Do-gooder snacks taste good, too

Full confession: I have a soft spot for Kristen Bell. Her spin as Eleanor Shellstrop in the series “The Good Place” has given me some of the deepest belly laughs I’ve had in a long time. So naturally, when I saw her face on the marketing materials for a line of snack bars, I was predisposed to like the things.

However, Kristen Bell (“Veronica Mars,” “Gossip Girl”) or not, I’m a genuine fan of This Saves Lives. That’s the name of a snack bar company Bell launched with fellow actors Ryan Devlin (“Brothers & Sisters,” “Cougar Town”) Todd Grinnell (“Four Kings,” “Desperate Housewives”) and Ravi Patel (“Master of None,” “Meet the Patels”).

I’ve been munching through the selection of flavors for the past couple of weeks and can enthusiastically say they not only taste good but, more importantly, they do good.

This Saves Lives has the mission of combating severe acute malnutrition — a condition that affects 16 million children around the globe. For each bar the brand sells, it gives a child in need a meal, distributed through hunger relief organizations.

The brand has sent out about 23 million packets of food in the U.S. and abroad since launching in 2013. The bars became available in H-E-B locations in October.

These bars come in grownup and kid-friendly flavors. For the adults, it’s flavors like dark chocolate and caramel, wild blueberry and pistachio, and almond mocha. The line of bars for kids, which just rolled out, come in flavors such as s’mores, apple crisp, and cookies and cream, and contain a full serving of fruits and vegetables. They’re all made with top-shelf ingredients that are non-GMO, gluten-free and kosher.

This Saves Lives bars are closer in spirit to a fancy-pants granola bar than protein-dense nutrition bars, and they’re a huge improvement over the insipid, cardboardlike granola bars we grew up with. My favorite so far is a dark chocolate and cherry version that balances tangy dried fruit with pleasantly bitter chocolate.

Look for This Saves Lives online or in H-E-B locations, priced around $4 to $5 for a package of four or $24 for a 12-pack. More at thissaveslives.com.

Paul Stephen / Staff The maker of This Saves Lives, a line of snack bars, sends food to malnourished children with every purchase.