One Good Thing wrapper free oat and protein bars - Box of 12

One Good Thing wrapper-free oat and protein bars are a unique and worthy take on the usual cycling back-pocket snack in that they aren't enclosed in a plastic wrapper, using an edible beeswax-based coating for protection instead. They're easy and resilient to pocket, and simple to eat on the move, although being all natural, including the covering, without any preservatives, they suffer from a short best before date.

> Buy now: One Good Thing Best Sellers Box Bundle for £19.80 from One Good Thing

One Good Thing was founded by father and son Mike and Daniel Bedford. As a keen cyclist, Mike was shocked by the amount of plastic waste in the British countryside, so set out to do something about it. Daniel has a scientific background and used this to create a plastic-free product with an edible coating to replace a traditional plastic or paper wrapper. The bars don't have any artificial additives or preservatives, or soya or palm oil, and they're delivered in a recyclable cardboard box. Absolutely nothing to complain about there, although note that all of the bars may contain nuts.

One Good Thing offers a choice of five oat and five protein bars, in a range of flavours. You can buy the bars in a box of six or 12 and custom build them with your favourite flavour combos.

All the oat bars contain 43% oats (apart from the Orange and Carob one which has just 41%) and are full of other nice things like honey, sunflower seeds and date paste. The protein bars have a lower fat content than the oat ones, a little less carbs, and over double the protein (which is derived from fava beans and peas).

Suspicions about how a One Good Thing bar might be to chew with its edible yet protective outer coating were quickly dispelled as it feels... totally fine. There is an initial firm resistance to the beeswax-based coating but that soon gets munched away and despite there being a few residual bits of what I can best describe as fibre, the outer is unnoticeable.

One thing that does feel odd, though, is that the bar has no 'bits' in it. As it's an all-natural product, there might be a part of you that expects some sort of healthy feeling structure, with discernible whole ingredients... a bit of body and maybe some crunch and munch to the bar, with nuggets of fruit and seeds in there to remind your mouth that it's got nice things in it. There's none of that to a One Good Thing bar; it has the uniform consistency of an old school energy bar. It's been a long while since I've had a Powerbar but the mouth feel is similar to that, but less chemically, more malleable and a whole lot nicer.

The One Good Thing bars are firm and slightly dry, so they're definitely helped down by a slug or two of water. I'd quite like to have a bit of texture from the sunflower seeds and dates that are in there to make them a bit more involving and pleasurable to eat but that's just me, their consistency does make them incredibly easy to chew and digest though.

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While I liked them all, none of them are absolutely saturated with flavour, and have instead what you might call a subtle hint of a taste, some of which you have to think about a bit. Which is no bad thing really as some energy bars can be a bit cloying if you're nibbling on a few of them after a while.

Fears that without a traditional wrapper of any kind the OGT bars would get covered in the muck, rubble and fluff of the bottom of a rear jersey pocket or insides of a bag turned out to be totally unfounded, and the beeswax-based covering magically shuns off whatever might be lurking in the corners. Even after multiple rides, when the bars rattled about but remained untouched and transferred to the next ride, they showed no worrying after-effects that impacted on your willingness to put them anywhere near your mouth.

One Good Thing does say they can be given a quick rinse if they're a bit grubby and a quick blow just won't do. A couple of them managed to sustain serious dents in transit somehow but the covering remained unpunctured.

The lack of a wrapper does have very handy practical as well as environmental bonuses as you can easily just fish one out of your pocket and shove it straight in your mouth without the fiddle and faff of trying to open a wrapper with your hands or rip desperately at it with your teeth, because not everyone can sit up and ride along hands-free casually opening an energy bar. There's also the bonus of not having to put an empty wrapper back in your pocket and dispose of it at ride's end, or maybe have it fall out like all those wrappers and dead gels I've seen in the verge. All of this is great stuff.

The One Good Thing bar is a relatively small size compared to many other energy bars. It's a couple of quick mouthfuls, which might just be enough to get you to where to need to go, or not enough. Whether that means it stops you having half a bar mooching around in the bottom of your pocket that you're unsure what to do with when you get home, or you need to carry multiple OGT bars with you on a ride to keep up with your calorific intake will be very rider and distance dependant.

Value

Full price for one OGT bar is from £1.20 for an oat one and from £1.44 for a protein bar, but there always seems to be some discount or other available which eases that a bit. The bars are only 39g, which is smaller than some, so factor that into your maths to see if pound for pound they're worth your money, but bear in mind the wrapper-free feature is going to cost over standard packaging. Taking up a subscription makes things cheaper.

They're a similar price to a Clif Bar Mini (£1.19, 28g), a far more hearty bar than the OGT, which has its plus points, although they can cloy after a while. They're vegan too.

Rawvelo tries to do its best for the planet with a range of Organic Energy Bars that are 100 per cent plant-based, organic and made with natural ingredients, and all the packaging is recyclable. Suvi liked the texture and flavour of all the bars, though felt they were a little date heavy. They're around £2 each, for a 45g bar.

Styrkr's rice energy bars are made in the UK, vegan and gluten free. At 72g they're almost twice the size of the One Good Thing bar, which goes some way to justifying their price of £2.75. They come in an easy-open foil pack to ease on-the-move snacking. We have a review coming soon...

I always struggle with the price of energy bars targeted at the active sports market, but then I'm not particularly bothered about any highly tuned ingredients and scientific carb vs fat vs energy mix or whatever nutritional wizardry will keep me at the peak of my performance as part of a fuelling strategy, and I can't remember the last time I chose to neck a gel. I am a simple fan of real food and am happy to buy whatever nutty fruity bar might be on offer in the supermarket. The One Good Thing bars are, to be fair, nice enough to eat on their own and OGT does emphasise their wrapper-free, easy to eat and digest, tasty features over any performance figures so I guess the target market is those who want a more responsible on-the-move snack, although their ability to be thrown into your face really easily without fiddling with a wrapper will be a definite benefit if you're a racing type and needs some fast food.

In case you're interested, though, the oat bars have 570 to 590kJ of Energy per 39g bar depending on flavour, with the Carob and Orange one punching a bit more with 613kJ; this equates to between 137 and 147kcals per bar. Carb content hovers around the 22g per bar for the oat bars and mid 18s for the protein bars. The protein bars have a little less Energy kJ per bar at 545 and 568, with 130kcals of energy across the board and carbohydrates in the mid to high 18gs. A swift look at other energy bars has the One Good Thing comparable to many others.

Conclusion

One obvious drawback, for me at least, is the short use by date; because they contain no preservatives and aren't wrapped in plastic, they have a shelf life of about three months. I'm not a person who requires a snack on every ride and I own plastic-wrapped bars that have been put into a back pocket at the start of a ride as a 'just in case' and taken back out at the end of a ride so often that their best before date is intelligible and it's done enough mileage to have its own Strava page. There's every chance I wouldn't even get through a box of six in time, and I reckon I'm not the only one out there who has an energy bar that's been on multiple rides. That said, I munched a few One Good Thing bars well after the best before date had passed in the interests of Science, and apart from them tasting noticeably drier, I can report no ill effects.

Overall, the concept of these wrapper-free snacks bars is a laudable one, and as well as removing plastic from your back pocket ride waste it does have a great practical application in allowing a seamless pocket to mouth transition without any unwrapping faff. The flavours aren't overpowering or sickly, and the beeswax coating doesn't hinder in any way while simultaneously doing a great job of protecting the bar. The texture-free composition of the bar does lead to a disappointing mouth feel, though, and the short lifespan might be more of a barrier than a bit of plastic to many.

> Buy now: One Good Thing Best Sellers Box Bundle for £19.80 from One Good Thing

Verdict

Innovative, eco, wrapper-free design works really well, they're tasty but texture is unexciting and short lifespan could be a