Review: PowerBar Pria Chocolate Peanut Crunch Nutrition Bar

Much to my chagrin, it seems like I am always hungry and in need of a snack.  The problem is that there are so many snacks out there that are such caloric bombs (chips, energy bars, etc.) that I don't want to eat them because I don't want the calorie expenditure on that particular item, so I usually just ignore my urges.  So, when I'm walking through the store and see something like this PowerBar Pria Chocolate Peanut Crunch nutrition bar and see that it is a non-belly busting 110 calories and costs only $0.69 (at Meijer), I'm immediately intrigued.  PowerBar usually has higher calorie energy bars, some of which I've reviewed, so this is a adventure for me in the PowerBar realm.  For reference purposes, this one also weighs 0.98 ounces, so it's slightly larger than your standard Quaker Chewy bar.

Once I cracked this one open, I can't say that there were any surprises in how it looked.  I expected some sort of rice crisp interior due to the low weight of the bar and that's what I got.  Since the name of the bar contained chocolate, I also expected a chocolate exterior coating and that was there too, although I might add that the chocolate coating wasn't particularly thick as the texture of the rice crisp mix protruded through the chocolate.  The only thing missing, at least visually, was the peanut part of the bar, but after perusing the ingredient list, it was quite obvious where the peanut component was coming from...the peanut butter in the rice crisp mix!

Much like the appearance of this bar, nothing about the taste overly shocked me.  It was chocolate and peanut butter.  The chocolate had a strong and "thick" flavor, but that flavor was not overwhelmingly sweet.  The peanut butter flavor was also strong, but it brought a little sweetness to the equation.  When you mixed the two together, you could almost call the flavor of this small bar "hearty."  The rice crisp serves only the purpose of breaking up the texture of the bar and adding the crunch that is carried in the name of the bar.  It's not a particularly hard crunch, but instead adds the texture of a Rice Krispie treat.  So, basically you can imagine this bar as a Rice Krispie treat that is bound together with peanut butter instead of marshmallow and then covered in chocolate.  Mmmm...come to papa.

Buy It or Fly By It?  This bar definitely gets a BUY IT rating as I view it as pretty much the definition of a snack.  It's small, but its large enough that it can quiet a hunger pang.  Also, at 110 calories, it's not going to kill your caloric intake for the day like a handful of potato chips or some other sort of snack would do to you.  Plus, when you mix two delicious flavors together into one bar and can do it without busting a waistline, you've got a winner!

BUY IT!!