Saturday, January 26, 2013

Review: Zone Perfect Perfectly Simple Cranberry Almond Bar


I consider myself perfect and also simple, so these bars should be right up my alley, right?  Okay, I'm neither perfect and I'm not all that simple, but that was the best introductory line that I could come up with, which proves that I am far from perfect and actually could be considered borderline awful.  Anyway, Zone Perfect has read some of my prior reviews and sent me some free samples of their bars to try out and it's those free samples that lead me to try out this Zone Perfect Perfectly Simple Cranberry Almond Bar.  This bar is 1.58 ounces and has 170 calories with ten grams of protein.  It's Perfectly Simple because it is made up of a limited amount of ingredients, which in this case, is ten ten ingredients.



As with the other Perfectly Simple bars, this one is made up primarily of a date paste puree mixed with other ingredients.  It's because of this date paste puree that this bar resembles a Larabar in look in feel meaning that it isn't particularly attractive and can kind of be slick to the touch.  Mixed into that date puree are fairy decent sized cranberries and whole almonds and they are spread healthily throughout the bar, so Zone Perfect gets high marks for not skimping on the add-ins with this bar.  When you take a whiff of the bar, it has a strong scent of cranberries, so one could infer that there was going to be a lot of cranberry flavor in this based on smell alone.

If that is the inference that you make, which I did, then it would be the correct inference because this bar had a lot of cranberry flavor.  It was especially tangy and strong and being that cranberries are awesome, I liked that quite a bit.  As for the other flavors, there really aren't any.  Everything else is just there for the textural component and adds some variety to the way the bar feels in your mouth as you chew through it.  The good sized almonds added great crunch and the date puree is almost oat-like in how it feels when you are chewing through.  One noticeable point of weirdness about this bar is that it seems like there are a bunch of ground almonds in the date puree as well, because it seems like there is some sort of shell graininess like you sometimes getting when eating a bowl of clam chowder.  That was weird and not all that appealing, but it's easy to get past.  Another thing to note is that this bar seemed to oddly dry out as you chewed through it, but again, that's easy to get past.

Buy It or Fly By It?  I loved the cranberry flavor in this bar and was craving more when I finished, so that obviously means this bar gets a BUY IT rating.  While the graininess was odd and not appealing, it's easy to forget about because the cranberry flavoring was so wonderful and when that flavor was mixed with the crunch of the almonds, it made this a very solid bar.  If cranberries are not your thing though, you absolutely need to stay away from this bar or else you may regret it.

BUY IT!!

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