You may remember that I was sent a couple of boxes of these a while ago, to share and taste … here’s what we made of them.
People who tasted these for me included coeliacs and non-coeliacs; the coeliacs came from my house, from my village (yes, my village of under 300 people has 4 coeliacs that I know of, and only one of them related to me), from the next county south, from Ireland and from Australia. Quite a collection!
The bars we were tasting came from Jigsaw, and come in two flavours: coconut and almond, and chocolate, and we had a mixed bag of views on these – as I suppose you’d expect.
- We liked the fact that the bars are soft and chewy, rather than crunchy (very often ‘health’ bars require you to have very strong teeth).
- We also liked the fact that they weren’t too sweet. All too often, gluten free food is overloaded with sugar in an attempt to disguise the texture.
- And several people said that they liked the taste, particularly of the coconut and almond bar. The chocolate bar has a dark chocolate taste, being quite high in cocoa flavour, and this might put some people off – others, of course, prefer dark chocolate.
However:
- Some people didn’t like the texture of the bars, saying that they were ‘powdery’ or ‘dry’ in consistency.
- One person said that the chocolate one smells and tastes like a health bar (that wasn’t a compliment, by the way).
- And it should be pointed out that though the bars are loaded with vitamins, they are not vegetarian (I guess that’s where the Omega 3 comes from – fish oil is said to be good for the brain).
Overall, people preferred the coconut and almond one, though a couple of people really enjoyed the chocolate one.
And there were mixed feelings on whether people would choose to buy these … some said that they wouldn’t see them as a treat, but would eat them as a way of filling up; others thought they might buy them from a cafe with a coffee.
My son – not a coeliac – has been sneaking them into his school bag for break-time. So there’s a strong vote in their favour from him!
Our Recommendation: a mixed response – why not try them to see what you think?
It’s interesting to find out what others thought about these bars. Funny thing is, I taste tested them on my wife and others, and the chocolate ones were the clear winner. I really like those, and so did my wife. I actually melted chocolate over top of the coconut one. So, I guess it’s completely up to the consumer. I have already ordered a couple boxes to keep on hand for snacks. I surely didn’t find them “powdery” or such, as I find many commercial GF bars – in fact, I find these to be quite good.
Interesting isn’t it … just different tastes, I guess.
I’m not a big ‘health bar’ fan, but I did think that these were better than the average.