Athletes and busy parents don't always have time to prep whole foods. Granola bars and other grab-and-go snacks fill a real gap when sweet potatoes aren't practical. Processed foods work fine as part of a balanced diet.
Processed foods versus whole foods for athletes. In the past, I've posted Walmart snack hauls and Costco hauls and stuff like that, and some of it has processed foods in it, and I get a lot of hate in the comments for it. A lot of people on Instagram, you will see, say processed foods are the devil, they're going to make you fat, they're super bad. I am a whole food advocate. Whole foods are so important. However, when an athlete needs a snack on the way to practice and all he has is what's in his bag, he's not going to be able to keep a sweet potato in that bag. He's going to need something that's packaged and easy to get, grab and go. If you want to home make muffins and protein balls and stuff to have him take, that's amazing. A lot of parents don't have the luxury of time to do that, so that's when a granola bar or some type of processed food is going to be super easy to come in and solve that problem for you.
