Friday, November 21, 2014

Review: Balance Bar Bare Sea Salt Caramel Nut Bar


Balance Bar is a product that I hit a lot in the early days of the blog and then it went a year before I reviewed it again.  I was thinking that prior to today that it had been at least eighteen months since I looked at one, but much to my surprise, I did a couple of reviews earlier this year.  Either way, review of Balance Bars have been few and far between since 2012.  So, today they make a return to the blog (again) as I take a look at this Balance Bar Bare Sea Salt Caramel Nut Bar that I was able to pick up at Meijer for $1.00.  The bar itself is 1.19 ounces and has 160 calories and five grams of protein.  It's also gluten and soy free, if you are interested in that kind of thing.



Being that the clear purpose of naming these bars "Bare" is that they are open to be seen by all, it should come as no surprise as to what is in these bars (the major components) before the wrapper is even opened.  In the case of this bar, the major components were caramel, oats, peanuts, almonds and cashews and those were large and ample.  What wasn't noticeable when this was in the wrapper but was immediately noticeable once it was out of the wrapper was how sticky this bar was and how strong the smell of the sea salt caramel was.  It was really strong and being that I'm always on board with caramel, I very much appreciated that.  What I didn't appreciate, but got over quickly, was how sticky it was.  Oh well.  As an aside, there's apparently dates in this bar too, but they must have been hidden because I didn't see any of them.

Biting into this provided me with a bar that was A LOT softer than I would have ever expected.  I was expecting something along the lines of a KIND bar.  What I got was something that was more along the lines of a Quaker Chewy bar that had some additional pop in it from the plethora of nuts that were spread throughout.  That plethora of nuts provided this bar with a very nutty flavor that really was primarily peanut, but I was okay with that.  That nutty flavor worked well with the very rich, but not sweet, caramel flavoring that really was the primary flavor in this entire bar.  It made it gooey and borderline decadent.  What was kind of mostly missing and I certainly didn't mind it, was the salty component of the caramel.  It was present, but was very faint and being that I don't necessarily love the salted caramel flavor profile, I was more than fine with that.  Basically, this was somewhat similar to a PayDay candy bar in that it was caramel and nuts (mostly peanut).

Buy It or Fly By It?  PayDay candy bars are my favorite candy bar, so anything that even remotely reminds me of that gets a resoundingly strong BUY IT rating from me.  I absolutely adored this bar and it did make me kind of sad that it was so small because I wanted more, more, more.  If you are a caramel person, this bar is going to be a dream for you so if you see this new product in your stores, I would highly advise you to pick it up...even if you aren't a caramel person and merely just co-exist with it.

BUY IT!!

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