Review: LUNA Chocolate Peppermint Stick Nutrition Bar

I know the packaging on this says Happy Holidays and makes shopping references, and while peppermint is technically a holiday flavor (at least it is marketed that way), I realize that I'm a little late on this review.  Since I only got this late last week for free from LUNA, it's not entirely my fault.  Also, after my experience with the CLIF Peppermint Stick bar, I was not exactly anxious to try this one out (LUNA is part of the CLIF family of products, so they have to be similar, right?).  With that said, let's dive in and review the Chocolate Peppermint Stick nutrition bar.  As always, LUNA bars are designed for women (men can eat them too!) and are 70% organic.  This bar in particular weighs in at 1.69 ounces with 180 calories and eight grams of protein.

If you compare this to the CLIF Peppermint Stick version, this key difference here is obviously the chocolate.  This bar is made of a white vanilla icing base layer that has peppermint pieces plentifully mixed in and you can see that in the picture above.  The base layer is then topped with the standard LUNA Pro protein mix of rice crisps, oats, etc. that is then mixed with cocoa for the chocolate flavoring.  Once thing I did find interesting when perusing the ingredient list was that this mix contains an ingredient called "chocolate cookies".  Weird.  I guess that means there are chocolate cookies mixed in with this too and as you can tell from the picture above, if they are there, they are certainly not visible.

So, after taking a look at the bar and comparing it with the CLIF version, I was ready to bite in and was very apprehensive about it thinking the peppermint would overpower me again.  Well, I'm happy to report that it did not.  In fact, I'd even say that the peppermint flavor was mild and pleasant.  With a flavor like peppermint, you can obviously tell it is there, but it definitely does not give you the proverbial punch in the mouth like the CLIF version did.  The chocolate, on the other hand, was unnoticeable.  In fact, had this bar not had the chocolate coloring, I would have just assumed this was a standard protein mix.  I tried as hard as I could to detect a chocolate flavoring, but it just wasn't there.  Perhaps it was masked by the peppermint and vanilla flavor, but I just couldn't taste it.  That said, the lack of chocolate flavoring didn't really detract from the bar because this one was fairly pleasant as I said.  In fact, the crunch of the LUNA Pro mix combined with the peppermint pieces and icing vaguely reminded me of the peppermint candies with their texture and feel in my mouth.

Buy It or Fly By It?  BUY IT.  This bar was pleasant enough that you could eat it as a snack, small meal or dessert, although it's not advisable for breakfast.  Even though the peppermint flavor in this one wasn't overpoweringly strong, I don't think it's a flavor you'd want to start out your day with.  Of course, if you forgot to brush your teeth, definitely eat this for breakfast because your breath is going to need all the help it can get.  Happily, I can say that this bar restored my faith in peppermint flavored bars after my initial CLIF review nearly turned me off of them forever.

BUY IT!!