Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Review: KIND Plus Cranberry Almond + Antioxidants Bar


I've had some success with KIND bar reviews on this blog.  I've always found them to be extremely crunchy due to the tasty nut component, but sometimes I find the fruit component of the bar to be questionable.  That said, I was interested to try out another one of their flavors, this time from their Plus line of bars called Cranberry Almond + Antioxidants.  As usual, I got this through a KINDING Mission, so I didn't pay for it, but it does weigh 1.41 ounces, contain 190 calories and three grams of protein.



As I'm sure you can clearly see, this one looks the other KIND bars.  It has a ton of nuts, some rice crisp and also dried fruit mixed in and then is held together by honey.  The nut component of this bar is huge almonds and macadamias and since those are both wonderful nuts, I was very intrigued, especially by the macadamias since they weren't in the name of the bar and their appearance was a huge surprise to me.  Much like the nuts, the dried cranberries were also pleasantly plump.  One thing I found especially interesting, weird and kind of alarming was the waxy texture of the honey that was being used to hold this together.  I'm used to KIND bars being stick, but this one was overly stick and the wax and developed a hardened and congealed wax on the outside of the bar.  Not exactly what you want to be looking at right before eating, but I kept on going.

As I bit into this, I was really not surprised by how it felt in my mouth at all.  It was extremely crunchy, as KIND bars usually are, with the almonds bringing most of the crunch.  The macadamia nuts, while somewhat crunchy were the softer nut, as you would expect based on the normal composition of a macadamia nut.  The dried cranberries added a nice soft chew after you got the initial crunch of the nuts chewed up in your mouth.  The honey, combined with the dried cranberries, also added in a nice sweetness to the bar to counteract the saltiness and crunchiness of the nut component.  In fact, I would say that this one is extremely similar to the Nature Valley Chewy Trail Mix Fruit & Nut bar that I previously reviewed.

Buy It or Fly By It?  Despite the fact that the congealed honey kind of scared me prior to eating the bar, this one turned out to be really good and I have to give it a BUY IT rating.  As usual, KIND combined salty and crunchy with sweet and chewy and they were successful doing it.  Plus, when you can get a bar for free through a KINDING Mission, can you really complain?

BUY IT!!

2 comments:

  1. I usually like any of these snacks where its a bunch of nuts and berries, etc. held together by random sugar. This looks great!

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  2. I agree completely with your review. My only complaint is that the bar stuck to the paper packaging making it impossible to simply snip the end off & shake it out. This however would not prevent me from buying it in the future.

    ReplyDelete

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