Review: Fiber One Salted Caramel Cheesecake Bars

General Mills drives me crazy.  That have a vast array of products, product lines, flavors, etc., but it always seems like their products are so overpriced for what you get.  It's because of that that I often stay away from their products...I just don't feel that I'm getting enough value for what I'm paying.  That said, every so often a sale comes along that makes one of their products/product lines appealing to me and that was the case recently at Meijer when they put a box of five of these Fiber One Salted Caramel Cheesecake Bars on sale for a bargain basement price of $2.00.  I knew I had to add to my Fiber One review collection after seeing that because I felt I was basically stealing and with a product this new (there's not even a webpage for it), I knew I was in.  So, each of the five bars in the box comes in at 1.35 ounces and has 150 calories and minimal two grams of protein, but let's be honest, you aren't getting these bars for the protein.  You are getting them for the fiber and all those "benefits."  With that happy thought, let's drop into this review...

Obviously there was no mystery on what this would look like based on what the box provided to me, but I will say that this reminded me of a Danish pastry in its appearance.  A multi-layered soft pastry topped with a filling (salted caramel) topped with an icing.  From a smell perspective, this just smelled sugary sweet.  The caramel didn't truly smell like caramel, it just smelled like sugar, which is funny considering that the caramel in this was supposed to be salted.  Other than what you see in the picture above, there's not really a whole lot else to describe here.

That Danish pastry comparison really held true in how this tasted as well.  The pastry itself was soft and chewy and had a hint of cheesecake flavoring in it and also even had a hint of lemon-like flavor to it.  It was sugary rich and really would have been fine to eat on its own.  BUT, it wasn't on it's own...it had other components to it.  The salted caramel filling really didn't have a salty taste to it as it was more sugary, but what was interesting about this was that the salty component hit me a couple minutes after I was done eating this because I then became thirsty.  That struck me as odd and I'm not sure that's ever happened before.  Anyway, the icing also had an ever-so-slight hint of cheesecake flavor to it and what was interesting about the icing was that it wasn't a gooey icing, but it had instead become somewhat hard and added a completely unexpected crunchy component to the bar.  Whether that was intentional or not, I actually liked it because it broke up the softness and gooeyness of the rest of the bar.

Buy It or Fly By It?  All in all, this did a good job of representing the named flavors in that it was a sugary (and later salty) amalgamation of a salted caramel cheesecake that provided me with an interesting and appetizing eating experience.  For that, it gets a BUY IT rating.  If you can find this on the shelves of your local store for a price that is acceptable to you, I would certainly pick it up because the flavor is right there IF you are into things that are very sugary.  As for the fiber portion, well...I'll leave that one to your imagination.

BUY IT!!