Friday, March 25, 2016

Soft And Flavorful, Sunbelt Bakery Pumpkin Spice Chewy Granola Bars Are All Right.


The Good: Flavorful, Healthy
The Bad: Not overly Pumpkin Spice flavored, Comparatively expensive
The Basics: Sunbelt Bakery Pumpkin Spice Chewy Granola Bars are enjoyable, but not incredibly distinctive.


Every now and then, I encounter a food that is good, but not truly exceptional. Granola bars are one of those foods that generally falls into the average range; it is hard to find the right balance between the promised flavor and the wheat and oats base that forms the medium for that flavor. Sometimes, the best one can hope for is a granola bar that tastes like a flavorful oatmeal. Sunbelt Bakery's Pumpkin Spice Chewy Granola Bars actually led to that realization for me. The Pumpkin Spice chewy granola bars have a spiced flavor that blends nicely with the oats and the dryness of the granola does not overwhelm the flavor. Even so, these are more generically sweet than they are truly pumpkin spice flavor.

The Pumpkin Spice Chewy Granola Bars are a good snack product from Sunbelt Bakery, even if they are not extraordinary.

Basics

The Pumpkin Spice granola bar is my first experience with Sunbelt Bakery. Sunbelt Bakery seems to be a health food company that is devoted to making snacks and foods that are healthy, made with good ingredients and are light on preservatives for an all natural food. The Chewy Granola Bars come in several flavors and I chose the Pumpkin Spice Chewy Granola Bars, while there are many other flavors of Sunbelt Bakery products.

Each Pumpkin Spice Chewy Granola Bar is in a .95 oz. bar that is plastic wrapped. Each bar represents a single serving and the Chewy Granola Bars are each 1 3/8” wide by 5/8” thick by 3 1/2” long bar that is unsurprisingly squishable, though they live up to their promise of being chewy. A box of Pumpkin Spice Chewy Granola Bars contains ten bars. Each bar looks like a plain, soft granola bar with nothing distinctive about its appearance.

Ease Of Preparation

Eating Sunbelt Bakery Pumpkin Spice Chewy Granola Bars is simple. After removing the plastic 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 Pumpkin Spice Chewy Granola Bar, one is given a powerful burst of the aroma of nutmeg and cinnamon. The chewy granola bar smells like autumn. Anyone who loves pumpkin spice will be instantly enticed by the aroma of these chewy granola bars.

In the mouth, the Pumpkin Spice Chewy Granola Bar is sweet and dry. The flavor of cinnamon blends with the oats and wheat making it taste like pretty much a cinnamon granola cereal. The flavor is identical to a cinnamon-flavored oatmeal and the additional flavors of nutmeg and sugar make it taste a bit more like pumpkin spice than just a chewy cinnamon granola bar.

This treat has a strong, dry, aftertaste that leaves a lingering sweetness on the tongue for only a few seconds before it simply dries the mouth out.

Nutrition

Sunbelt Bakery Chewy Granola Bars are intended as a snack, not a meal. Each .95 oz. Chewy Granola Bar represents a single serving and they are predictably healthy. Made primarily of whole grain oats, sugar and whole grain rolled wheat, there is nothing in these bars that is unpronouncable. This is a mostly-natural food product and these Chewy Granola Bars were produced on equipment that may leave the bar with traces of coconuts, peanuts, wheat, almonds, soy and milk, so they are not Vegan-compliant.

Sunbelt Bakery's Pumpkin Spice Chewy Granola Bars have 110 calories, 25 of which are from fat. A full serving represents 5% of one's RDA of saturated fat and these are cholesterol free. They are fairly low in sodium with only 65 mg per serving and there are 2 grams of protein to be had by eating a full bar. These are not a significant source of vitamins or minerals, though they do have 2% of one’s daily RDA of Iron.

Storage/Cleanup

As a healthy snack, Sunbelt Bakery Pumpkin Spice Chewy Granola 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. It is virtually impossible for these granola bars to mess up one's clothes or anything else - there is nothing to melt from them.

Overall

Sunbelt Bakery Pumpkin Spice Chewy Granola Bars are good, but they lack any sort of pumpkin flavor; they live up to their name of being pumpkin spice, but spiced granola bars are pretty hard to differentiate when so many use cinnamon as a flavor.

For other reviews of pumpkin spiced foods, please check out:
Twinings Pumpkin Spice Chai Tea
Ghirardelli Milk & Pumpkin Spice Caramel chocolate squares
Pumpkin Pie Pop Tarts

6/10

For other food and drink reviews, please check out my Food And Drink Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2016 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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