Slim-Fast! Trio of Chocolate Meals

Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine's Day, and Easter... the stream of eat, eat, eat holidays has finally come to a end and we have a period of less pressure to make the tastiest and most decadent food and drink we can come up with.  Some of you may be thinking about the summer and worried about how your body looks.  Or perhaps you are more worried about your health instead of simply what you look like or the size of your clothes. I old enough that I remember when Slim-Fast! came out and let me tell you that Your Chocolate Priestess was not impressed with the products.  But I try to have an open now when it comes to many things, chocolate is what you most know about here, so when I was offered three different "meal" products from them, I wanted to give them a try and share those results with you.

Let's start with this Chocolate Royale shake since the company started off with shakes.  The first thing I notice is how much more feminine the shape of the bottles have become but the question is why.  Perhaps they think it will appeal to women who want to look like that or to men who want to look at that.  But for us we are most interested in what is inside the bottle.  The first ingredient is fat free milk so you know this has dairy in it but also soy if either of those are allergens for you.    Cocoa processed with alkali is fourth on the ingredient list after water and sugar.  There are a lot of minerals and vitamins on the nutrition facts list but look closely at the ingredients -- there a lot of added ingredients, most of them are difficult to pronounce chemicals, this is highly artificial.  But maybe you don't carea about that so let's talk about our five senses and this drink.  It looks just like a rich chocolate milk and has a light cocoa scent with a hint of sweetness.  When I start to drink I'm careful because I remember the flavor was not something I liked but I'm surprised.  It is slightly thicker than plain skim milk, exactly like chocolate skim milk would be, and it has a sweet chocolate flavor.  Obviously as a drink it makes no sound, I'd be frightened if it did.  This is better than the previous incarnation of Slim-Fast! shakes but I am concerned about the ingredients list.

The other two products we'll review today are meal bars, these are meant to be used in place of another meal like breakfast or lunch, ideally both.  The first of these that I tried was the Chocolate Cookie Dough bar seen here in this photo.  Like the shake the number of added and artificial ingredients is simply overwhelming on the nutrition facts.  Again it has cocoa processed with alkali but this is very far down on the list.

This bar does not have a strong scent of anything but oddly it smells a bit plasticity to me.  Inside you can see that it has a chocolate chip cookie dough nature but the taste is a bit too sickly sweet for me.  It is chewy and the chips which you can see doesn't crunch but seem either very tiny or very moist. There isn't any cocoa or chocolate flavor at all.  If the box didn't claim it had any chocolate I wouldn't guess that from taking a bite.

The Chocolate Fudge Brownie meal bar lists cocoa processed with alkali higher up on the ingredients list but still much further down than the shake.  Once more while the nutritional values are good over all the amount of chemicals concerns me personally. On the box and wrapper it looks like it should have more chocolate ingredients inside, yes?  It does; several ingredients layer is cocoa and then after a few more chocolate is listed.  This should at least taste like chocolate I hope.

The scent is very odd, a very strong artificially sweet scent, not chocolate scent whatsoever.  This has tiny chocolate chips in it, too, if you can make them out in the photo.  The texture is indeed fudgy but this is the only fudgy thing about this bar. The flavor is difficult to describe it has an odd burnt quality to it but a bit of cocoa as well.  I didn't think it was possible but this is worse than the previous bar.

Over all these products are better than previous incarnations but I'm still not a fan of the flavor of any of them.  They could have more chocolate in them and it should be higher up on the ingredients list. What really kills this for me though is the quantity of artificial ingredients and long chemical names.  I think any of us, Sisters and Brothers, could find better foods to control our calorie intact and improve our health or body shape.