Review: Good 'n Natural Oatmeal Cinnamon Raisin Bar

So I thought I had touched on all the Good 'n Natural products in prior reviews, but lo and behold, I found a new product offering (at least it was new at the time) on the shelves of the nutrition bar section on one of my recent trips to Kroger.  I've generally found Good 'n Natural products to be just okay in general, but with a name/recipe like this Good 'n Natural Oatmeal Cinnamon Raisin Bar had (there's no product page at this time, so I guess it is pretty new), I was expecting big things because I absolutely love all three of those things that are mentioned in the product name.  With that, I grabbed this on sale for $0.99 and it comes in at a fairly robust 2.0 ounces with 220 calories and ten grams of protein.

Like I said, this bar was robust and when I picked it up and also took it out of the wrapper, it felt like I was holding a brick because this thing was so dense.  Within this brick was the typical Good 'n Natural mix of fruits, nuts and seeds.  Holding up the fruit bargain were raisins and apples.  Holding up the nut bargain were large almonds, tiny bits of walnuts and soynuts.  I'm sure I've eaten soynuts before, but if you put one right in front of me, I'd have no idea what it was because I've never actually seen one before.  I couldn't tell you if they were present in the mix of this bar, because again, I have no idea what the heck they are.  Finally, the seed mix of the bar was some very noticeable pumpkin seeds and also some unnoticeable sesame seeds.  The rest of the bar was an oatmeal mix bound together by they typical syrups, etc. with cinnamon and nutmeg also in that mix.  The wrapper also said that this was a chewy bar despite the fact that it felt like a brick in my hands, so obviously I'll be putting that claim to one of my very stringent tests.

Test results:  yes, it was chewy and I was honestly surprised by that after holding it in my hands.  Outside of the chew, the one overpowering taste in this bar was nutmeg, despite the fact that it was listed as the last ingredient in the list, meaning that it was the least prevalent.  Even with that lack of prevalence, the nutmeg flavor just took this bar over and made it difficult for me to barely notice the cinnamon at the beginning of each bite.  I did notice that the nuts added a minimal crunch and I also noticed that the seeds and oats added a graininess to the bar as you chewed through it, but there was so much nutmeg that I couldn't notice much of anything for long.  One thing that I didn't notice, and it wasn't because of the nutmeg, was the flavor of the fruits.  They were nowhere to be found and that was disappointing because I've always been a fan of the oatmeal raisin combination.

Buy It or Fly By It?  After biting through about two-thirds of this bar, I had to spit some out and throw the last third away because I just couldn't take the nutmeg anymore.  I'm generally not a fan of nutmeg, but I can tolerate it if it doesn't smack me in the face.  This smacked me in the face and made this bar completely unappealing to me, so it gets a FLY BY IT rating.  I've got to admit that I was really disappointed by that too because based on the product name alone, I thought this would be a success for sure.  Alas, like many things in life, things can look good on paper but be poor in execution and that's the issue with this bar.

FLY BY IT!!