Snacks, crisped rice bar, chocolate chip

Crisped rice bars are built from toasted, puffed rice cereal bound together with a sticky syrup base, then studded with chocolate chips and often finished with a thin chocolate coating. The result is a bar with a light, airy interior contrasted by soft pockets of melted chocolate, sized to a single 1-ounce (28 g) bar that fits neatly in a coat pocket or a small compartment of a lunchbox. They are eaten straight from the wrapper as a quick snack, tucked into lunchboxes and gym bags, or broken up and scattered over yogurt or a bowl of ice cream for extra crunch. Some households also crush a couple into a bar of trail mix alongside nuts and dried fruit for a car-ride snack.

Because they are shelf-stable, look for them in the granola and snack-bar aisle and keep unopened boxes in a cool, dry pantry away from direct heat; once opened, reseal the wrapper tightly, since exposure to air quickly softens the crisp texture into something chewy and stale. Per 100 g this bar totals 404 calories with 73 g of carbohydrate, mostly from the rice and syrup base, and it stands out for iron at 35% DV alongside 11% DV magnesium and 10% DV protein, which makes it a snack better suited to eating one bar at a time than by the handful, given its 13.5 g of fat and 5.1 g of protein per 100 g.