Review: LUNA Protein Mint Chocolate Chip Bar

I've mentioned countless times that the combination of mint and chocolate is not exactly my favorite flavor combination.  There's some products that I can tolerate, but I've had several bad experiences in my life where the mint flavor overwhelmed the chocolate flavor and it made it seem like I was eating/drinking mouthwash.  Because of that, I tend to stay away from that flavor combination when picking out products to review, but in the case of today's review, I went ahead and took the leap and picked up this LUNA Protein Mint Chocolate Chip Bar on sale at Kroger for $1.00.  This bar adds to my expansive LUNA review archive and the bar itself comes in at 1.6 ounces with 170 calories and twelve grams of protein.  So, while it does have a fair amount of protein, it's not nearly as calorie heavy as a lot of these protein bars can tend to be, which is nice.

As you can see from the photo above, the design of this bar is pretty simple.  It's got a chocolate coated exterior along with a protein mix on the interior.  That interior protein mix also contains a bit of cocoa for additional chocolate flavor and also small mint chocolate chips that are spread throughout.  I was kind of scared to take a smell of this because I was worried about the strength of the mint smell, but when I did take a whiff, I got a very pleasant and mild mint smell, so that took a lot of my apprehension about eating this bar away.

That mild mint smell was a harbinger of things to come because when I took my first bite, the bar had more chocolate flavor than it did mint and I very much appreciated that.  Don't get me wrong, the mint taste was there and it was definitely noticeable, but instead of being the primary flavor, it was more of an accent flavor to the quickly melting chocolate exterior and the chocolate laced protein interior.  The chips that provided that mint flavor also brought a bit of occasional crunch to what was a surprisingly soft and chewy bar.  I know I use this comparison a lot when describing products that have the mint and chocolate combination, but I would compare this to an Andes Mint, but not with as potent of mint flavoring.  Think of it as a protein mint.

Buy It or Fly By It?  This was a good balance of chocolate and mint flavoring and it was a balance that I very much enjoyed, so I'll give this a BUY IT rating.  It was mild, soothing and also quite tasty, so for those people that enjoy the mint and chocolate flavor combination, I think you'll enjoy this quite a bit.  Even if you don't particularly enjoy that combination like myself, this one is mild enough that I believe you'd probably find it enjoyable regardless.  Good effort here by LUNA and one that makes me just a little bit less scare of mint and chocolate, which is a good thing.  Call it a maturation of my taste buds, I guess.

BUY IT!!