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Tribe Protein Flapjack

7
£12.00

VERDICT:

7
10
Decent performance and fairly tasty, though it's expensive and you can't eat it while you ride
Tasty
Compact
All-natural and vegan
Good ethics
Falls apart a little too easily
Expensive
Weight: 
58g
Contact: 

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Tribe Protein Flapjack is a tasty protein boost that's made with all-natural ingredients and is easy to carry on the bike. Its slightly flaky composition makes it best suited to eating when off the bike rather than on it, though. It's also rather expensive.

This compact, pocket-friendly protein bar packs a decent kick for its size. It comes in two different flavours, caramel and raspberry. Each bar consists of three layers: a flapjack base, with a caramel or raspberry date layer above this, topped off by peanuts.

As with all of Tribe's products, not only is the Protein Flapjack vegan, it's HFSS (High in Fat, Salt and Sugar) compliant – this basically means it's scored a high enough nutrition rating to pass the new government legislation. And for every one you buy, Tribe will donate 1p to the Tribe Freedom Foundation: a charity established by the company to fight modern slavery and human trafficking. So there you go, not many protein bars can boast that kind of ethical prowess, it's fair to say.

Inside each bar you'll find an array of all-natural ingredients, including date paste, gluten-free oats, peanuts, soya crispies, and natural caramel flavouring (you can find the full list here).

Nutritionally, the headlines stats are: energy 823KJ, carbs 19g, fats 9g (saturated fat is just 1g), with protein at 7g. It's not going to give you a massive mid-ride boost, then, compared with similar products, but then again Tribe's 50g Protein Flapjack is so small and light you won't notice it on you, and you could probably take several of them along for the ride.

> How to eat right for sportives and long rides

No matter whether you go for the caramel or raspberry offering – both actually taste very similar – you'll likely be pretty pleased with the flavour. It's not game-changing like the Veloforte bars I tried previously, but the taste is subtle and they certainly aren't sickly in the slightest.

There's a good degree of moisture to the bar, but my only gripe with it is that it's quite crumbly, so as you're taking it out of the packet it does tend to fall apart a bit too easily sometimes. You probably wouldn't want to try eating one while you ride, as you'd risk losing half of it.

Off the bike, it's no issue, of course; I usually eat drier, more solid foods like dried apricots while I ride, anyway.

Value

The Tribe Protein Flapjack comes in boxes of 12 and costs £22. That's about £1.83 per bar, which certainly isn't cheap. In fact, given these are only 50g per bar I'd say that's definitely on the expensive side.

For comparison, the Torq Explore Flapjacks I tried a few months ago worked out at £1.67 per bar when bought in bulk. Each bar is 65g, making it even cheaper per gram. That said, Tribe's Protein Flapjack offers more than twice the amount of protein, which makes sense given it's labelled as a protein bar, whereas the Torq bar isn't.

Veloforte's Mocha Protein Bar costs £2.42 at its cheapest (when bought as a box of 24). Interestingly, the Mocha Protein Bar offers about 14.7g per 100g of protein versus the Tribe Protein Flapjack's 14g per 100g, so they're fairly matched, but when you look at protein per £, Tribe's bar is slightly behind Veloforte's at £3.66 per 100g versus £3.46 per 100g.

Conclusion

Though Tribe's Protein Flapjack is quite a pricey option, it's a very compact and convenient size, and tastes good, the only downside being it's not one you can really eat while you ride. It's also good to know that you're supporting a very worthwhile charity when you spend money with Tribe.

Verdict

Decent performance and fairly tasty, though it's expensive and you can't eat it while you ride

road.cc test report

Make and model: Tribe Protein Flapjack

Size tested: 50 g

Tell us what the product is for and who it's aimed at. What do the manufacturers say about it? How does that compare to your own feelings about it?

Tribe says, "The TRIBE Protein Flapjack is a great-tasting natural plant energy bar to fuel your everyday adventures. It has three layers; a vegan, gluten-free flapjack base with a raspberry [or caramel] date layer and a peanut topping. Discover the Force of Nature."

Tell us some more about the technical aspects of the product?

Tribe lists:

INGREDIENTS

Date paste

Gluten-free OATS

PEANUTS

Sunflower oil

Chicory fibre

PEANUT flour

SOYA crispies (SOYA protein, tapioca starch, salt)

Water

Coconut sugar

Date syrup

Natural caramel flavouring

NUTRITIONAL INFORMATION

Nutrition per product

Energy (kJ) 823

Energy (kcal) 197

Fat 9.1g

Of which Saturates 1.2g

Carbohydrate 19g

Of which Sugars 11g

Fibre 6.6g

Protein 6.9g

Salt 0.11g

Rate the product for quality of construction:
 
8/10

A solid bar, but a little bit flaky when broken up.

Rate the product for performance:
 
8/10

Decent nutrition per gram.

Rate the product for value:
 
4/10

Quite an expensive bar when you look at the cost per gram.

Tell us how the product performed overall when used for its designed purpose

Offers a decent level of performance and a good taste in a small and light package.

Tell us what you particularly liked about the product

Easy to carry.

Tell us what you particularly disliked about the product

Flaky texture means you can't really eat it while you ride for fear of losing half of it.

How does the price compare to that of similar products in the market, including ones recently tested on road.cc?

One of the more expensive protein bars we've tested, for sure. It's much more expensive than the Torq Explore Flapjack I tested not long ago (which admittedly isn't designed as a protein-specific bar, so doesn't compare well), and even more expensive than Veloforte's Mocha Protein Bar.

Did you enjoy using the product? Yes

Would you consider buying the product? Yes

Would you recommend the product to a friend? Yes

Use this box to explain your overall score

There's a lot to like about the Tribe Protein Flapjack. There's a decent amount of protein, along with other nutritional benefits, in its compact 50g square shape, it tastes nice, and is made of all-natural ingredients (and is HFSS compliant). The brand has some really rather strong ethics, which adds appeal, for me anyway. The only downsides are the expense and slightly crumbly texture which makes it hard to eat while riding.

Overall rating: 7/10

About the tester

Age: 39  Height: 6'4  Weight: 175lbs

I usually ride: Condor Italia RC custom build  My best bike is:

I've been riding for: 10-20 years  I ride: A few times a week  I would class myself as: Experienced

I regularly do the following types of riding: commuting, touring, club rides, sportives, mtb,

Add new comment

8 comments

Avatar
wtjs | 2 years ago
1 like

I, too, am staying with the Aldi fig rolls and ordinary food afterwards.

Avatar
jaymack | 2 years ago
2 likes

£22 for twelve with a miniscule charity donation to their own charity? A branded pack of flapjacks, TREK original oat protein flapjacks for example, cost in the region £2 for three 50g bars. These cost nearly the same for one bar yet the nutritional values are near identical. If you really want to give to an anti modern slavery/trafficking charity and you must have a mass produced flapjack you could buy four boxes of the high street brand for £8 and give £14 to an established charity with a proven track record.

Avatar
Simon E replied to jaymack | 2 years ago
1 like

Agree.

Anything with 'Protein' in the product name is a non-starter for me, it's just marketing spin. You don't need extra protein while riding, just eat a proper meal afterwards. And 19g of carbs isn't going to get you very far if you're pressing on the pedals.

I like the Torq, Ma Baker (90g) and Brynmor flapjacks (80g and made fairly local to me, as it happens).

Avatar
Rendel Harris replied to Simon E | 2 years ago
0 likes
Simon E wrote:

Agree.

Anything with 'Protein' in the product name is a non-starter for me, it's just marketing spin. You don't need extra protein while riding, just eat a proper meal afterwards. And 19g of carbs isn't going to get you very far if you're pressing on the pedals.

x2. Protein helps build muscle, it doesn't help fuel them, carbs needed for that; protein, as you say, can be had at breakfast and dinner and in recovery. My ride snack of choice at the moment is Nature Valley Oats and Honey bars which are currently half price at Sainsburys (other bars/supermarkets are available) at £1.20 for a box of five. 27g of carbs per bar (well per two, two thin bars in each packet). I might eat four in the course of a 100 mile ride, so over a year maybe about £100 worth, the same amount of these (probably need more as fewer carbs, 19g per 50g as opposed to 29g per 42g) would cost over £700, a differential big enough to buy a very adequate new bike or a brilliant secondhand one. Could always give the £4 a year's worth of purchases would raise for chairty direct... 

Avatar
wtjs replied to Rendel Harris | 2 years ago
0 likes

Protein helps build muscle, it doesn't help fuel them

This is, of course, not strictly true. Protein, either from the gut because you've just eaten this 'high protein' bar or from various body stores, can be sacrificed to produce glucose and in most of us this process can be called up rapidly when blood glucose levels fall so that the brain cannot be fed with the glucose it has to have. It's just a roundabout and wasteful method of producing glucose for the muscles- so you might just as well hoover down the fig rolls

Avatar
Rendel Harris replied to wtjs | 2 years ago
0 likes

I accept the correction, but as you say it's hardly the optimal way of fuelling so not sure why this would be marketed as an in-ride booster. I don't know how accurate this is but I was told by a professional soigneur some years ago that protein should be avoided during a ride because of the extra energy it takes to process.

Avatar
mdavidford replied to Rendel Harris | 2 years ago
0 likes
Rendel Harris wrote:

not sure why this would be marketed as an in-ride booster

It's not particularly - they bill it as 'pre- or post-workout, or everyday snacking'. (Plus they're generally more run-focused than cycling anyway.)

Avatar
ktache replied to Simon E | 2 years ago
1 like

I make my own, a riff on Green&Blacks flapjack recipe from their 2nd book, no cocoa powder, and added mixed seeds. And no drizzled chocolate, adjusted for a smaller bake too.  Pretty much every week for the past five years, second breakfast. Change the dried fruit, pears this week.

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