Review: Earnest Eats Almond Trail Mix Baked Whole Food Bar

Sorry folks, but this blog has been a little Fresh Thyme heavy recently.  Unfortunately, that's mostly going to continue for a while because I made a HUGE splurge there and probably will go back again.  The positive is that it's freshened up (get it?) the content a bit here and given me some new products to review.  Today is the second look at an Earnest Eats product as I grabbed this Earnest Eats Almond Trail Mix Baked Whole Food Bar for $1.69.  It's 1.9 ounces and has 210 calories with six grams of protein.  It's also organic, vegan and wheat free.

The clear wrapper eliminates the mystery of this, but I'll touch on it briefly.  This is a square, oat-based bar (meaning very soft) that has a plethora of ingredients mixed into it.  Those ingredients, which nearly all are clearly visible, include almonds, cranberries, oats, pumpkin seeds, raisins, sunflower seeds and walnuts.  That's all bound together with almond butter and has a touch of sea salt mix in along with it.  The variety of ingredients clearly helps carry the trail mix motif, so Earnest Eats is good there.  In terms of smell, it really had a mix of oat smell (which is fairly bland) and also of nutty almond butter (which is also mostly bland).

As expected, my first bite into this bar provided a soft and chewy experience.  Also to be expected was for this bar to have a grainy texture to it with all the seeds and nuts that were mixed in here.  What I didn't expect was that the walnuts within the bar would have such a noticeable effect.  Walnuts are often a weak nut with limited flavor, but in the case of this bar, I could absolutely tell that they were there and it was a nice change of pace.  The almonds and almond butter also added to the nutty feel and when that was mixed with the nuts and sea salt, it was definitely the salty portion of the trail mix.  The sweet portion of the trail mix was supposed to be coming from the cranberries and raisins, but their flavor was kind of muted by the oat flavor that really dominated the bar.  There was some cranberry and raisin sweetness and tang at the end of each bite, but it wasn't particularly powerful.

Buy It or Fly By It?  For me, this bar was primarily oat flavor mixed with the texture of nuts and seeds with a tiny bit of fruit flavoring mixed in.  Some people find oats boring, but I love them, so I give this a BUY IT rating.  I found it particularly tasty and interesting to chew through with the various textures that it had.  Certainly not the world's most interesting bar, it was definitely one that I felt delivered quite well.

BUY IT!!