Breakfast On The Run (Weetabix Alpen Cereal Bars)

Member Name: Mauri

Product:	Weetabix Alpen Cereal Bars
Date:	10/04/03 (923 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Convinient to carry aorund

Disadvantages: Not much taste, Not very healthy

We are all very busy these days, or so the marketing companies tell us. It is an imperative for all of us to save time, take short cuts, do things on the run.
We have microwave ready meals, fast food, everything you can possibly imagine in tin cans ready to heat and eat! Up to now one institution of daily life that had been to a great extent immune from this pressure on our valuable time was our breakfast. Part of the reason for this was the fact that the vast majority of us don’t actually have a cooked breakfast anymore most make do with toast, or cereal hardly a drain on valuable time, but no now we are encouraged to even forgo this luxury and to eat our breakfast on the way to work in our car or on public transport! Hence the rise of the latest addition to the fats food armoury the fast food breakfast, the cereal bar.

We all know that most types of fast food whether they be tasty or not are usually fattening and generally not considered healthy eating, the difference with cereal bars is that they play on the image of cereals as being a healthy way to start the day even if you are consuming it running for your bus!

Alpen is no exception. Alpen cereal bars are marketed as a portable version of the muesli based breakfast cereal and thus possessing all the properties traditionally associated with muesli; Low fat, high fibre, nutritious and generally good for you. So is this true and can this cereal bar really replace a ‘sit down’ breakfast?

THE CEREAL BAR- (FRUIT AND NUT VARIETY)

The bars come individually packaged shiny plastic foil lined wrappers. The bars themselves weigh 28g and the first thing that struck me is how light they felt. On opening you are presented with a square-edged solid cereal bar, basically a very small portion of Alpen meusli bound together with glucose syrup. The bar itself is fairly sturdy and will hold up to being carried in your pocket of bag without crumbling to bits.

The
cereal itself makes up only about 40% of the bar the rest is mainly glucose syrup and concentrated apple juice. When you bite into it the first thing you notice is how crumbly it is and I can guarantee that you will not be able to avoid crumbs flying all over you front and if you are in a packed bus or tube, all over you fellow passengers.

The next thing you notice is the complete lack of taste! Alpen is usually quite a sweet cereal, in fact too sweet for my taste but this version is simple tasteless and dry. The bits of dried fruit included in the bar are so small the will invariably get stuck in every conceivable cavity of your teeth and the dryness of the bar in general will leave you gasping for a drink to wash it down with.

The final thing you notice is that when you have eaten the whole bar (something, which I reckon would take the average ravenous morning person a few seconds to do) you will feel just as hungry as before. I calorific terms this bar is supposed to provide you with 394kcal/100g so about just lees than 100kcal/bar, that might be great if you are on a starvation diet but it hardly seem to provide for a nutritious meal to start of the working day.

The bars I’m describing in detail are the ‘Fruit an Nut’ variety but there are others including ‘Fruit and Nut with Chocolate’, ‘Strawberry with Yoghurt’, ‘Apple and Blackberry with Yoghurt’ some of which I have also tried and broadly speaking are little different in texture or taste from these.

IS IT GOOD FOR YOU?

The bar does contain cereal nuts and fruit and so it does represent a high fibre food but it also contains a fair amount of added sugar, butter and salt, which is not so good (however this is broadly in line with the majority of so called ‘healthy’ cereals in general) if you also take into account that it has around a 10% fat content it really can’t be considered that healthy.
What amazes me is that despite the fairly high sugar, salt and fat content it is still so tasteless!

OVERALL

At best this could be a light (very light) snack that you could eat at coffee break enabling you to feel virtuous while others around you are scoffing their chocolate covered biscuits. In no way is it a suitable alternative for a descent breakfast. Personally I’ll stick to my bowl of cereal with cold milk straight from the fridge and if I have to get up that five minutes earlier to fit it into my impossibly busy schedule what the hell!

FINAL THOUGHTS

These bars contain nuts, gluten, cow’s milk and Soya so people with any food allergies should be warned. I would also say that the bars are not suitable for very young children, (if you could get them to eat it!) due to the crumbly nature you will get quite small solid pieces that could represent a choking hazard.

At Sainsbury’s a box of six will cost £1.39

Thanks for reading and rating this opinion

© Mauri 2003

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