Why aren’t Quest Bars in the food substitution calculator?

July 11th, 2014 by

I get asked quite often why we don’t have Quest Bars in our food sub calculator. So I thought I would write up an explanation AND teach you how to work them in yourself.
Yes, a little math is involved. 

Q: Why are Quest Bars not in the food calculator?

A: Fastest Answer-it doesn’t fit into one macronutrient category as I would like to see it.
You see, Quest bars have about the same amount of carbs as they do protein, so it doesn’t fare well to sub it for one macronutrient.

But lets say you get in a pinch, or traveling and you want to sub a Quest Bar. I can teach you how to go about doing this.

We will pretend your meal plan calls for the following:

95g Chicken Breast
100g White Rice

So I am then going to go to the food calculator to calculate my totals.

95g Chicken Breast= 150c /29.9gP/ 0gC/ 3.3gF
100g White Rice=126c / 2.7gP/ 28.2gC/ 0.3gF

So the total is
276 calories
32.6g Protein
28.2g Carbs
3.6g Fat

Now, we know that we are not going to find the perfect macronutrient sub when it comes to swapping it out with a Quest Bar, but I will show you how to get it close.

I then take my Quest Bar (don’t forget to adjust the calories for the fiber-https://www.facebook.com/curlsandwhey/posts/694199763945352 )
and this is the total I get for the Quest Double Chocolate Chunk:

198 calories
20g Protein
17g Carbs
6g Fat

So after subbing that in, you will see that you have 78 calories left.

The easiest (and keep in mind, these types of subs are done infrequently or in a pinch) would be to add some portable carbs (since I had carbs on my original plan) to total 78 calories. If I had a protein and fat that was originally on my meal plan, I would then sub the Quest Bar AND some almonds or another portable fat.

But since I had carbs, I went in and added 21g of Caramel Rice Cakes:

78 calories
1.6g Protein
17.8g Carbs
0g Fat

So my grand total for the Quest Bar and Rice Cakes is:

276 calories
21.6g Protein
34.8g Carbs
6g Fat

So although the macronutrients do not match up, as you can see, our calories add up.

Do you know how to add your macros to get total calories? Find out here: https://leanbodiesconsulting.com/how-to-add-your-macros-to-get-total-calories/

c/o Curls & Whey Training