Elevation by Millville Double Chocolate Protein Meal Bar (Aldi)

Affordable and pretty good, but beware the "meal" bar designation...

I’ve found that breakfast bars make the perfect snack for me when I’m wasting away in the mornings at work. I usually stock up on the cheap ones (dipped granola bars, etc.) but every once in a great while, I’ll turn my attention to the Elevation by Millville line, which offer up “premium” bars for a comparatively premium price tag. Wanting to get as close as I could to the line between “premium” and “value”, I eventually opted for these protein bars, simply because they were the cheapest ones that had at least 5 bars. After all, I need to get at least a week out of them!

The only other product I’ve tried in the Elevation line were the mint chocolate bars, which are absolutely phenomenal, but still make me pause for thought every time I see the $6 price tag ($1 per bar? That’s some serious shit right there.) These offer up 6 full-size bars for just $4.19, which comes out to a respectable $.70 per bar. I haven't really compared the two all that in-depth, but I am kind of wondering what else the mint bars have that these don't (besides superior flavor), that justify the nearly $2 price increase.

At any rate, these aren’t anywhere on the same plane as those flavorwise, but they are a decent bar in their own right. The chocolate flavor here is definitely more akin to “milk”, rather than dark (thank God), but isn’t too awfully sweet. Meanwhile, the bar’s “guts” are light and crispy, also akin to the mint chocolate bars that I once fell in love with. There’s a slight graininess in the finish, but nothing that’s too noticeable, and certainly not enough to be distracting.

It's a good-tasting bar, with a decent amount of protein and some other necessary vitamins (A, C, D, calcium and iron chief among them), but one thing I don't like is that this is a “meal” bar, insinuating it's meant to replace a meal. Only, it's nowhere near filling, making this come off as more of a “snack” bar. I mean, I don't personally care, because I just use it as a morning snack (which I guess technically makes it "breakfast"), but I can't see anyone being satisfied enough after eating this to be able to skip eating actual food; that whole idea is ludicrous, and a distinction that makes the whole "snack" versus "meal" bar thing a little confusing.

Overall: 7/10. A nice milk chocolate flavor with a delicious “puffy” crisped-rice style interior set the stage for this bar from the Elevation by Millville line. The flavor is pretty delicious, offering up some nice sweet milk chocolate flavor without being too sweet, the price is on point at $4.19 (for six full-size bars), making it one of the more affordable options they have to offer, and there's minimal weirdness in the texture. It's not nearly as outstanding as their mint chocolate bars (which are, to be fair, almost $2 more expensive), nor are they anywhere near filling, making their designation as a “meal bar” (as opposed to just a “snack” or “protein” bar) pretty confusing and pointless.