Another Day, Another Diet Product (Weight Watchers Double Choc Chip Cookies)

Member Name: krazykat2005

Product:	Weight Watchers Double Choc Chip Cookies
Date:	07/05/06 (323 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Sweet taste, low price, low calories and fat content

Disadvantages: Not much chocolate!

Another day, another Weight Watchers food review! I am feeling somewhat better after my good experience the other day with one of their soups.

Now, if you ask most women which foodstuff they could not live without, most of them will answer almost without thinking that they would die if they could not have chocolate. I go against the mould as I am actually a take it or leave it kind of girl when it comes to anything sweet. Well, that is unless I am on a diet when, for some strange reason, I become a sweet-aholic… a chocolate junkie desperate for my fix of creamy cocoa goodness. Which is unfortunate really as the whole purpose of being on a diet is to lose weight, and the purpose of chocolate (other than to satisfy women’s cravings) is to add poundage on.

So off I toddled to the local Tesco on a quest to find myself a ‘healthy’ chocolate snack. Some might think I was off on a wild goose chase, but you would be wrong as I returned with the next best thing to a chocolate bar – double chocolate chip cookies – and they were made by Weight Watchers. Result!

-- PACKAGING --

These come in a cardboard carton with six individually wrapped portions of two cookies each. They have all the usual nutritional information, which quite handily has per portion values rather than per cookie. I usually have to add up the values when I have another of my favourite snacks (Crispy Slices), so this is useful. There is allergy information included just under the ingredients list, which is a very good point.

My one quibble is the best before date is printed in such a way as that it makes reading it a bit difficult. It is printed in dots, rather than proper letters and numbers and it makes my eyes go a bit funny looking at it. I know this is very minor, but I thought it worth a mention as I am pedantic like that.

-- PRICE --

These are £0.79 for six portions, so about thirteen pence per snack. Not too bad really, although if you compare it to their full fat counterpart you might feel slight short changed, but no pain no gain!

-- THE PRODUCT --

There are twelve Double Chocolate Chip Cookies in each pack in six portions of two cookies each.

Weight Watchers says: “they can help with slimming or weight control as part of a calorie controlled diet.”

Each portion contains 102 calories and 1.1g of saturated fats. This equates to one and a half Points, which is a Weight Watchers measurement used when following their diet. For anyone interested in joining you can find their website at www.weightwatchers.co.uk or you can call them on 08457 123000.

These cookies contain soya, wheat and gluten and are not suitable for those with nut allergies. They are marked as suitable for vegetarians.

They have a shelf life of about nine months as my pack goes out of date in December 2006.

-- LETS EAT!!! --

I remove my first portion from the packet and am immediately disappointed by the size of my chocolatey offering. They are pretty small (about 4cm in diameter) and very thin (less the 1cm thick), but after my initial shock my rational mind takes over and assures me that of course they have to be smaller than usual, that’s how there are less calories.

The appearance of my cookies is a bit disappointing too as I can only visibly see one chocolate chip in each. They also look quite dry and brittle – somewhat similar to ginger nuts. I snap one in half and have a look at the insides, finding that it is quite an insubstantial biscuit which is more full of air bubbles than it is of chocolate – well, I suppose air is calorie free.

I tentatively sniff one to see whether it smells better than it looks. A faint whiff of chocolate is overpowered by a warm oaty smell with perhaps a hint of golden syrup in there too.

The texture is very crunchy, so I was right about them looking brittle. There are definitely oats in it as well as when the biscuit melts in my mouth I am left with some bitty oat flakes coating my teeth.

Now down to my favourite part… the taste test! My earlier reference to these cookies looking a bit like ginger nuts is relevant here as the initial taste is very similar – very oaty with a tang of spice, you don’t taste chocolate unless you get an elusive chocolate chip, which taste strongly of cocoa and dark chocolate rather than of milky chocolate. There is definitely some vanilla flavouring in this, and very little chocolate flavouring which is a bit poor in my opinion as I have bought a chocolate biscuit not a vanilla one. The overall sweetness appears to come from a golden syrup direction as these are sweet but not sugary sweet.

-- CONCLUSION --

Don’t expect chocolate perfection when you buy these cookies! In fact don’t expect much chocolate at all… the biscuit doesn’t really taste of chocolate and the chips are few and far between. Once you get past the disappointment of this initial non-chocolateliness (not a real word I know) the biscuit isn’t all that bad, it is sweet after all and when you are on a diet you can’t always afford to be too picky.

The price is fine and I have found the availability quite good. I love that each portion is individually wrapped as it keeps them nice and fresh even after I have opened the box.

Three stars out of five.

Summary: Alright when you want something sweet