As any great lover of the country will claim, Greece has the very best of everything. The seas are the bluest you’ll ever see. The walls are the most blazingly white, as if just specially painted for a detergent commercial. The priests have the bristliest beards of any priests anywhere (even Russia). The men are the most ruggedly handsome, and the women are the most beautiful. The philosophers are the most philosophical. And so on.
Now, these are all stereotypes – which isn’t to say they’re not true. (Personally, I agree with about half of them). But generally, they’re seen as a thing to amiably argue over, because that’s also a thing that Greek people do really well.
But there is one ‘Best Of’ statement that is surely uncontestable, and it’s this: Greece has the best snack bars.
Snack bars (also called power or cereal bars) – or at least the kind available in most shops of your high street, instead of just at the back of specialist sports-related stores under the category of “nutrition” – are so relentlessly everywhere right now that it’s easy to forget that they’re a relatively new thing.
Morre recently, you’ve probably seen the varieties that have the word “PROTEIN” loudly plastered all over them, and wondered what fad is next (it’s probably added fibre). You’ve also probably raised your eyebrows at the price of some of them – but tried one or two anyway, because hey, curiosity is a virtue.
I blame flapjacks (which fall under the category of granola bars outside of Britain). Which means I blame oats, and ultimately blame the whole agrarian revolution in the Levant around 10,000 ago. As long as I have someone to blame for the glut of exceptionally sugary, unhelpfully sticky and alarmingly overpriced rectangles of semi-unfulfillment that cover our grocery store shelves these days, I’m a happy man.
It’s easy to see how all this happened (partly because it’s well-documented). At some point a few decades back, some entrepreneurial bright spark realised that terrific money was to be made if you mechanically produced flapjacks dotted with the occasional raisin and rebranded them “breakfast bars”, with the vague promise of being a healthy replacement to your actual breakfast, with none of that inconvenient ‘interacting with your family’ or ‘enjoying your food’ stuff that gets in the way of having a super-productive day.
Then the raisins became flecks of apple core, and then shavings of coconut husk. And then the food arms-race had begun – everyone searching for the next big flavour in snack-bar technology.
In some cases, “sugary” doesn’t even get close to what’s going on here. Take the humble Kellogs’s Coco-Pops Bar, which was found to contain proportionally more calories from its sugar than milk chocolate. For breakfast. And all those fats and corn syrup! Yikes.
If you don’t have a lot of time on your hands (which I believe describes every human being on the planet these days), snack bars are indeed a great way to banish the munchies for a few hours. However, what they surely aren’t is a replacement for a proper meal – because they’re “snacks”. Right there in the name.
There are indeed plenty of great snacks in the world – just ask my friend Doug who writes a popular newsletter about them – but let’s also keep them firmly in the category of meal supplements they belong in.
So, how are the Greeks any different here?
For starters, they currently have the most non-existent breakfast in the world. This is a minor Greek tragedy in itself, because I’d argue the best breakfast in the world is fresh fruit slathered with yoghurt – and Greece arguably makes the best yoghurt in the world. Hugely missed opportunity, especially considering how Greece used to put a lot of emphasis on breakfasts as the most important meal of the day, and stuffed them with fresh produce, especially in rural areas…
Instead, Greeks now tend to wake their innards up with a mid-morning snack, often a sticky pastry or some kind of sweet pie, accompanied by strong coffee. This can be forgiven by considering that many Greeks seem to go to bed at the time when the rest of us are irritably batting a hand at our alarm clocks, hoping we’ll hit the Snooze button. If you’ve only had a few hours of sleep, you’ll probably want to go for the high-intensity end of sugary foods along with a blast of caffeine to jolt you fully awake – so a snack bar would fit right in.
But somehow, sanity has prevailed in Greece – because ruling the pantheon of snack bars is Jannis. During my six-week tour around the country in 2007, these fuelled my jaunts through Athens, the Cyclades and around the Peloponnese. Without a stick of Jannis in my back pocket at all times, I’d have hit the wall a thousand times over. Jannis bars kept me upright and moving forward – and when I returned to northern England and discovered that four varieties of them were on sale there as well, these bookmark-sized slabs of pure joy continued to keep my energy levels topped up until I could go home and work all evening on my second job as a travel writer.
(If you’re curious: Peanut, Almond, Hazelnut and Mixed Nuts. That’s one for every day of the week, plus Fridays for “what kind of nut do I feel like today?”)
Why are they so good? They have a host of winning features, including mouth-feel, taste, obvious high quality of ingredients and so on. But mainly, they’re just simple. You’ve got nuts, you’ve got some kind of peanut-brittle-like stickiness holding them in place, and…that’s it. No added gunk to keep it fresh until the sun burns out, and no added sugars to spike your blood sugar levels so much that you’re trapped on the soar-and-crash cravings rollercoaster for the rest of the day.
(Fats? Well, yes, tons – but that’s nuts for you.)
If all this sounds like a poorly-disguised advert for Jannis, I’ll point you towards the snack called the pasteli – made in much the same way, except from honey and sesame seeds, and to be found in pretty much every cafe or supermarket. These have the strongest claim to being the “original” power bars by at least a couple of thousand years (!), since the ancient Greeks ate something very similar and Herodotus made a note of enjoying “sweet cakes of sesame and honey”.
(These are also a popular treat in Poland under the brand “Sesame Snacks” – but if you’re not lucky enough to find those, try making them at home.)
The main thing about all these snacks is that – perhaps because they’re made from whole, unprocessed ingredients – you eat one, and you’re genuinely feeling full. All their slogans should be variations of “One is enough! No, really! Full! Amazing!”
Maybe none of these snacks should be regarded as a complete replacement for breakfast. Let’s keep a sense of proportion here. But yes, I’d say Greece does indeed have the very best snack bars in Europe (and have done for centuries).
That’s my take, and I invite you to take a trip there and prove me wrong.
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Join Wheel & Anchor in September 2025 for an island-hopping (and snack-hunting!) adventure covering some of the well-known islands like Crete and Santorini, and some of the lesser-visited ones like Naxos and Paros. We’ll take local ferries and stay at least 3 nights for each stop to really see the islands that most cruise passengers only catch a glimpse of. All the details are here.