Quaker True Delights Granola Bar

Product: Quaker True Delights Toasted Coconut Banana Macadamia Nut Chew Granola Bar with Whole Grains
(say that three times fast, bonus points for saying it with a True Delights bar stuffed in your mouth)
Purchased at: Grocery Outlet (Seattle – Madrona)
Price: $1.69 (box of 5 bars)

Marisa’s Take: I’d love to meet the person behind naming products like Quaker True Delights (granola bars), Dove’s Promises (individually-wrapped chocolates), Betty Crocker’s Warm Delights (a plastic bowl full of chocolate you stick in the microwave) and other indulgent product names seemingly targeted to middle-aged women who flop down on the couch in front of the TV after a long day of work and eat the product straight from the bag/box/pint with a spoon (which I am definitely guilty of, on multiple occasions).

Note how they post all the nutritional benefits on the packaging – 0g trans fat! Iron! C’mon guys, face it, it’s a candy bar. It’s oats held together by sugar topped with banana and toasted coconut (also coated in sugar). A true delight (only 140 calories though).

The smell was overwhelming when the wrapper came off; it was akin to a tropical sugar skin scrub from a fancy-pants spa. The actual bar was quite gooey, but crispy with a flavor that I can only describe as “banana syrup”. In my head, I can picture a giant bottle of fluorescent yellow-tinted liquid sitting at the Quaker factory. It was really sticky and gooey when I held it too.

It kind of reminds me of a tropical island Rice Krispie treat, if such a thing existed (but with oats instead of puffed rice). There’s also a cloying sweetness that sticks around in your mouth for a while after eating one. I ending up eating the rest of the bar after the initial taste test, despite my above critique (sugar is truly a powerful drug).

Watch for my newest granola/health bar in a few years – it’s going to be powdered women’s multivitamins combined with oats, flax seed and Metamucil. It’ll be called, “You Go Girl!” (No relation to Go Girl energy drink).

Checking out some past reviews of the product, looks like they’ve changed their original black packaging with script lettering to something slightly less…seductive (what’s pictured above).

Ben’s Take: I’m the kind of person who tries to be prepared for life’s little annoyances. I keep a small shovel next to my car’s jack and full-sized spare. I also keep a complete tool kit with all of the tools I need to handle most standard automotive field repairs, from changing a tire to replacing my exhaust system. Being prepared is what I do, and as such I like to keep emergency snacks for those times when I get stuck in Seattle’s supremely awesome traffic. These little emergency snacks keep me from making a detour for Dick’s (While I love Dick’s, I prefer to eat them as a treat so I can enjoy them, instead of inhaling them).

As you might expect, I’m often left turning to my emergency snack reserve to make it home and as such I like to keep the mix interesting. I was hoping the Mommy Bar we also picked up at the Seattle-Madrona Grocery Outlet would be a fine candidate since they had some extra vitamin-like-fortification but as I noted in that post they were pretty bland. Marisa, in her infinite wisdom, suggested we give the True Delights a try as well. I found that they were significantly better, though smaller. They also lacked the additional DHA fortification that expectant mothers might want but they sure made up for it with their sweetness. At 140 calories, I figured they weren’t going to be horribly sweet but in reality I found that the assaulted my taste buds with the same sweetness as a Snickers or Milky Way candy bar. Way too sweet to be a backup meal.

In fact, I was glad I found this out at home, because I needed to down a glass of milk after the first bite. I don’t know what would have happened if I tried these out on the road. In traffic. Perhaps there would have been a road rage incident involving a bicycle, a car and their window. I can’t say for sure, but I bet it would have been ugly.

If you were looking for a sweet treat, I’d recommend you give these a look, but if you’re looking for something a little more wholesome – just keep looking. Though these are relatively reasonable in terms of calories, they’re just as sweet as any other candy-granola bar hybrid and I just find that those just don’t satisfy me in the least.

Buy Quaker True Delights on Amazon.com, now made with WHOLE GRAINS

Tags: Banana, Bars, Coconut, For Your "Health", Nuts

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011 at 6:00 am and is filed under Food. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.