Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Review: Pure Protein Strawberry Shortcake Bar



In my never ending quest for additional protein, I was browsing through the health bar section at my local Meijer and I came across a variety of Pure Protein bars.  When looking at the packaging and seeing the tagline of "Eat Good.  Look Great.", I could not possibly resist picking this up since I'm about as vain as they come when it pertains to my looks.  Anyway, I picked up one of each flavor (more reviews coming later) for about $1.29 and the first flavor to try was this Pure Protein Strawberry Shortcake Bar.

Having had protein bars before, I was a little leery of a Strawberry Shortcake flavored protein bar and also of one that claimed it was made with "Real Fruit".  I don't see how something that is chemically engineered can advertise "real fruit", but hey, I'm willing to try anything.  This bar is packed with 19 grams of protein and 180 calories and in terms of size, is only slightly larger than a Twix bar.





As you can see, this bar start off with a white "frosting" that covers a bottom layer of "shortcake" and then a top layer of "strawberry." 

In terms of taste, each of these components was a letdown. The frosting had ZERO creaminess and was actually flaky and fell apart as I was trying to eat it and also after I broke it in half for the above picture.  If you look above, you even see how much it cracked.

Despite the bottom layer looking cake-y like the picture above, the "shortcake" was gummy and chewy.  Honestly, I felt like I would compare it to one of those little caramel square candies that you can chew on seemingly for hours.

The real loser in this bar though was the "strawberry" because it definitely was not that.  My first inclination after tasting it was, I've never had a strawberry like this in my life and I certainly hope I don't ever have one like it.  When I checked the label, I saw that the strawberry was actually a puree mix of of apple, strawberry and plum.  Huh?!  How could that be marketed as strawberry?!  The texture was also gelatinous and almost Vaseline-like without even the give of your typical JELL-O.  It was just weird.

Buy It of Fly By It?  Definitely FLY BY IT.  This thing was just awful and my appetite was definitely not satisfied.  On their website, they say that the "Pure Protein Strawberry Shortcake bar is like a little piece of heaven."  If this is what heaven is like, I officially don't want to go.  Ugh.

FLY BY IT!!
I'm all for chemically engineered foods, but this one should have stayed in the lab.

10 comments:

  1. first comment? Nice!

    I agree, these things taste like straight up chemical.

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  2. Sounds like you might be reviewing some stuff that I would have probably never really even tried at all. I like it.

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  3. I like their chocolate deluxe bars...have never tried the strawberry. Thanks for the review!

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  4. Never fear, I will have chocolate deluxe in a future review!

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  5. Sounds like there's a worse way to get protein than drinking raw eggs like Rocky Balboa.

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  6. Chocolate Deluxe and Chocolate Peanut Butter are the best of the lineup if you ask me.

    I also love Doctor's CarbRite Diet Bars. They have a lot of different flavors.

    http://www.carbritediet.com/store/html/category.cfm?id=45

    Each bar is around 200 calories and has no sugar. However, they have 19-21 grams of sugar alcohol. I've tried most of them already. They're really good and I haven't had any of the side effects of sugar alcohol that some people claim to have had.

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  7. Don't buy those carbrite bars from the official site. You can get them much cheaper elsewhere.

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  8. I don't buy them from the official site. I buy them at my local grocery store.

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  9. "frosting" = yogurt coating (read the ingredients) and the strawberry puree ISN'T 100% strawberry, you say? NO WAY! Welcome to the world of packaged food. I bet you'll soil yourself soggy when you find out what's in pop tarts.

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  10. Their chocolate PB is not entirely repulsive

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