Review: Balance Bar Nimble Peanut Butter Bar

I've done a lot of Balance Bar reviews here on the blog and I've tried some of their various different product lines as well.  That said, I had recently read about their new Nimble Bars online but had not had a chance to try them or pick them up at the store.  Much to my surprise one day when I got home from work, there was a box sitting on my porch that had been delivered that I had no clue what it was, but once I opened it up, it was filled with a plethora of the various varieties of Balance bars and some of those included some from their new Nimble Bar line.  So, armed with these free bars, I was ready to dive into a review of this Peanut Butter Nimble Bar.  It's 1.16 ounces, 120 calories and has ten grams of protein.  It's sweetened using Truvia, so it's not as sugary as a lot of the bars (I'm guessing that is why it is relatively low calorie).

Review: Walden Farms Cinnamon Raisin Peanut Spread

Several weeks back in a post about Walden Farms Apple Butter Fruit Spread, it was discussed how Walden Farms had recently come out with a several new spread products and one of those products was a Cinnamon Raisin Peanut Spread.  While I just find their regular peanut spread to be okay, the thought of cinnamon and raisins combined with their peanut spread had me wanting more and since I have a love of Walden Farms products and have reviewed many of them, I knew I had to get my hands on this new offering since my favorite way to eat oatmeal is by adding cinnamon and raisins, so I clearly love the flavor combination.  Since it is not available at my store, I went searching online and found a twelve ounce jar at Netrition.com for $3.79, placed my order and there it was at my doorstep within three business days.  Big props to Netrition for quick shipping time.  Anyway, as with all Walden Farms products, this is calorie free, sugar free, fat free, etc.

Review: CLIF Chocolate Almond Fudge Bar

The other day, I was meandering through my office trying to waste time before it was time to go home for the day and my travels took me into the lunch room.  In there was a large plate of homemade chocolate and white chocolate fudge.  It's been a while since I've had a piece of fudge, but I know that I love it.  Luckily (for my waistline), I was able to stay away and not have any which I consider to be an accomplishment since I have a major weakness for white chocolate.  Anyway, needing a light lunch a couple days later while working from home, I saw this CLIF Chocolate Almond Fudge bar in my stock of bars and decided to fill my fudge craving in a "healthy" way.  Prior to finding this one in my stock I picked it up at Meijer for $1.09 and it comes it at the CLIF standard 2.4 ounces.  It also is contains 240 calories and ten grams of protein.

Review: Quaker Chewy Low Fat S'mores Granola Bar

In the long list of Quaker Chewy granola bar flavor reviews, we come to the next flavor in the series, the Low Fat S'mores granola bar.  I don't have an individual price as I picked it up as part of a variety pack, but this one is 0.84 ounces, 90 calories and as the name implies, is meant to simulate the old campfire treat of graham crackers, marshmallows and chocolate.  Of course, since this is a granola bar, they've substituted out the graham cracker for granola mix, but I won't hold that against them.

Time Waster: Cereal Math Equations

I'll be the first to admit that I've recently developed a really bad habit that I'm trying to rid myself of.  My bad habit that is that I've started buying boxes of cereal and then just eating them dry by the handful like they are potato chips.  If I was just eating one handful every now and then, this wouldn't be that big of a problem, but I'm eating multiple handfuls at multiple times throughout the day/night in addition to what I would normally eat.  Not exactly healthy and while it may not be potato chips, it's just as bad.

Anyway, during one of my binges the other day, I was looking at the back of the box my Cheerios and was just astounded by how many flavors of Cheerios that there are.  Throughout the course of my bad habit and also my life, I've managed to have just about every one of their flavors, so having done that, I came up with a fun game in my head called Cereal Math.  What I mean by cereal math is that I want to write a mathematical "equation" rating each of the Cheerios flavors in order.  This would only apply to those flavors that I've actually had as I'm missing a couple.

I didn't limit my "fun" game to just Cheerios either as there are several other cereals out there that have "kin" with the same name brand, but just in different flavors.  If you want to think of it this way, think of it like Coca-Cola with original Coke, Cherry Coke, Diet Coke, Coke Zero, etc.  Basically, the equations are limitless if you spend some time in your cereal aisle at the store because I don't know about you, but the aisle at my store seems like it is about a mile long.

So, here we go...

Cereal Math Equation #1:  General Mills Cheerios Flavors
Peanut Butter Multigrain Cheerios > Chocolate Cheerios > Honey Nut Cheerios > Original Cheerios > Multigrain Cheerios > Apple Cinnamon Cheerios > Oat Cluster Crunch Cheerios > Dulce De Leche Cheerios > Frosted Cheerios

Get where I'm going with this?  I think Peanut Butter Multigrain Cheerios are the best followed by Chocolate Cheerios and then all the way down in descending order to Frosted Cheerios as the worst.  There's obviously some missing flavors in there that I have not had, but let's try some more that are much simpler.

Cereal Math Equation #2:  General Mills Toast Crunch Flavors
Cinnamon Toast Crunch > Frosted Toast Crunch

Cereal Math Equation #3:  General Mills Cocoa Puffs Flavors
Brownie Crunch Cocoa Puffs > Original Cocoa Puffs

Cereal Math Equation #4:  Quaker Oats Cap'n Crunch Flavors
Peanut Butter Crunch > Original Crunch > Crunch Berries

Cereal Math Equation #5:  Kellogg's Krave Flavors
Double Chocolate > Chocolate

Cereal Math Equation #6:  Kellogg's Crunchy Nut Flavors
Golden Honey Nut > Caramel Nut > Roasted Nut & Honey

Cereal Math Equation #7:  Quaker Oats Oatmeal Squares
Honey Nut > Cinnamon

There's obviously countless other cereals out there, so I'd like to see if anyone else has an opinion on this.  If you think I'm nuts, let me know.  Also, feel free to add your own and hopefully some of the cereal experts that read this blog like Marvo at The Impulsive Buy or Adam at Option Pitch and Waffle Crisp will chime in with some of their thoughts if they happen to see this post.  I'm curious to see what everyone thinks.

Review: Starbucks Vanilla Bean Frappucino Ice Cream

In my last Starbucks ice cream review, I wasn't necessarily against the product, but I just couldn't get on board with coffee flavored ice cream.  With that, I was curious to try out one of their coffee free flavored ice creams with this Vanilla Bean Frappucino ice cream.  Inspired by the drink made of vanilla, milk and whipped cream, this one was essentially the same thing except it is frozen and lacks whipped cream.  Okay, I guess it is not essentially the same thing, but it is close.  Like the last pint, I picked this up at Meijer on clearance (making room for more Ben & Jerry's) for a bargain basement price of $1.97.  Each serving in the pint is 210 calories and there's four servings per pint, as usual.

Review: SmartForLife Cranberry Granola Square

I have a friend that works for a food distributor and because of that, some of the companies that his company distributes products for send him random, unrequested samples.  I often times find myself rummaging through his pantry at home to amuse myself and see what he's gotten since my last visit (there are often some VERY odd products in there) and recently I found a box of these SmartForLife Cranberry Granola Squares.  Billed as a dietary supplement that supposedly helps you feel fuller longer, these bars are all natural and contain no high fructose corn syrup.  They also carry an amusing tagline on the package stating "Eat Cookies.  Lose Weight.  It's that Simple."  So, I guess one could infer that these granola squares are going more toward the cookie/dessert realm than they are the snack bar realm as the packaging also says to enjoy these with a low calorie dinner.  If you were to enjoy one though, you'd find it coming in at 1.05 ounces with 80 calories and five grams of protein, so it is a moderate sized and very low calorie product.

Review: Planters Triple Nut Big Nut Bar

Mr. Peanut has quite a track record on this blog.  I've had a couple of his bars and have liked all of them.  While this Triple Nut Big Nut bar technically is not a "health" bar, but instead a snack bar, it doesn't truly fit the mission of the blog (at least health wise), so I'll classify this one as comfort food in that it's a high sugar and unhealthy treat.  Although, nuts in moderation are healthy, so it's somewhere in between ice cream and a Planters Antioxidant bar that I've reviewed before.  Anyway, I was on the road for a convention in San Jose (thus the different look in the pictures), so I picked this one up at the Marriott gift shop at my hotel, so the $1.49 price is probably not relevant to the outside world, although I was presently surprised that it was that low.  The remainder of the statistics on the bar include 1.62 ounces, 220 calories and seven grams of protein.

Review: Skinny Cow Dulce de Leche Low Fat Ice Cream Single Serving Cup

In my continuing quest for my own personal ice cream portion control to not be a total glutton in 2012, I'm led to do another Skinny Cow single serve low fat ice cream review, although this time I'm focusing on the Dulce de Leche flavor of their single serving cups.  This one clocks in at the usual 5.8 ounces and I picked it up at Meijer for $1.25.  This one contains 150 calories and scores as a four pointer on the Weight Watchers Points Plus scale.

Review: Rickland Orchards Cherri Almond Greek Yogurt Bar

So I believe I've mentioned before that my company has a wellness refrigerator where they stock it with "healthy" snacks.  In addition to this, they've also started a daily "snack break" at 3:00 p.m., which I find to be hilarious.  It's like we are in day care or something.  Anyway, during one of those snack breaks they threw out a product from a manufacturer that I had never seen before and that was this Rickland Orchards Cherri Almond Greek Yogurt bar (very cute spelling of cherry, by the way; so weird).  Obviously I didn't pay for it, but I can tell you that I've seen it at Meijer for $1.59, it weighs 1.41 ounces and has 160 calories and seven grams of protein.  The bar also professes itself to be an excellent source of fiber and protein, so there's clearly all sorts of health benefits to this bar.

Review: Quest Vanilla Almond Crunch Protein Bar

Quest bars are only available through the internet and since I'm a pretty cheap guy, I refuse to pay the prices (plus shipping) for a bar through the internet, so I don't have them often.  So, whenever I see a free giveaway on these, I'm all over it.  Much like my last Quest review, I got this Vanilla Almond Crunch bar through a free giveaway on their website.  The bar itself is 2.12 ounces and has 200 calories with twenty grams of protein.  The fact that this can pack so much protein in a relatively lowish calorie treat is astounding to me, but I guess science amazes me every day.  Anyway, this is also billed as a low carbohydrate and low fiber bar, so there's all sorts of good stuff going on.

Review: YoCrunch Strawberry Greek Yogurt Parfait

Having exhausted myself of some of the major Greek yogurt purveyors, I've been led to start trying out other products by other manufacturers and that leads me to this Strawberry Greek Yogurt Parfait (yes, the third day in a row of strawberry flavored products) made by YoCrunch with REAL strawberries!  I have previously reviewed a regular yogurt parfait from YoCrunch, but as I've already mentioned, this is my first voyage into their Greek yogurt line.  I picked this one up on sale at Marsh for $1.00 and it is six ounces of fun with 170 calories and eleven grams of protein.

Review: SOYJOY Strawberry Baked Soy & Fruit Bar

In my first SOYJOY product review of the blueberry bar, I admitted that I went in to the review terrified because I had no idea how it would turn out.  The fact that I was eating a soy bar and a baked one at that, kind of made me skeptical of how everything would turn out.  Once I finished though, I was pleasantly surprised and actually enjoyed the bar.  So with that, I head into this second review without any trepidation and actually, I've built up some expectations for this Strawberry flavored bar (good ones) that I'm hoping can be met.  Quite a change, eh?  Anyway, I picked this one up at Meijer for $1.00 and it is 1.05 ounces with 130 calories and four grams of protein.

Review: Ben & Jerry's Strawberry Shortcake Greek Frozen Yogurt

Based on my first review of Ben & Jerry's entry into the Greek yogurt, albeit frozen, war, I was less than excited to dive into this pint of Strawberry Shortcake Greek frozen yogurt.  It's not that the last one was bad, but it just wasn't good or memorable and when you are paying premium prices for Ben & Jerry's products, it better be both of those things.  Since I picked up two of these pints, along with that Blueberry Vanilla Graham pint, I had to make my way through this one as well and that leads to this review.  This Strawberry Shortcake pint was also picked up at Meijer on sale for $3.00 and is 180 calories per serving with the typical four servings per pint.

Review: Good 'n Natural Cranberry Almond Bar

Sometimes I'll go on a binge and buy a variety of different bars from a new manufacturer at the store, rush to do the first review and then totally forget that I have the rest of the bars saved at home and ready to review.  That's the case with this Good 'n Natural Cranberry Almond bar as it sat unopened in my house for a couple of months before I finally got around doing this review.  In my initial review of their Peanut Butter bar, I was not overly impressed, but gave it a BUY IT rating because it was a decent enough product that it was worthy of a purchase.  We'll see what happens with this one.  As with the last bar, I picked this up at Kroger on sale for $0.99 and it comes it at 2.0 ounces with 230 calories and ten grams of protein.

Review: Talenti Caramel Cookie Crunch Gelato

One of my early reviews on the blog was of Talenti's Sea Salt Caramel Gelato and I loved it, but for whatever reason, since then I have not done another Talenti review or even had any Talenti gelato for that matter.  Not sure why, but maybe I was waiting for it to go on sale or had other things on my mind, but armed with a coupon from their Facebook page and also a sale at Meijer, I was ready to pick up another couple pints for reviews.  For this first review, I'll be reviewing the Caramel Cookie Crunch gelato that I picked up for $3.50.  Each pint contains four 220 calorie servings.

Review: Larabar Blueberry Muffin Food Bar

Looking back at my prior Larabar reviews, it's both sad and amazing to me that I've only found one Larabar that I've truly liked out of all the reviews.  That's just mind boggling to me that there can be so many different varieties of a product and I've only essentially found one of them to be appetizing.  They are all edible, but none are particularly flavorful, in my opinion.  Anyway, in my continuing quest to find another Larabar that I find tasty, I'm led to the Blueberry Muffin flavor food bar.  I picked it up at Kroger on sale for $1.00 and it contains 190 calories and four grams of protein packed into a 1.6 ounce bar.

Review: Walden Farms Tomato Ketchup

First things first, I am OBSESSED with ketchup.  There are many foods that I eat that I don't particularly care for (eggs), yet I eat them only as a form of a ketchup delivery system.  Not only do I put ketchup on my eggs (and lots of it), I use it outside of the norm in other ways too.  I use ketchup as a dip for fried chicken, put it on crackers and chips, put it on spaghetti (admittedly, I took this idea from the movie Goodfellas), put it on vegetables, etc.  Basically, I'll put it on anything, although I've never put it on ice cream, nor do I think I ever will.  That said, when I saw that Walden Farms offered a sugar free and zero calorie version of Tomato Ketchup, I said that I had to give it a try.  I knew I was playing with fire with this one, but hey, I'll try just about anything.  I picked up this twelve ounce container for $3.69 at Kroger, by the way.  So, with a sense of terror in my mind fearing how my beloved ketchup could be ruined, I plodded on.

Review: Quaker Popped Tomato Basil Rice Snacks

Editor's Note:  While the product has stayed the same, Quaker now markets these under a different named and they are now called "Quaker Popped Tomato Basil Rice Snacks." The review below applies the same.

The next Quakes review and hopefully one of the last for a long while because I am frankly fatigued on these reviews, is a flavor that is so new (it says it on the bag, but my superior photography skills cut that part off) that Quaker does not even have a website for the flavor!  It's a flavor that I saw in while meandering through Walmart in a large bag for $2.59.  Each serving is 130 calories and in this large bag, there's about six servings.

Review: Balance Bar Gold Caramel Nut Blast Bar

This is certainly not my first Balance Bar review, nor will it be my last.  That said, one aspect of Balance Bars that I haven't really spent a lot of time on is their Gold line of bars.  Basically, they describe their Gold line of bars as your typical Balance Bar with an extra layer of decadence.  Um, okay.  Anyway, this leads me to the Caramel Nut Blast bar with its "three indulgent layers".  I picked this up for $1.09 at Meijer and it packs 200 calories and fourteen grams of protein into a 1.76 ounce bar.

Review: Ben & Jerry's Willie Nelson's Country Peach Cobbler Ice Cream

I mentioned in a previous review of Ben & Jerry's Phish Food flavor that I was feeling particularly psychedelic on a trip to Meijer and picked up that flavor along with this Willie Nelson's Country Peach Cobbler flavor on sale for $3.00.  Willie, as you may or may not know, likes to smoke the herb, so these two fit together nicely in a almost drug induced shopping binge.  Like the Phish Food pint, this one contains 220 calories per serving in the four serving pint, so it's on the very low scale in terms of calories in the Ben & Jerry's ice cream spectrum.  Being that I usually buy the calorie dense Ben & Jerry's ice creams, this purchase was a bit of a departure for me.

Review: Atkins Endulge Caramel Nut Chew Bar

It has been a while since I've reviewed an Atkins product on the blog, because frankly, most times I find their products too expensive.  So, when I saw a free giveaway online where they were giving away a "starter kit" as it related to their general weight loss plan, I hopped in and signed up and they sent me a trio of sample bars.  You'll be seeing reviews of all these bars on the blog, but for the purposes of this review, we'll start with a bar from the "Endulge" line of bars with the Caramel Nut Chew bar.  I would assume "Endulge" means that this is a bar where you can break your strict adherence to your diet for the occasional treat just so that you don't go batty.  This bar comes in at 1.2 ounces and is 130 calories and has five grams of protein, by the way.

Review: Stonyfield Organic Oikos Chocolate Pure Pleasure 0% Greek Yogurt

I've dropped hints on the blog before that I work in internet marketing as my real job.  The reason I bring this up again is that my job specifically is to work with Google/Yahoo/Bing to make sure that my company is bidding on the proper search keywords to show up in each search engine's paid advertisement listings.  Anyway, when I look at the name of this Stonyfield product, I get a chuckle because I can just imagine some pervert looking for the search term of "pure pleasure on the bottom" or some variation and then their search results coming up with my review in the results even though that is not what they intended at all.  Anyway, maybe I only find that funny, but it did provide some amusement for me on a sleepy morning.

So, I've reviewed one Stonyfield Pure Pleasure product before and that leads me to another flavor of the product line with a review of the Chocolate flavor.  I picked this one up at Meijer with a free product coupon, but it usually retails at $4.69 for a four pack of these four ounce cups.  Each cup contains 100 calories, has ten grams of protein and says it is zero fat despite the fact that the nutritional information on the back of the cup says there are five calories from fat.

Review: Quaker Chewy Dipps Caramel Nut Granola Bar

Quaker is apparently very fond of their Chewy bar product line and/or the must have huge successes with it because along with their original Chewy bars, they have several different variations of the bars.  I've reviewed several of these Chewy bars already, but today is my first review of the Dipps extension of the Chewy line with this Chewy Dipps Caramel Nut bar.  I picked up a box of six of these on sale at Meijer for $2.00 and each bar clocks in at 1.09 ounces (larger than a traditional Chewy bar which is 0.84 ounces) and has 140 calories.

Review: CLIF Builder's Chocolate Peanut Butter Protein Bar

My comprehensive review of all things protein, including CLIF bars, leads me to the CLIF Builder's Chocolate Peanut Butter Protein Bar.  I picked this one up with a buy one get one coupon at Meijer and it factored out to about $1.67 for the bar with the coupon.  The hard numbers on this protein bar include a weight of 2.4 ounces (pretty much CLIF standard), 270 calories and twenty grams of protein.  For you natural lovers out there, this one's entirely natural as well.