Review: LUNA Chocolate Cupcake Bar

LUNA products were something that I reviewed frequently in the early days of the blog as they were easy to get my hands on at the stores.  I reviewed them so frequently that I eventually ran out of flavors to look at unless they released a new flavor out into the stores that I had never seen.  Eventually I stopped looking at the LUNA section because it was the same sold stuff each time.  Anyway, on a recent trip to Kroger, I just happened to look at the LUNA section of the shelves and saw a newly released flavor and that leads to today's review of this LUNA Chocolate Cupcake Bar.  It's the first time in well over a year that I've looked at one of their bars and this gluten free bar cost me $1.00 and it weighs in at 1.69 ounces with 180 calories and nine grams of protein.

Review: Promax Lemon Bar Protein Bar

I mentioned in a previous Promax review that a representative of theirs was kind enough to reach out to me to offer my some flavors of some sample bars.  Today's review is another one of those reviews as I'll be diving into one of Promax's original product offerings in this Promax Lemon Bar Protein Bar.  It's a protein bar, so it's on the bulky side at 2.64 ounces and within that bulk is 290 calories and twenty grams of protein.  Now, just because it is bulky doesn't mean it's bad because it's also gluten free, kosher and vegetarian.  Honestly, I would not have anticipated that.  Of course, I probably wouldn't have thought of it, but now that I know, I'm mildly surprised.

Review: Mediterra Yogurt & Oat Bar with Cherry & Pistachio

Fresh Thyme strikes again!  It's another new product from my first trip to the store itself.  In that trip, I picked up a very interesting, Mediterranean inspired product when I grabbed this Mediterra Yogurt & Oat Bar with Cherry & Pistachio off the shelf for $1.99.  The bar itself is 1.6 ounces and packs in 180 calories and seven grams of protein.  It's also all natural and gluten free, so there are some clear benefits to this one.  I wish one of the benefits would be that when eating this bar, I would automatically be transported to a beach (preferably nude) somewhere in the Mediterranean.  Probably not going to happen though, unfortunately.  Instead, I'll just have to settle for testing out this bar.

Review (#1000!): Skinnygirl Dark Chocolate Pretzel Bar

Today is a big day for the blog and if you didn't notice from the title of this post, this is review number one thousand in this blog's history, so if you'll indulge me for a few moments, I'm going to spend a little time dwelling on the milestone before I get into today's actual review.

Honestly, I can't believe I've written that many reviews and I've done it in a little over three years time.  That's not epic, non-stop production like some blogs out there, but it's still a lot for one guy to take on (excuse me while I break my arm patting myself on the back) AND EAT.  When I started this blog, I figured it would be something that I'd do sporadically for a few months and then move on with my life.  Over three years, one thousand reviews, over 2.5 million page views and over 500,000 unique visitors later, I'm still here kickin' it.  This blog has never been a super successful or overly read blog as those statistics show, but it's chugged along just enough to keep me going for all these years and reviews.

I'd be remiss if I didn't thank everyone that has gotten me this far because if it weren't for the fans whose visits generate revenue via the obnoxious display advertising that clogs and slows down the site, I would have given up this blog a long, long time ago.  I realize that I've mailed some reviews in, not really given my best effort at times and I've even accidentally reviewed some products twice without even knowing it, so there have been times where it perhaps hasn't been worth visiting.  Regardless, that just shows how awesome all of you are and I do want to say THANK YOU (again) for all your visits and support throughout the years.

Since this is the milestone one thousand, I figured I would call my masculinity into question (this is called Crazy Food DUDE) and review a product that is specifically targeted toward women as I've done many times before with LUNA bars.  Still, despite the fact that I'm not female, I think it's okay for me to eat this...well, I'm going to declare that it's okay for me to try out this Skinnygirl Dark Chocolate Pretzel Bar that I picked up at Marsh for $2.49.  Skinnygirl is kind of famous and maybe it's going to her head as she's put two mildly annoying taglines on the wrapper of this bar.  First, this is referred to as a "Tasty Nutrition Bar" on the front of the wrapper.  Should the judgment of whether something is tasty or not be at the discretion of the person eating it?  Also, on the back/side of the wrapper, there was another tagline that said "Treat Yourself Healthy."  Again, if I don't eat this bar, am I not treating myself healthy?  And yet another thing, is a bar that is part of a company that was founded based on Skinnygirl alcoholic cocktails really able to decide what is treating my body healthy or not?  And another thing...the founder of said company is a Real Housewife of New York (Bethenny Frankel), so that doesn't exactly make her a model citizen.  Okay, I'm complaining in a ridiculously long diatribe about things that don't matter again, which is something I've done many times over the course of one thousand reviews, so I guess it's nothing new.

Anyway, this bar is 1.4 ounces and has 160 calories and six grams of protein.  It's also gluten free (isn't seemingly everything now?) and also kosher, if you are into knowing that kind of information.

Review: Zone Perfect Chocolate Caramel Cluster Bar

It amuses me how Kroger's Free Friday Download promotion has re-opened my eyes to products that I haven't looked at in a long time because I thought I had covered everything and don't bother to look anymore.  For example, I haven't done a Zone Perfect review in seemingly forever, which is funny since they were a big part of the blog in its early days.  When I went and look at the review archives, I saw that I did a couple reviews nearly a year ago and prior to that, it was all in January 2013 and prior.  So, to say that I'm in a bit of Zone Perfect drought would be an understatement.  Anyway, today ends that drought as the free download forced me to find a flavor that I had missed and never looked at before with this Zone Perfect Chocolate Caramel Cluster Bar.  The bar is 1.76 ounces and has 210 calories with fourteen grams of protein.

Review: Carnation Breakfast Essentials Chocolate Nutrition Bar

Free samples, free samples free samples...I LOVE them and you know that.  Today's review is another free sample that I honestly don't even remember how I signed up for.  I don't know if it was Facebook, a mailing list or what, but my mailbox was blessed with this Carnation Breakfast Essentials Chocolate Nutrition Bar.  This one clocks in at 1.76 ounces with 200 calories and ten grams and as a major tagline, Carnation has tagged with one as having twice the calcium of regular six ounce serving of yogurt.  Woo-hoo...I guess.

Review: Six Star Pro Nutrition Chocolate Peanut Butter Protein Bar

For some reason, my initial Six Star Pro Nutrition review is one of the most viewed posts in this blog's history and certainly the most commented, although 99.9% of those comments have been spam that have never made it to my comments section.  Not sure how either of those things happen, but since these are apparently popular (probably because they can be found at Walmart), I decided I better snatch up another to up my readership and that leads to today's review of this Six Star Pro Nutrition Chocolate Peanut Butter Protein Bar that I picked up for $1.25.  Each bar is 1.7 ounces and has 200 calories and twenty grams of protein.

Review: Six Star Pro Nutrition Chocolate Deluxe Protein Bar

For those of you that read sports magazines on occasion, I think that you'll probably agree with me that ESPN Magazine is horrible.  It's basically a goofball propaganda machine that is disguising itself as a real magazine.  My dislike of the magazine and the network itself (that's a LONG story for a different day) aside, I did find a coupon for a free Six Star Pro Nutrition Chocolate Deluxe Protein Bar in a recent issue as I was thumbing through it, so that was a nice surprise and just about the only worthwhile thing I can remember seeing in the magazine in quite some time.  The coupon was exclusive to Walmart, so I knocked off a few IQ points and made my way over there to pick up this 1.7 ounce protein bar.  The bar is 190 calories and packs twenty grams of protein punch that is made up of natural and artificial flavors.  The tagline on the wrapper is "Chewy and Delicious" and while I'd like to say that I am the judge of that, I clearly am not since the wrapper also includes a gold medal for superior taste from the American Masters of Taste.  Alrighty then, I had no idea that existed.  So, I guess I'll be judging my tastes against theirs in this instance.

Review: Thrive Homemade Vanilla Frozen Nutrition

I mentioned in my previous Thrive review how it pained me how they referred to this as frozen nutrition on the packaging, but every single other reference to this on the web includes this being referred to as ice cream.  After trying to be cute and calling it frozen nutrition last time, I'll just go ahead and call this ice cream for the purposes of this review, except when I list out the name of this one which is Thrive Homemade Vanilla Frozen Nutrition.  I picked this one up for $3.99 (I had a coupon to tack onto that as well) and each two pack contains two six ounce cups of ice cream.  Each cup is 250 calories and is loaded with all sorts of nutritional benefits, or that's at least what the packaging tells me.

Review: Thrive Chocolate Fudge Frozen Nutrition

I had never heard of Thrive in my life until one day when I was perusing the digital coupons app of Meijer.  I saw a digital coupon for their products, so I figured I'd "clip" the coupon and save it for my next trip to the store.  On that next trip, I finally found it in the ice cream aisle, which makes the product name of Thrive Chocolate Fudge Frozen Nutrition all that much more amusing to me.  Everyone knows this is ice cream (even their website), but why is it called frozen nutrition on the product packaging?  Odd.  Anyway, a two pack of these six ounce single serve cups ran the regular price of $3.99, but with  my digital coupon, I got this for $2.99.  Each cup is 250 calories and since this is frozen nutrition, I'll go ahead and list that it has nine grams of protein as well.  The packaging lists this as comparable to ENSURE and since ENSURE is just basically nutrition drinks, I guess the fact that this labeled as frozen nutrition begins to make sense.

Review: Zone Perfect Cinnamon Roll Nutrition Bar

Being that today is National Cinnamon Roll Day, there is no more fitting time for a cinnamon roll review.  This is the third cinnamon bun/roll product that I've reviewed, so I think it is pretty safe to assume that I like cinnamon rolls a lot.  They are just about the most unhealthy thing in the world, but when done right like at Granite City Food & Brewery, they can be AWESOME.  So, anytime someone tries to simulate this in ice cream or bar form, I'm very much interested and that leads me to the Zone Perfect Cinnamon Roll Nutrition Bar.  I picked this one up for $1.25 at Marsh and it is 1.76 ounces with 210 calories and fifteen grams of protein.  This bar is part of Zone Perfect's all natural Classic line of bars.

Review: Zone Perfect Dark Dark Chocolate Caramel Pecan Nutrition Bar

I like the semi-hot streak that I'm working on with Zone Perfect reviews here at Crazy Food Dude.  So far, I've liked all but one that I've had, although I haven't tried any from their "Dark" line of bars that are angled at the dark chocolate market.  As you may or may not know, dark chocolate is supposedly high in antioxidants, so it is supposed to be healthier for you than regular chocolate.  Anyway, I picked up this Dark Chocolate Caramel Pecan bar at Kroger on sale for $1.00.  It weights in at a semi-small 1.58 ounces and contains 190 calories with a respectable twelve grams of protein.

Review: PowerBar Pria Chocolate Peanut Crunch Nutrition Bar

Much to my chagrin, it seems like I am always hungry and in need of a snack.  The problem is that there are so many snacks out there that are such caloric bombs (chips, energy bars, etc.) that I don't want to eat them because I don't want the calorie expenditure on that particular item, so I usually just ignore my urges.  So, when I'm walking through the store and see something like this PowerBar Pria Chocolate Peanut Crunch nutrition bar and see that it is a non-belly busting 110 calories and costs only $0.69 (at Meijer), I'm immediately intrigued.  PowerBar usually has higher calorie energy bars, some of which I've reviewed, so this is a adventure for me in the PowerBar realm.  For reference purposes, this one also weighs 0.98 ounces, so it's slightly larger than your standard Quaker Chewy bar.

Review: LUNA Peanut Honey Pretzel Bar

We've been through this before in LUNA reviews...I know I'm not a woman, but that doesn't stop me from trying out these bars, especially when some of them have been so good.  Recently, I stumbled across one of my favorite things in the world (free giveaways) on the website FreeStuffTimes.com and saw that there was a giveaway for LUNA's new Peanut Honey Pretzel bar, so I hurriedly signed myself up and a few weeks later, this arrived in the mail.  So, I don't have a price since I didn't pay for it, but I do know that it weighs 1.69 ounces, has 190 calories and also nine grams of protein.

Review: Tiger's Milk Peanut Butter Nutrition Bar

This is not my first Tiger's Milk bar review on this blog.  My last review gave me a boring bar that did nothing particularly outstanding and made me wonder how America's first nutrition bar had stayed in business for so long.  Since I picked up that bar at Walmart for $0.99 along with this Peanut Butter flavored bar, I've got another review to do.  Based on my last review, it's not exactly a review that I was looking forward too.  That said, let's get to it...this King Size bar clocks in at 1.94 ounces and contains 230 calories with nine grams of protein.

Review: Zone Perfect Sweet & Salty Cashew Pretzel Nutrition Bar

Zone Perfect has had a good reputation here on the blog so far.  In prior reviews, I've reviewed their bars previously and just drooled over some of them.  This time, I'm venturing out into a different product line of theirs, the Sweet & Salty Zone Perfect bars and specifically, the Cashew Pretzel flavor.  This one clocks in 1.58 ounces with 200 calories and a respectable ten grams of protein.  I picked it up at Kroger on sale for $1.00.

Review: Zone Perfect Chocolate Coconut Crunch Nutrition Bar

This is the third Zone Perfect Nutrition bar that I've reviewed and while I was very impressed with the first two and gave them BUY IT reviews, let's see if this one turns out equally as well (fingers crossed!).  This time I'm looking at the Chocolate Coconut Crunch flavor.  It's from the All-Natural Classics line of bars and for semantics purposes, I picked it up on sale at Kroger for $1.00.  It weighs in at 1.76 ounces like most of their bars, consists of 210 calories and also fifteen grams of protein.

Review: LUNA White Chocolate Macadamia Nutrition Bar

I've covered before how I don't think I look like a woman and was duped/bullied into buying these LUNA bars that are specifically made for women, but since I was duped, I might as well finish reviewing my purchases and that leads me to the White Chocolate Macadamia Nutrition bar produced by LUNA (a subsidiary of CLIF, so this fits right in with the theme of the week).  This one is 70% organic and weighs in at 1.69 ounces with 190 calories and nine grams of protein.  I picked it up on Kroger (from the bully) for $1.00.

Review: Zone Perfect Fudge Graham Nutrition Bar

It's funny, I feel like I am doing reviews of the same product all the time because these protein/nutrition/energy bar companies have so many different flavors of products out there. I don't mind it though for a couple of reasons.  First, the difference in flavors adds some variety to the monotony of my life and second, I actually do care about all twelve of my readers.  I don't want you guys buying stuff that sucks.

Anyway, it's time for another review of a different flavor of Zone Perfect Nutrition bars.  This time, it's the Fudge Graham variety.  This one clocks in at 1.76 ounces (all of their bars do), 210 calories and contains fourteen grams of protein.  I picked this one up at Kroger on sale for $1.00.

Review: Balance Bar Honey Peanut Bar

In the endless quest for protein and to try as many of these protein/nutrition/energy bars as I can find, I'm led to Balance Bar.  Judging by its name, Balance Bar considers itself very balanced.  They push this point even harder by putting a nice fly wheel on the label (that's it on the left) that shows all of the nutritional benefits of these bar.  Nutritional benefits, charts and graphs...I'm in!  I picked several of these up, but we'll start with the Honey Peanut flavor of this bar.  I picked this one up at Meijer for $1.09.  It clocks in at 1.76 ounces and contains 200 calories with 15 grams of protein.  Basically, it's similar to Pure Protein bars in its calorie and protein counts, although slightly less in each.