Abbott Labs offers a new line of healthy snacks

Abbott Laboratories, the world's largest maker of heart stents and adult nutritional beverages, is doubling down on the crowded $6.2 billion U.S. snack market with a line of six bars that it hopes will grow into a new brand of wide-ranging products.

Curate snacks — including a chocolate-quinoa-hemp seeds bar and another one combining mission figs and balsamic vinegar — will start selling this month, with additional children's choices coming in April.

Curate will carry “Crafted With Joy” on its label. The Salted Decadence snack bar, for example, lives up to its name with dark chocolate and Marcona almonds, but it also contains hemp seed and quinoa, an ancient grain that's been popularized as a healthy plant-based protein.

Bloomberg News

This story was originally published February 9, 2016 at 2:23 PM with the headline "Abbott Labs offers a new line of healthy snacks."