I love tasty snacks. To be honest I am obsessed with snacks 🙂 I love cool packaging, good recipes and creative claims. It is super great when people do staff like that and actually create business with the goal to help people to eat and live better. Also, after over 9 years in FMCG marketing I truly appreciate great products. So I can never pass by without tasting (or maybe it is an excuse to try cool things?? hehehe)
Anyway, this is the first post about healthy packaged snacks which I LOVED.
Lets’ start from a few key points. In my opinion, its better to eat raw or just cooked, BUT when you are on the go and simply didn’t have time to prepare your snack than its ok to buy a packaged one 🙂
My criteria for assessing healthy snacks:
1) It must be OMGsoTASTY
2) It should have NO added sugars
3) It should have well balanced ratio: protein/carbs/fat
4) Packaging should be good looking 🙂 (Its always nice to have a nice thing from a nice pack, right? 🙂 )
5) Claims should be interesting and really appealing
6) It should not cost a fortune
The First review is of the FRANK bar.
It is very recently on the market in UK (guys on the website said that they started in 2012). There are a few flavour available, check out here more info.
1) FRANK bar would score super good on OMGsoTASTY scale, its rich and chocolaty and not to sweet but very nice. And you would not want to have 5 to feel like you have eaten enough, you would be happy with just one, which is cool, and exactly what you want when you are running somewhere!! It tasted a bit like chocolate brownie, soft and chewy and chocolaty. Nice!
2) Ingredients of the Chocolate&Blueberry flavour:
Dried Fruit 49.8% (Dates 36.2%, Plums 13.6%), Fruit Juice Concentrates (Concentrated Apple, Grape and Pear Juices, Rice Starch), Gluten Free Oatmeal 10.9%, Fat Reduced Cocoa Powder 9.2%, Chocolate with Coconut Cream 7.4% (Cocoa Mass 47%, Coconut Blossom Sugar, Coconut Cream, Cocoa Butter 4.3%, Ground Vanilla Pods), Pea Protein, Pea fibre, Freeze Dried Natural Blueberry Powder 0.9%, Natural Blueberry flavour.
Well, there are a LOT of ingredients:) In my opinion it is better to try to have no concentrated fruit juices or coconut sugar, but it is maybe something FRANK guys gonna do in the future.
3)Nutrition Value (per 100g…one bar is 35g)
Energy 333kcal
Protein 11g
Carbohydrates 65g (Of Which Sugars) 41g
Fibre 11g
Fat 5g (Of Which Saturates) 3g
Well, this is quite a snack for a quick BOOST of energy (4:1 ration of carbs to protein), and for people who move a lot, as it has a lot of simple carbs in it (65g per 100g, or per one bar 22.7g). Or maybe a good option after a run? when you just need to fuel up with simple carbs to replenish the energy. Some more interesting facts about running and cacao could be found here
4) Packaging is super nice. Its colourful and really fun to hold in hand:) It has its kind super feel good factor:)
5) Simple and really engaging claims:
Gluten, Nut and Dairy Free
Source of protein (well…it is a source, but I wouldn’t say it is a lot in there:))
With energysmart – really cool, FRANK has even registered a trademark name for a claim! awesome! Its really hard to do it usually, so well done guys!
6) Frank bars do not cost a fortune:) You can check on their website
And one additional comment, this year on Gluten&Allergy free show in Olympia, London they were very friendly and nice. Which make a huge impact! And its great to see nice people behind nice products!
So if you are after a treat with chocolate and some “OMGsoTASTY” factor get yourself a FRANK bar! (Oh, by the way, try crashing FRANK’s bar on top of your morning cereal or yogurt – it is super tasty!!)
x
OMGsoTasty 