Fiber before Chocolate?

You as you may recall, Sisters and Brothers, your Chocolate Priestess really likes the cereal bars from Fiber One compared to many other breakfast, cereal and energy bars she's reviewed for you here on The Chocolate Cult.  Today I want to look at another product from Fiber One: "Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins" that you can find on the mass produced bakery shelves in many grocery stores.  I found this on sale in Kroger and decided I wanted to try it.  First thing to note is that even on sale these are over $3 a box and there are only three muffins in it which measure about 2 inches across the bottom and rise about 2 inches tall.  That's expensive for grocery store bought, mass produced muffins!

Second, the flavor is not just chocolate chip but also banana and that is what you smell.  Indeed, no matter who close I got to one of the chocolate chips with my nose, I could not escape the fruit scent.  Luckily I like banana but if you don't, then you do not want to buy these.  The chocolate chips or "semi-sweet chocolate drops" as the ingredient list labels them are the 8th ingredient on that list but they are chocolate made with chocolate liquor and cocoa butter but they also have sugar as the primary ingredient and artificial flavors listed.  This is not a treat for folks with many food allergies including wheat, eggs, soy, oats and nuts.

Each muffin has 200 calories made of 1.5g saturated fat, 30mg cholesterol, 180mg sodium, 7g fiber (which is why you'd buy this over another chocolate chip muffin), 18g sugars, 3g protein, 2% calcium and 4% iron.  Nutritionally speaking these are pretty great though it would be better if the sugar was a bit lower and we could cut down the sodium just a touch.

All the nutritional greatest isn't going to get us to buy a product again here on The Chocolate Cult.  We demand more so let's see what these muffins are like beyond the scent.  The muffin come in individual plastic sleeves so they are still fairly moist.  It doesn't taste grainy or any of those other worries you might have about high fiber products.  However unless you bite right into a section of a lot of chips, it also doesn't taste like chocolate.  The pictures on the box aren't the same as the muffins inside -- they do not have as many chips as the professional photos suggest.  Meaning that the chocolate here does not meet our standards on The Chocolate Cult where we have to have a certain level of cocoa flavor and scent and over all chocolatyness or we can't recommend it.

Sisters and Brothers, may you, too, take the time to slowly appreciate what the Divine and human ingenuity have offered you in chocolate.