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| Sickeningly sweet. And that's coming from me. |
Well, I’ve taken a look at a couple
different products by EbM and was pretty well won over by both of
them. They are more expensive than the average Aldi product—their
excellent mint chocolate protein bars come in a six-pack that retails
for $1 per bar, putting it uncomfortably close to the national brand
in terms of cost—but they have great texture and taste that help to
offset the “investment”.
With that in mind, I decided to push my
luck: I realized I always stuck to the familiar flavors that I
enjoyed—such as, in this case, chocolate—and never really
branched out to try anything new. Right then and there, I made the
decision to try a flavor that I wouldn’t normally get…but I did
chicken out a bit by offsetting my potential disappointment by buying
the cheapest box I could find. This set of 6 protein bars came in at
a respectable $4.19, which isn’t too bad at all, especially for six
full-size bars.
Oh wow, the smell hits you right away,
like you’re in an enclosed laboratory space where a vat of
strawberry natural flavor just got dumped all over the floor—it’s
pretty evident that this ain’t real strawberry that we’re dealing
with. But you know what? That’s not a problem with me, because it
reminds me a lot of the strawberries and cream oatmeal packets, which
are some of my absolute favorites.
The flavor matches the scent pretty
well—for better for worse—by offering a clearly fake strawberry
imitation that is very, very sweet at first, and then continues to
snowball from there. The yogurt-based coating (I’m assuming that’s
what it is, anyway) provides a nice exterior texture that melts in
your mouth, providing a counterpoint to the puffed rice-style
interior of the bar. To help put your mind at ease, there are also
chunks of dried strawberries laced throughout, although they are in
such small increments they don’t really do anything for either
flavor or texture.
This is pretty much a strawberry
overload of flavor; I happen to have a palate that skewers toward the
sweet, but those that are sensitive to sweet flavors will be
disgusted and overwhelmed. Even with my own high tolerance for the
saccharine, I find that this bar is about the perfect size to test my
limits: right as I’m nearing the end is when my stomach starts
gurgling, and right as I finish the last bite I start to feel sick,
as if my body is shutting itself down to protect itself from
potential sugar (and artificial strawberry) overdose. I don’t know
that each bar actually has as much sugar in it as it tastes
like it does, but regardless of that, it’s…overwhelming.
And that was just the first bar...by
the end of the first box, it wasn't finishing the bar that
became so much of an issue: it was building up enough courage to
start it. Even now, a couple months on, the mere thought of it
still gets my stomach a-rumblin'...and that's exactly why I'm
hesitant to get it again, and even more hesitant to recommend it.
Overall: 4/10. The price ($4.19 for 6
bars) is actually very reasonable and the taste isn’t all that
bad…at first. But gradually, the unrelenting onslaught of fake
strawberry mixed with a bucket of sugar overpowers the tastebuds with
a syrupy sweetness that always leaves my stomach churning by the time
I reach the final bite. Even thinking about eating a bar now leaves
my poor tummy feeling queasy, and I ate my last bar over a month ago.
And if it's enough to overpower a guy like me—an avid purveyor of
sweets—then I can only imagine just how off-putting it will be to
most other people. So much for trying a different flavor for
once…looks like I’ll be back to sticking to the familiar flavor
of chocolate for the foreseeable future.
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