This isn't really about protein, just how ultra-processed, high-carb candy bars are masquerading as protein. Good quality protein is necessary and healthy, and as we age we actually need more of it, not less.
Another demographic who can benefit from extra protein? The elderly. That’s because as we age, we need more protein to retain muscle mass. But we also tend to eat less protein as we get older because our taste-buds begin to prefer sweet over savoury.
True, however they just didn't link to anything (unlike other parts, e.g. in the paragraph prior to that one, where they send you to published research).
I learned that any 'health' bars with 12+ grams of carbs are just candy. Yet all except one was over that limit. The exception was 5g yet had sugar alcohol (artifical sweetener?) putting the real number at 20g.
So maybe those bars are intended as whole meal replacement? If so it's not clear on the labels.
I think you're being too charitable. I don't think they have any intention other than to sell bars. I've read the content declaration of every bar I've encountered and have yet to ingest a single one of them.
Just buy a bag of nuts if you want what bars portray themselves to be, but are not.
I have occasionally seen products along these lines that actually are what they claim to be. They never seem to stick around for long.
The problem with making a consumer product that isn't primarily designed to sell is, you tend not to sell very much of it. When it comes to convenience foods - and anything ready-to-eat in a Mylar wrapper is, almost by definition, a convenience food - what most people want to buy is junk food. Not out of some moral failing, I don't think, so much as that, when you're going for convenience foods, you just happen to be working with a part of your brain that's hard-wired to crave junk food. So we tend to go for junk food, and, even when that's not what we think we want, it's ridiculously easy to be taken in by junk food whose Mylar wrapper loudly proclaims that it's actually healthy food.
From there, it's just the law of the jungle. Products that sell better get the shelf space, products that don't sell as well don't. That determines who gets the shelf space, and therefore who gets to survive as a company.
I've also seen this play out at a macro scale in the rise of Whole Foods Market. They devote every bit as much of their shelf space to convenience foods as any other supermarket. Between that and their distressingly ironic name, it's hard for me to feel surprised that I've seen them out-compete a great many beloved stores that were more genuinely focused on selling whole foods over the past quarter century.
Sugar alcohols are not artificial sweeteners. Some, like erythritol, are a byproduct of fermentation. They usually don't "count" as carbs because they are not fully digested. They act more like fibers.
If something has more than 10grams of carbs and more than say 7 grams of fat per 100g , it should never be labelled as protein bar.
Check the labels, don't trust the packaging brand text.
Some of these bars are worse than a Snickers.
EDIT: Nevermind, found some:
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/8/5/295 [from 2016]
https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article-abstract/35/1/6/469334... [from 1982]
One that says it doesn't differ: https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/88/5/1322/4648885 [from 2008]