The Good: Very healthy
The Bad: Absolutely terrible taste, Expensive, Does not deliver the promised flavors
The Basics: Fiber One Chocolate Peanut Butter Meal Bar are an insult to the Fiber One name and not worth trying!
I am frequently fascinated by licensing. When a company sells its good name to another for a product, I become intrigued, largely because the companies that rent out their name seem to have so much more to lose than the company that uses it. I am always perplexed when the product names get associated with unlike products or products that have dramatically-different quality levels. As a fan of General Mills’s Fiber One cereal (reviewed here!), I’ve been surprised how General Mills has licensed out the name. The name Fiber One has been licensed to a number of different snack and meal bars and I have tried to give them a fair shake because I do like Fiber One. The latest experience I had was with General Mills’s own Fiber One Chocolate Peanut Butter Meal Bars . . .
. . . and they were horrible. In fact, why General Mills would associate something that taste nothing like its namesake baffles me, but why they would make something that tastes so bad and try to associate it with something good, just seems sketchy.
Basics
Fiber One is perhaps best known as the breakfast cereal that is reminiscent of fish food. Fiber One meal bars are part of General Mills’ expansion into snack foods. Their Meal Bars come in several flavors and I chose the Chocolate Peanut Butter Meal Bar because they were being clearance and I love chocolate, like peanut butter and enjoy the combination. Sadly, neither flavor was well-represented in these bars.
Each Chocolate Peanut Butter Meal Bar is in a 1.59 oz. bar that is foil-wrapped. Each bar represents a single serving and the Meal Bars are each 1 3/8” wide by 5/8” thick by 5” long Meal Bar that is unsurprisingly breakable, though it cannot be easily damaged by compression. A box of Chocolate Peanut Butter Meal Bar contains only five bars. Each bar looks like a granola bar with a bottom of chocolate that fuses the meal bar into a cohesive food product.
Ease Of Preparation
Eating Fiber One Chocolate Peanut Butter Meal Bars is simple. After removing the foil wrapper, simply pull out the bar and stick it in your mouth. There is no particularly complicated equation to eating this snack; it is an entirely ready-to-eat food!
Taste
Unwrapping the Chocolate Peanut Butter Meal Bar, one discovers these are not a very aromatic food at all. Instead, even the smell of chocolate only wafts up from the bars when they are flipped over and one puts their nose near them! The granola portion has no inherent scent.
In the mouth, the Fiber One Chewy Chocolate Peanut Butter Meal Bar is mealy and tastes like the aftertaste of nuts. These bars do not taste anything like Fiber One cereal, peanut butter or chocolate. My wife immediately likened it to a dog treat and, sadly, I cannot come up with a better description, other than slightly sweetened cardboard. The most disappointing aspect of these bars might well be that the “chocolate” tastes nothing like chocolate. The result is a dry, mostly flavorless bar that is not positively flavorful in any way.
The Chocolate Peanut Butter Meal Bars leave a very dry taste in the mouth for a good ten minutes after they are consumed. Even strong coffee had a tough time beating back this aftertaste!
Nutrition
Fiber One Meal Bars are intended to replace full meals and they are filling-enough to do that. These 1.59 oz. Meal Bars represent a single serving and they are fairly healthy. Made primarily of Roasted Peanuts, Soy Protein and Chicory root extract, the Chocolate Peanut Butter Meal Bars are loaded with nutrients, but do not contain any real chocolate. This is a mostly-natural food product and these Meal Bar include a dietary disclaimer that this flavor contains nuts (duh!), soy and milk, so they are not Vegan-compliant.
Fiber One's Chocolate Peanut Butter Meal Bars have 190 calories, 80 of which are from fat. A full serving represents 14% of one's RDA of saturated fat and these are cholesterol free. Unsurprisingly, they have a decent amount of sodium with 180 mg per serving (7% RDA) and there are 10 grams of protein to be had by eating a full bar. These are a significant source of thirteen vitamins and minerals, as well as possessing 15% of the RDA of Phosphorus.
Storage/Cleanup
As a healthy snack, Fiber One Chocolate Peanut Butter Meal Bar remain fresh so long as they are kept in their wrappers. As long as the bars are not heated up, they remain fresh and the only real clean-up for them comes from wiping up crumbs. Consult a fabric guide if the “chocolate” melts onto your clothes.
Overall
If I were stuck on a desert island, I would instantly see the appeal of eating Fiber One Chocolate Peanut Butter Meal Bars to keep me alive; but after trying them, I think it would be a fair toss-up between continuing to eat them or trying my luck with eating the sand for sustenance. Were it not for the powerful amounts of nutrition to be had from these, they would be a zero rating!
For other reviews of healthy food, please check out:
Slim-Fast 3-2-1 Double-Dutch Chocolate Bars
Truvia sugar substitute
Carb Conscious Supreme Protein Peanut Butter & Jelly Protein Bar
2/10
For other food and drink reviews, please check out my Food And Drink Review Index Page for an organized listing!
© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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