Pro Bar: Koka Moka Review
February 26, 2008
Before you start wondering why I’m posting a mocha bar on my chocolate peanut butter blog, let me defend it by saying that organic peanut butter is the second ingredient and dark chocolate chips are scattered throughout the bar as well. Hah!
As a habitual snacker, granola bars and protein bars are a constant presence in my diet. They sit in my purse ready for the moment those hunger pangs attack me while I’m out and about.
My favorites are the Odwalla and Cliff bars, but I’m always on the lookout for new varieties at supermarkets and health food stores. On a recent trip to Whole Foods, there was a nice display of Pro Bars at the register. I can hardly pass up trying out a new granola/protein bar normally, let alone when some evil person places it right at the cash register. The packaging is covered with all sorts of nuts, coffee beans, chocolate chips and dried fruits with a tagline that reads “The Whole Food Meal made with Organic Ingredients.” They’re also vegan which is nice for those with special diet concerns. Naturally I went for the chocolatiest of the bunch, over the other fruitier varieties.
Eating healthy makes me feel good mentally and physically, but above all I want to know if it tastes good. The verdict is…
It’s okay. Just okay. And at $3.29 for a measly 2 3/4 inch x 2 3/4 inch x 3/4 inch bar, that’s a lot of beans for “just okay.”
The reasons I say this are first, that I find the presence of little seeds in bars to be rather unwelcome. Granted, it’s nice to have texture in a health bar where most of them are just a ground up brick of long-named ingredients, but seeds provide an icky grainy texture that’s unpleasant to chew, not to mention they get stuck in your teeth. I like seeds, I just feel that there are too many of them in this bar. Secondly the bar has a cocoa - not chocolate or mocha flavor - a cocoa flavor. It’s a bit artificial tasting. And I come away from it more with an aftertaste of cocoa and raisins instead of mocha. Maybe they misnamed it?
It’s also a hefty 360 calories which is a lot more than your average 250-ish calorie Cliff & Odwalla bars. I don’t have a huge qualm with this since the calories are spent on nuts, seeds and dried fruit which keep you fuller longer than say a high calorie breakfast pastry. But since the Cliff & Odwalla bars are lower calorie, lack the over abundance of seeds and taste better, I think I’ll stick with those. Not to mention they have flavors that are more chocolate-y and pea-nutty.