at 140 mg per serving, compared to 35 mg for the Peanut Butter with Dark Chocolate flavor or 20 mg for the Cashew, Cherry with Dark Chocolate flavor.
Again, we compared these to their name-brand KIND counterpart and couldn’t taste much of a difference. Some of us thought the Elevation bars might have a slightly more salty taste, but opinions were mixed.
KIND bar on the right, Elevation bar on the left.
If you’re looking out for allergens, the Nuts and Sea Salt with Dark Chocolate Nut Bars contain soy, peanuts, and almonds. They may contain walnuts, pecans, cashews, Brazil nuts, coconut, milk, sesame, and eggs. They may contain nut shells.
The box advertises 59% nuts per serving.
Ingredients and nutrition information are again pretty similar between the KIND bars and Elevation bars, although the Elevation bars have 30 more calories per serving.
Nutrition information and ingredients for KIND bars on the left, Elevation bars on the right. (Click to enlarge.)
The Elevation bar ingredients list includes: almonds, peanuts, semisweet chocolate, chicory root fiber, palm oil, whole grain brown rice flour, cocoa powder, honey, cane sugar, sea salt, natural flavor, soy lecithin, and agar.
One 40-gram Elevation bar contains 210 calories, 15 grams of total fat (19% DV), 3.5 grams of saturated fat (18% DV), 140 mg of sodium (6% DV), 16 grams of total carbohydrates (6% DV), 7 grams of dietary fiber (25% DV), 6 grams of total sugars, 5 grams of added sugars (10% DV), no sugar alcohols, and 6 grams of protein.
Elevation Only Cashew, Cherry with Dark Chocolate Fruit & Nut Bar:
This bar has the most unique flavor and texture of all three bar varieties that I tried, with a combination of crunchy cashews and chewy cherries, cranberries, and raisins.
KIND does sell a Dark Chocolate Cherry Cashew bar, but I have not yet been able to find that flavor among the name-brand KIND bars at my local grocery store, so we weren’t able to sample the name brand to see how it compares to the Aldi version. Based on my experience with the other flavors, I’m guessing there would be little difference in taste.
Elevation Only Cashew, Cherry with Dark Chocolate Fruit and Nut Bar nutrition information and ingredients. (Click to enlarge.)
If you’re looking out for allergens, the Elevation Cashew, Cherry with Dark Chocolate Fruit and Nut Bars contain cashews, soy, peanuts, and almonds. They may contain walnuts, pecans, Brazil nuts, coconut, milk, sesame, and eggs. They may contain fruit pits and nut shells.
The box advertises 36% nuts per serving.
The ingredients list includes: cashews, semisweet chocolate, chicory root fiber, almonds, peanuts, cherries, cranberries, raisins, whole grain brown rice flour, unsweetened chocolate, palm oil, honey, cane sugar, soy lecithin, sea salt, and agar.
One 40-gram bar contains 190 calories, 11 grams of total fat (14% DV), 3.5 grams of saturated fat (18% DV), 20 mg of sodium (1% DV), 23 grams of total carbohydrates (8% DV), 6 grams of dietary fiber (21% DV), 11 grams of total sugars, 5 grams of added sugars (10% DV), no sugar alcohols, and 4 grams of protein.
The Verdict:
Elevation Only Bars look to be affordable dupes of name-brand KIND bars. These come in three flavors: Peanut Butter with Dark Chocolate; Nuts & Sea Salt with Dark Chocolate; and Cashew, Cherry with Dark Chocolate. These feature nuts as their primary ingredients. They’re gluten free, and they’ve got some fiber and can offer you a small protein boost. All three flavors are good, and we really couldn’t tell much difference between the Aldi version and the name brand. We’re partial to the Peanut Butter with Dark Chocolate one.
