In Review: Quest Bars

Quest Nutrition sent me 17 different flavored bars for a review. I tasted and evaluated them with five friends from different backgrounds. There was everything from personal trainer to person who doesn’t do any sports. However one thing was common – usage of protein products but none of my friends had tried Quest products before. We evaluated the texture (1-5), taste (1-5) and how the taste and the name work together. Every of us also gave the bars overall grade from 1 (poor) to 10 (perfect). You can read my previous post about Quest Nutrition from HERE (CLICK!) and about their protein chips from HERE (CLICK!)

All of the bars include about 170-220 calories about 20grams of protein only 1-4 grams of sugar and about 4-10 grams of fat. You can find all the nutritional information from the website of Quest Nutrition.

I designed with Excel and printed us evaluation sheets 🙂

Top 6 + 1 Overall

 

1. Cinnamon Roll, Overall 9.15, Taste 4.65, Texture 4.5 – TOP1 x2, TOP2 x2 and TOP3 x1

Exotic taste for a protein bar. Like real cinnamon roll. Strong cinnamon taste and after taste – like in real rolls. Great buttery and moist texture. Just perfect!

2. Douple Chocolate Chunk, Overall 9.15, Taste 4.85, Texture 4.5 – TOP1 x1, TOP3 x1

Chocolate cookie dough color, texture and taste. For European tasters little salty but Americans just loved it. Has real chocolate chunks in it.

3. Cookies & Cream, Overall 9.15, Taste 4.5, Texture 4.85 – TOP1 x1, TOP3 x1

A little dry texture but big plus of real big Oreo pieces (or something really similar looking and tasting!) in the bar. Taste has something similar with Quest Vanilla Protein Powder (review coming later), it’s very nice and sweet but still not too sweet.

4. Chocolate Peanut Butter, Overall 8.65, Taste 4.5, Texture 4.15, TOP1 x1

Like Reese’s peanut butter cups – full of chocolate and peanut butter. Wet dream of peanut butter lovers (= about all Americans). Flavors are in good balance and texture works.

5. White Raspberry, Overall 8.5, Taste 4, Texture 4.5, TOP1 x1, TOP3 x1

Great texture with whiter chocolate chunks and raspberry seeds the taste was very sweet and good at the same time. Too sweet for me but others loved this one. Taste is very real, not artificial at all!

6. Apple Pie, Overall 8, Taste 4, Texture 4, TOP2 x1

Includes real apple pieces. Very nice, buttery and sweet taste – like real apple pie. Name and bar are perfect mach. Little chewy texture but in a good way. This one was one of my top ten. I could eat these when I feel like having something sweet.

+1. Coconut Cashew, Overall 8.17, Taste 3.67, Texture 4.5 TOP1 x 1, TOP3 x1

This bar was one of the favorites of people who love coconut. We had 4 coconut lovers and 2 haters. The first 4 would have given overall 9.5 and taste 4.5 for this one. If you love coconuts you must try this one! 🙂 Great coconutty taste and almost perfect crunchy texture.

Other 10 in alphabetic order with short reviews and grades:

– Banana Nut Muffin, Total 5.35, Taste 2, Texture 3.35 

Good texture, little chewy but not too much. Nut dominates the banana a lot and it’s even hard to find the banana taste – and it’s actually quite artificial. If you love nuts and texture is important for you, you might like this one.

– Chocolate Brownie, Total 7, Taste 3.35, Texture 3.65

Tastes like real American brownie – a lot of chocolate taste and little salty for me and my European friend. Some of my tasters have a weird after taste but they still said they would buy this one again. And hey, I got couple of recipes where you need these bars, I think I will buy them and try later this semester! Texture is like real brownies.

– Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, Overall 6.65, Taste 3.15, Texture 3.5 

Nice texture made with real chocolate pieces. Most of us considered this tasting like real cookie dough – buttery, little salty and served with chocolate pieces. However two of us said this was a huge disappointment. Maybe if you love some specific kind of cookie dough? In my opinion this was a good bar but not the best one that Quest has. If you’re looking for something like chocolate cookie dough I would recommend you Douple Chocolate Chunk (in TOP list above)

– Lemon Cream Pie, Overall 7.5, Taste 3.15, Texture 4.35, TOP3 x1

Like lemon cookie dough. If you know those plain cookies with lemon juice in the dough – very similar taste and texture. Very lemony – if you love lemon this is your bar!

– Mixed Berry Bliss, Overall 7.15, Taste 3.15, Texture 4 

Very sweet, even too sweet for most of us. Strawberry dominates the taste. Like cookie with strawberry jam. If you love fruity sweet bars you will love this one. Texture is great, there are real fruit pieces!

– Peanut Butter and Jelly, Overall 7.65, Taste 3.65, Texture 4 

A lot of peanut butter in taste, where is the jelly? Very sweet tastes like peanut butter (& jelly) sandwich. Again, perfect bar for peanut butter lovers. Very good texture.

– Peanut Butter Supreme, Overall 6.65, Taste 3.15, Texture 3.5 

Very nutty and sweet. Good but not special.

– S’Mores, Overall 7, Taste 3.15, Texture 3.85

This is really new flavor! Great graham cracker taste combined chocolate, vanilla and little caramelly taste. Sweet but not too sweet. Could have had more chocolate pieces in it.

– Strawberry Cheesecake, Overall 7.80, Taste 3.65, Texture 4.15 

Very moist bar with real strawberry pieces in it. Sweet but not too sweet.

– Vanilla Almond Crunch, Overall 7, Taste 3.5, Texture 3.5

Vanilla & almond work nicely together, right amount of sweetness. Nice texture with almond chunks throughout.

Overall Quest bars have awesome textures – better than any bars we had tasted before. Also flavor & name combinations are mostly very good. Many bars were very sweet (at least if you’re just tasting 17 of them during 2 hours). In my opinion they were just perfectly sweet when I was running around New York from exercise to another and between all the tourist attractions. We also liked the wrappers. The flavor options are great especially for American market I think things like S’Mores and peanut butter wouldn’t work as well in Europe.

Ps. Sorry for super long post but I didn’t want to leave any of the bars out of review so this could value you the most. I reviewed all 17 that I got, that’s like 75% of all Quest’s bar flavors. I hope you enjoyed!