Review: Zone Perfect Dark Dark Chocolate Strawberry Bar

I stuttered quite a bit as a child, but I can assure you that I did not stutter or make a typographical error with the name of this bar in the heading of this post.  The reason "Dark" is included twice is that this bar is from Zone Perfect's "Dark" line of nutrition bars and it is flavored as a Dark Chocolate Strawberry bar.  Anyway, now that I've clarified (like you probably cared), it's time to get down to the nitty gritty of this review...I picked this one up at Kroger on sale for $1.00 at Kroger and it comes in at the standard Zone Perfect weight of 1.58 ounces.  It has 180 calories and twelve grams of protein and it says it is all natural, although when I read the ingredient list, there's a lot of natural things I don't recognize.  I usually don't write about ingredients because I don't care for the most part, but when something bills itself as all natural and then I can't pronounce half the things on the ingredient list, I begin to scratch my head.

As you can see from the picture of this bar above, the "Dark" them of this bar continues into its visual appearance as the rice crisp interior, which is usually a tan-type color is now a dark chocolate type deep brown (almost black) color.  Outside of that, the bar is then covered with a thick layer of chocolate and being that this is a dark chocolate bar, I can successfully say that the chocolate exterior is actually dark chocolate.  I didn't see any strawberry bits in the mix (perhaps they were hidden by the dark color), but when I took a whiff of this bar, it had a strong strawberry scent, so everything in the name was present and accounted for.

When I bit into this bar, the first and most prevalent thing that I tasted was the strawberry flavoring.  It was strong and sweet and tasted just like you'd expect strawberries to taste.  The bar was also crunchy, so what I was getting to start was a crunchy strawberry bar.  Notice how I said "to start" in that last sentence...at the end of each bite was a strong, thick and somewhat flat dark chocolate taste.  The dark chocolate had a bitter taste and frankly, I didn't like it.  I'm not the world's biggest dark chocolate fan, but I can usually tolerate it.  In this case, I was definitely not a fan as I felt it ruined the pleasing strawberry taste.

Buy It or Fly By It?  This was a nice idea by Zone Perfect since dark chocolate is healthier than regular chocolate, but it just didn't work for me, so I have to give it a FLY BY IT rating.  Had this been strawberry and milk chocolate, I think it would have worked perfect.  Since dark chocolate was involved, I think this one was a failure, at least for me.  Granted, it wouldn't be as "healthy" if it was regular chocolate, but at least it would taste better.  Oh well, there are other Zone Perfect bars out there that I've reviewed and have found to be tasty, so I'd stick to those.

FLY BY IT!!