Puffed amaranth protein bar recipe

Nuts for nuts

Are you one of these people who can’t resist a late-night spoonful of peanut butter? If so, has your weakness for this dense, protein-packed, flavourful paste evolved in recent years? We now rotate our nut butters (actually, legume butter in the case of peanut butter!) and add them to our morning yogurt or acai bowls as well as to smoothies… and this protein bar recipe is a toothsome way to channel our appetite.      The Aztecs ate a paste made of roasted peanuts; that was somewhat surprising to us because, for whatever illogical reason, nut butters feel so contemporary. They have a long and interesting history though. The very brilliant African-American scientist and inventor George Washington Carver is often credited with inventing peanut butter, but what he actually did was push peanuts into the American consciousness, along with a variety of other crops. It obviously worked, as today a typical American child will eat 1,500 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches before finishing high school. Leading on from this legacy, sunflower, cashew, almond, and other seed and nut butters made without sugar or processed oils are now more available to conscious eaters around the world, not just in America.     

Back to our protein bar recipe...

Protein bars with nut butters always seem like a great idea in principle; the kick of that spoonful of peanut butter, complemented by other nourishing ingredients. However, the store-bought ones we’ve tried just haven’t done the trick for us. But this protein bar recipe sure does! The addition of Erbology Puffed Amaranth to this protein bar recipe brings lightness and a pleasing crunch. Nuts, raisins, dates, and seeds only add to the satisfying textures, while lemon zest sharpens everything up with an essential tanginess. These bars store very well in the fridge, so make up a batch and throw a few in your bag for easy retrieval whenever you need some extra help getting through the day.

The many benefits of manganese

We’ve written elsewhere on our website about the numerous qualities of amaranth, but we might have not mentioned that the mighty amaranth is also a wonderful source of manganese. Containing 2.1mg of this mineral, a cup of amaranth exceeds the daily recommended manganese intake.(1) Manganese plays a key role in activating enzymes that we need for digestion, which is important because it maximises our ability to extract and use valuable nutrients contained in our food.  As you will know by now if you are familiar with Erbology, we deeply believe that obtaining everything that your body needs from the foods that you eat rather than via supplements is key to true physical, mental, and spiritual health. In this light, manganese becomes even more worthwhile.      Further, manganese is also closely related to mental functions; correlations have been drawn between deficiencies of manganese and mental illnesses, mood changes and learning disabilities.(2)(3) In short, adding puffed amaranth to your protein bar recipe is a lovely way to inject all the benefits of amaranth into your diet – and we are very happy to provide you with many other options and possibilities!

Related healthy snacking recipes

• Gluten-free amaranth cookie recipe
• Raw vegan chocolate bar recipe
• Yogurt parfait with poppy seed oil recipe