People often send me emails asking me to compare Atkins and Medifast protein bars. Folks sometimes ask my opinion as to how both of these bars are different. I’m also often asked which bars are better in terms of taste, nutrition, and effectiveness. I will further discuss these things in the following article.

Some Nutritional Differences Between These Two Bars That Might Affect Effectiveness: To be fair, I’m on Medifast and I need to disclose this upfront. But, I have tried Atkins and have done a lot of research on it also. More than that, I’m going to compare these two bars side by side in order to gauge their perceived effectiveness.

So that I’m trying to compare similar products, I’ll be looking at both diet’s peanut butter chocolate bars. First up, I’m looking at Atkins advantage. This one has a very high 240 calories. A whopping 110 of these calories come from fat. The total fat content in this bar is 12 grams. There are 22 grams of carbohydrates and 15 grams of protein.

When you look at the Medifast bars, some of the big differences become evident. This peanut chocolate bar has only 110 calories (which is less than half of the Atkins bar.) You could eat two of these bars and still consume less calories. This bar only gets 30 of it’s calories from fat. The total fat content of this product is a very low 3 grams. (The Atkins bar has 4 times as much fat.) There are only 12 grams of carbs and 11 grams of protein.

Granted, Atkins does have slightly more protein, but it also has tons more calories, fat, and carbs. In fact, I would be skeptical that a product so high in carbs, calories, and fat would be able to get you into ketosis (or fat burning mode which is the cornerstone of these types of diets.) Simply put, with the Atkins product, you’re likely taking in enough protein, but your calorie and carb ratio is way too high.

To be fair, both of these bars are decent tasting and neither have the weird and chalky texture of some bars. But, taste is only one piece of the puzzle. If you’re going to eat diet food but not lose weight, what’s the point? I actually do believe in the science behind Atkins because Medifast is based on the same idea. The whole point is to get the proper carb to calorie to protein ratio. But only one of the bars accomplish this. Hopefully, this article has made it clear as to which bar this is.