Skinny Girl Nutrition Bars

I truly don't know how I wound up with a product from Skinny Girl in my snack pantry.  Sure, I love to try all kinds of snacks, and find bars handy to have around when I'm on the go, but this isn't really a brand that I'd seek out.

"With Skinnygirl™, you can have it all!  A balanced lifestyle with delicious products that help you celebrate the things you love. No guilt. No hassles."

Frankly, just reading their marketing makes me recoil slightly.  I'm all for balance, but, they go a bit too far for my tastes, and their iconic, well, skinny girl logo .... shutter.  

 

Anyway, I believe the brand name came to fame originally for low-cal cocktail recipes (and later, pre-made, ready to drink, supermarket cocktails), but they've dabbled in many different product offerings, including different supplements.  I tried only the nutrition bars, but they also currently make a line of salad dressings with only 5-10 calories per serving (huh, really?) and cocktail inspired preserves (again, so low cal it makes you wonder ...).

Bars

"Tasty Nutrition Bars"

The bars all are 170 calories or less, and have 6g of protein or more.  Like many similar products, the flavors of the Skinny Girl sound promising: chocolate chip cookie dough. Chocolate peanut butter with sea salt.  Etc.  Etc.

I rather assumed that they'd go the way of all other products that have my leave favorite ingredient, soy protein isolate, in them: awful!  I was pleasantly surprised.

Dark Chocolate Pretzel.

"SkinnyGirl Dark Chocolate Almond with Coconut Protein Bars offer all the benefits you want without compromising the decadent flavor that you love."

At a first glance, this at least didn't look like an awful nutrition bar.  I could see real chunks of peanut.  There was chocolate drizzled over the top, and the entire back side was coated in chocolate.

So I broke off a chunk.  I could tell the bar was made up of some actual ingredients.  Oats, nuts, bits of pretzel.  It didn't have a strange consistency.

It was ... well, a granola bar.  I liked the crunch from the peanuts, and the peanut flavor obviously.  It was a bit sticky in a good way.  The chocolate didn't taste like wax.

But a granola bar isn't something I'm ever going to get crazy excited about.  And, don't get me wrong, this wasn't actually made with "real" pure ingredients.  The ingredient list is quite long.  There are certainly some normal ingredients in there, like the peanuts, oats, almonds, and sugar, but there are plenty of other slightly less appealing things (like the long list of ingredients that make up the "chocolate coating" and the gluten-free pretzels).  But if you like granola bars, and want to try another one out, these aren't bad.  ***.