Monday, October 28, 2013

Review: Nature Valley Sweet & Salty Nut Chocolate Pretzel Nut Granola Bars


I was trolling through my local Kroger and it seems as if mega-conglomerate General Mills has sneakily released another new bar variety through it's Nature Valley granola bar line with this Nature Valley Sweet & Salty Nut Chocolate Pretzel Nut Granola Bars product.  Like I said, I picked a box of six of these at Kroger and got them on sale for $2.99.  Each bar in the box is 1.2 ounces and has 150 calories and a minimal two grams of protein.



As you can see from both the name of this bar and the bar itself, there's actually a variety of ingredients in this bar.  Obviously there is the standard granola mix of oats, etc., but along with that granola mix are several add-ins that provide the name and flavor of the bar.  First, the bar has a chocolate base layer that is then topped by that aforementioned granola mix.  Within that mix is a plethora of pretzel rod pieces and also large almonds.  All of that is then bound together with syrups that made this bar surprisingly sticky.  Being that this bar is aiming to be both sweet and salty, it should come as no surprise that the whole presentation also carried those distinct smell characteristics.

When I bit into this bar, I was first hit by the chewy granola, which came as no surprise to me.  After that I was surprised by the differing textures of the ingredients in this.  The pretzels provided an airy crunch with a hint of saltiness and then the almonds provided some hard punch of crunch due to the fact that they were nuts.  Duh.  There wasn't a lot of sweetness in this bar, but what sweetness there was provided by the melting chocolate that coated the crunch and syrups as they provided more of an accent to the primary salty taste.  Either way, it wasn't overly sweet or salty, but both were present and that was nice.

Buy It or Fly By It?  Not the kind of bar that is going to win any flavor awards, but this is a solid performer and that earns it a BUY IT rating.  Coming from a huge manufacturer like General Mills, I wouldn't expect that it would have any sort of major negative connotation and flavor to it, but it is always nice to eat a product that actually delivers on the flavor that it promises and this bar definitely did that.

BUY IT!!

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