Monday, April 2, 2012

Review: Balance Bar Gold S'mores Bar


I've had some pretty good successes with Balance bars.  While I wouldn't say they are awesome, I've found all of them to be better than average and have given all of them a "BUY IT" rating.  Because of that, I was anxious to try this bar out of their "Gold" variety of bars, the S'mores bar.  I've liked all the bars that I've had with S'mores flavoring in the past, so I was also anxious to see if this lived up to those lofty expectations as well.  Anyway, I picked up this all natural bar at Meijer for $1.09 and it weighs in at 1.76 ounces with 200 calories and fourteen grams of protein.



As you would expect with a bar that is trying to simulate a S'more, this bar has an exterior chocolate coating.  One thing I did notice as I was breaking this in half for the above photo was that this chocolate coating was extremely thick.  Extra chocolate is almost never a bad thing, so that made me happy.  As for the rest of the bar, it had a base layer of a protein mix that I assume had graham cracker flavoring to simulate the base layer of an actual S'more.  To the naked eye in the picture above, this base layer looks sort of crumbly, but once you get farther into the bar, it turns gummy.  On top of that graham/protein layer is a layer that simulates marshmallow.  I would compare its texture to that of your garden variety bottle of toothpaste and while that's not exactly the most appetizing thought, I was willing to look past that and hold my belief in Balance that this would taste good.  One unique thing to note is that while this bar looked like a big rectangular brick that would weigh a ton, it actually was quite light and airy.

Well, me holding to that belief was a good thing because this bar did taste pretty darn good.  The thick chocolate flavoring had that "thick" taste, but that taste was not overwhelmingly sweet.  It was a mild and pleasing version of chocolate and I appreciated that.  The base graham/protein layer did have sporadic bits of something that I assume was probably graham cracker and those bits did add a bit of crunch to something that I was expecting to be quite gummy and difficult to chew.  Thankfully, there was that crunch and it was not difficult to chew either.  The one gummy part of the bar though was the marshmallow topping and that was strange.  It was almost gelatinous in its texture and while it felt weird as I chewed it in my mouth, it wasn't weird enough that I was put off by the bar.  Still, when you mixed it with the chocolate and the graham/protein base, it was pretty easy to ignore and actually thing you were eating a candy bar version of a S'more.

Buy It or Fly By It?  Like all the Balance reviews before it, I wouldn't say this bar was outstanding and deserving of a "Gold" rating, but I would rate it as above average and therefore give it a "Silver" or BUY IT rating.  I know, horrible joke.  Regardless, it's a pretty darn reasonable approximation of a S'more and when you can do that, you have done no wrong in my book.

BUY IT!!

1 comment:

  1. Yeah, I think it's difficult to go wrong with anything S'mores-flavored.

    This bar definitely sounds like it's worth a try.

    ReplyDelete

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