Should Your New Year Resolution Involve thinkThin?

I love when my Kroger loyalty freebies are for something I haven't tried before but I also like it when I can try new flavors of an item I've tried in the past. As we head into 2019, I know that many of you are starting to think about New Year's Resolutions and that many of them will involve your body.  These range from losing weight to exercising more to just plain being more aware of what you are eating. There have been a lot of products we've tried over the years that promise they can help you with those goals and still give you the yummy treats that you crave. Years ago I tried a thinkThin bar and I wasn't too impressed. With some Kroger freebies I was able to score a couple of their other flavors to see if they had improved in 2018 versus the 2015 bar I recall trying out. Kroger had no idea I going to turn their Friday Freebie into this feature article so no form of compensative was received for this article.

thinkThin Brownies Crunch Protein Bar

The first bar I tried was Brownie Crunch, one of their HIgh Protein Bar line. This has 20 grams of protein per 2.1 ounce bar. It has no added sugars but there are 21 grams of sugar alcohol so this is a bar you might be wary of depending on your reaction to such sugar substitutes in foods and drink. The bar has only 1 gram of fiber, disappointing but then its a fiber bar, is it? It has 8 grams total fat of which 2.5g is saturated fat. It actually isn't horrible if this is how you start off your day or if you use it as a midday snack. Cocoa butter and Chocolate are listed as part of the "Maltitol Coating" on the ingredients list on the label; Chocolate appears again at the end of that list right before Sea Salt. It has a waxy sort of scent to it but the cocoa scent is strong after I cut off a piece to show you the inside. I'm not sure if those light areas are the almonds or part of the "protein blend". When I take a bite it is not crunchy as I was thinking it might be, there is a crunch but only when I hit those little pieces which taste like almonds to me. The cocoa flavor is stronger than I feared so that is an improvement but the coating... that has almost no flavor at all. If I had a chocolate craving this wouldn't satisfy me nearly as much as several of the protein bars we tried in 2017.

thinkThin Chocolate Fudge High Protein Bar

The next bar was Chocolate Fudge and what I noticed was that as soon as I opened just one end of the wrapper, my nose picked up a strong cocoa fragrance. Nutritionally this bar is nearly identical to the previous one in terms of ingredients, fats, sugars, and proteins. It looks a bit different with more rounded edges and no internal evidence of anything crunchy or chewy. The different in appearance pleased me because over these 10 years I've seen products which claimed to be quite different looking exactly alike particularly when they are mass produced. I'm sure these are mass produced but at least the visual difference suggest that thinkThin has taken the time to try and show the differences in more than just flavor names. Let's see if eating it proves there are differences. The almond flavor isn't present even though the nut is listed on the label. The bar isn't sweet, it really is just kind bland until I've really chewed up a bite and then at the very end I get a bit of cocoa flavor. If you don't like unsweetened chocolate, this would be unpleasant for you. Once more the coating looks good but that seems to be where the limited sweet I get from is concentrated. Very disappointed in this bar.

I was hoping that thinkThin might have improved their product but I guess since they have been selling enough to stay in business that they really haven't felt the need. Perhaps their taste testers have never had good quality let alone high quality chocolate so they tell how poor these. We've covered much better protein bars here on The Chocolate Cult so please look in the right hand of this page and find that category and check those out.