Can someone tell me how these are used? Are they for a snack or do they constitute a meal? Thanks.

Hey, Ellen!

If you are speaking of the zone bars that are sold here on this site, they are all in 2-block portions. So, for a 1-block snack, you have to limit yourself to 1/2 of a bar (to me, this is a difficult task).

If you want to use them as a meal, you could eat one bar and then drink a cup of milk (for a 3 block meal). Or, eat 1 1/2 bars. Or, eat one bar along with something else that is equal to 1 block, like a piece of string cheese and a 1/2 cup of grapes, as an example.

Might have to take those back to Wally World then. Was going to use them for a snack.

Get yourself a bag of Babybel cheese (low fat) and keep a bag of grapes in a fridge. If I need a quick snack, I have one cheese ball and hadful of grapes (1/2 cup) or one kiwi.

Thanks, Bozena. Good idea. I guess any low-fat cheese would do? Not sure that I've ever seen the babybel around here.

Some stick cheeses, work.
BUT watch - most are higher in fat and lower in protein.
I do not think they have much taste, and the lo-fat versions - less so,
However, in a pinch. We might take a couple with us with some fruit when we do longer Kayak and hiking trips.

Thanks, John. I just had one with 1/2 cup grapes and 1 oz. low-fat cheddar for lunch. Didn't have time to cook anything today. The chocolate/peanut butter bar is good to me. Now we'll see if this lasts until snack time.:)

HI, Ellen - you actually had one snack as your lunch food was worth 1 block. You need 3 blocks to keep your hunger in control for 5 hrs. I would not be surprised if you felt hungry after 2 hrs or so. Quick lunch idea, I had that today: 3oz cooked chicken, 150 grams of asparagus soup from carton heated together in a microwave oven. "pizza" - half a small low-carb wrap, dry grilled on a hot pan, covered with 1 P of low fat mozarella. When mozarella gets runny I topped it with a big handful of herb salad (bought ready made: rocket, spinach, watercress). One cup of strawberries for dessert.

Those Babybel cheeses are pretty good, you may have to look in the deli section of the store (where they sell specialty items, sometimes I find hummus and specialty dips nearby). They do make a lower-fat variety, so be careful to grab the right one (in a white-colored wrapper). They come in rounds, not in sticks.

Meant to say that I had the 1 oz. cheese and 1/2 cup grapes with a Zone Peanut Butter Bar. I ate at 12. It's almost 2 still feeling good.

From my own experience - I actually need to have a large in volume lunch to fill OK and to last me till 5pm. Breakfast or dinner can be smaller, but lunch needs to be big usually to keep me in control. So I have a large bowl of salad usually (tomato, pepper, spring onion, radish with lots of green lettuce). So 1.5 peanut bar (or 1 peanut bar + string cheese + grapes) would probably feel like nothing to me in the middle of the day

I feel the same way as Bozena, I tend to need a larger volume meal that takes longer to eat.

If I try using bars or other small-volume meal, I think that I end up not feeling physically full, then I end up eating more just to get that full feeling.

Yes, ladies I agree. The small lunch did not work out too well in the end. By 3:00 I was starving.

And, if you weren't using the Zone Bars from this site, that might be part of the problem, too (although the bars here don't really do much better for me, anyway, just a slight improvement).

Ellen, everyone is different, and what works for one person may not work for everyone. So, just keep that in mind when you read through these posts. I am someone who is carb sensitive, so I am more sensitive to foods that have a high glycemic index (which means they don't keep me in the Zone).