Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Even The Healthiness Of Low Fat Chocolate Chunk Chewy Granola Bars Cannot Get Me To Recommend Them!


The Good: Fairly healthy, Comparatively inexpensive
The Bad: Not as chocolate-flavored as I would like, Could be healthier
The Basics: Not the most healthy or tasty treat on the market, Quaker Low Fat Chocolate Chunk Chewy Granola Bars leave me underwhelmed.


My wife has been getting me to eat healthy lately and, truth be told, I have found some truly delightful healthy options, like the Slim-Fast 3-2-1 Chocolate Mint bars (reviewed here!). I even found myself enjoying the Quaker Low Fat S’mores Chewy Granola Bars (reviewed here!) she had kicking around the house. So, when she offered me some of her Quaker Low Fat Chocolate Chunk Chewy Granola Bars, I eagerly accepted.

Sadly, I am not impressed with these. While the S’Mores bars were flavorful and fun, the Chocolate Chunk Chewy Granola bars, while healthy, are less inspired and far from delicious. More than anything else, what made me truly downrate these chewy granola bars was the fact that they were not especially chocolatey.

Basics

Quaker is perhaps best known for making oatmeal, but for a long time has made granola bars and other healthy snacks. Their Chewy Granola Bars come in several flavors and my wife and I chose the Low Fat Chocolate Chunk Chewy Granola Bar because we both have a sweet tooth and are trying to eat healthier. I figured with a name like Chocolate Chunk, they had to be loaded with chocolate flavor. Alas, I was wrong!

The Low Fat Chocolate Chunk Chewy Granola Bar come in a .84 oz. bar that is foil-wrapped. Each bar represents a single serving and Quaker has the Chewy Granola Bar presented as 1” wide by 3/8” thick by 4” long granola bar that is unsurprisingly breakable or easily squished. A box of Low Fat Chocolate Chunk Chewy Granola Bar contains eight or twelve bars, depending upon where you buy them. My wife and I picked them up because they were on sale (2/$5) and we had a coupon. Not on sale, these are an impossible sell to me.

Ease Of Preparation

Eating a Quaker Low Fat Chocolate Chunk Chewy Granola Bar is simple. After removing the foil wrapper, simply pull out the bar and stick it in your mouth. There is no particularly complicated equation to eating this snack; it is an entirely ready-to-eat food!

Taste

Unwrapping the Low Fat Chocolate Chunk Chewy Granola Bar, I was impressed by the full, rich milk chocolate aroma that escaped the foil wrapping. There was no hint of salty scent or rice; this smelled fully like a chocolate bar!

On the tongue, the results are a bit more hit-or-miss. With one bite, the flavor is sweet and grainy with only a hint of chocolate. Another bite is chocolate, bogged down by a slightly dry wheat taste that is hardly satisfying. Every bite is sweet, but this is a hardly distinctive flavor of chewy granola bar and the lack of serious amounts of chocolate chunks left me wanting quite a bit more than this bar provided.

The Chocolate Chunk Chewy granola bars leave the mouth dry, so it is hard to get excited about these as a snack on their own. It is highly recommended that you only have them with a lot of water!

Nutrition

Quaker chewy granola bars are intended as a snack and they are a fairly healthy snack, even if they are fairly unsatisfying. These .84 oz. Chewy Granola Bar represent a single serving. Made primarily of granola, corn syrup and brown rice crisp, there is nothing in the Chocolate Chunk bars that was unpronouncable. This is a mostly-natural food product and these Chewy Granola Bar were produced on equipment that may leave the bar with traces of peanuts and other tree nuts. There is also a dietary disclaimer that this flavor contains wheat, soy, milk and coconut ingredients. Because it has milk, it is not Vegan-compliant.

Quaker's Low Fat Chocolate Chunk Chewy Granola Bars have only 90 calories, only 20 of which are from fat. A full serving represents 3% of one's RDA of saturated fat and these are cholesterol free. Surprisingly, they are fairly low in sodium with only 80 mg per serving and there is 1 gram of protein to be had by eating a full bar. These are not a significant source of vitamins or minerals, though they do have 8% of one’s daily calcium and 2% of the RDA of Iron.

Storage/Cleanup

As a healthy snack, Quaker Low Fat Chocolate Chunk Chewy Granola Bar remain fresh so long as they are kept in their wrappers. Our box had an expiration date in 2013, so these truly do last. As long as the bars are not heated up, they remain fresh and the only real clean-up for them comes from wiping up crumbs.

If the Chocolate Chunk bars get hot, though, the chocolate chips in them will melt and cleaning that up can be a little trickier, especially from light fabrics. Consult a fabric guide if the chocolate chips melt into one of your outfits.

Overall

In a world where there are increasingly delicious and affordable healthy snacks, it is impossible to recommend Quaker Low Fat Chocolate Chunk Chewy Granola Bar. There are far more chocolatey, flavorful and nutritious snacks in the same price range. Why wouldn’t you choose one of them?!

For other reviews of healthy food, please check out:
Peeled Organics Banan-a-Peel
WhoNu? Nutrition Rich Chocolate Cookies
Yoplait Parfait Grasshopper Pie Lowfat Yogurt

4/10

For other food and drink reviews, please visit my index page on the subject! That is available by clicking here!

© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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