Saturday, August 31, 2013

Review: Odwalla Orange Cranberry Bar


If you are a regular reader, you may have noticed in my last Odwalla review that is not only Odwalla changing up its packaging, but it is also changing up some of their product offerings.  Today's review is a product that fits both of those bills as I'm going to take a look at this Odwalla Orange Cranberry Bar that I picked up on sale at Kroger for $1.00.  Each bar is 2.0 ounces and comes in at 200 calories and three grams of protein.  Oranges and cranberries are two things that I like very much, but I don't often think of the two flavors being blended together, so that'll make this review interesting.  Something about this just seems weird to me, but that's why I try these things out.  Occasionally something weird ends up being delicious, so it's time to see if that bears out to be true here.



Outside of the change in packaging, this Odwalla bar looks just like any other standard Odwalla bar once you let it loose to the wild.  It's primarily consisted of oats and syrups bound together, similar to a CLIF bar.  So, the composition is the same, but the flavor is what ends up being different and the very first thing I noticed when I took this out of the wrapper was that it had an incredibly strong orange smell.  When I looked at the ingredients, the only orange ingredient listed was orange peels and boy, oh boy, were those orange peels potent, although they weren't particularly visible in the mix.  What was visible was the cranberries and while I'd like to say that I could smell those too, I couldn't because everything was overtaken by the orange peel smell.  Along with the oats and syrups, there were also date and raisin pastes in the bar, so there was no shortage of berries.

When I took a bit out of this, it was soft and chewy, but it was extremely dry due to the fact that the oats in the mix dried it out.  As for the flavor, it was all orange, all the time.  There was a slight hint of cranberry tanginess, but I couldn't really do much discernment of that since the orange peel flavoring was just overtaking my mouth and even my sinuses.  Yes, it was that strong.  It was so strong that after eating the first half of this, I couldn't take anymore and ended up throwing the second half of the bar into the garbage.  I love oranges as much as any orange lover out there, but this was just too much for me.

Buy It or Fly By It?  When the second half of the bar meets the trash can, it's pretty easy to conclude that a product is going to get a FLY BY IT rating.  It was a valiant and interesting effort by Odwalla in pairing these flavors together, but just didn't work for me.  Now, if you want to over-orange yourself, this would be a good solution for you.  It just wasn't that for me.  Time for me to go find a tissue to blow my nose with now since this thing cleared my sinuses so well.

FLY BY IT!!

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