When I'm getting a bit peckish around 11 in the morning I was often found raiding the biscuit tin and for not much of a snack was probably eating 200-300 calories. Not really what you want. I have started to move over to the more substantial cereal bars and have after trying many that were on offer I have now tried one of Alpen's lighter bars.

These were on sale in my local Tesco express in a box of 5 for £1.72 so they are not the cheapest on the market but I am a firm believer in 'you pay for what you get' which is true most of the time. Inside the box there are 5 individual wrapped bars each of 21g

The appearance/smell

On opening the foil wrapper the smell that comes out is mainly strawberry but it has a slight chemical edge to it which gave it a slight acidic aroma which was slightly disappointing. This then gave way to a slightly sweeter smell with perhaps a hint of cranberry and apple.

The bar is disappointingly small - perhaps this is the reason why these are around the 60 calorie mark. There is a fair amount of yogurt drizzled over the top and there appears to be a good amount of the red fruit within the bar. The pieces of oat and rice are visible and yes it does look more appetizing than it smells.


Taste/texture

The initial texture is slightly crisp but this gives way to a more chewy texture. The pieces of oat do add to the texture as do the bits of rice. Unlike some of the other bars in the Alpen range these are not overly dry this is possibly due to the yogurt drizzle.

Whilst it is quite difficult to distinguish the tastes of each of the fruits in the bar,
the most overpowering taste is that of the red fruits. I find that it is the cranberries which come through the most with a lingering aftertaste of the raspberries with a slight tang of the apple. There is a slight acidity to the taste of the fruit which helps the bars not to taste too sweet. The fruit taste again for me is, like the aroma, slightly chemical. This is probably due to the use of the fruit concentrates.


So how bad are they for me?

Well the small bars are only around 60 calories a bar so not too bad at all on that side of things. This is probably due to the low fat content. They are, however, quite high in sugar so those with diabetes my have to think twice before indulging in more than one of them.

Nutritional info (per bar 21g):

Energy - 59.4 Kcal
Protein - 1.23g
Carbs - 11.95g (sugars 4.83)
Fat - 0.75g (saturated 0.27)
Fibre - 4.73g
Salt - 0.12g


Overall opinion:

There are good cereal bars which despite being low calorie actually taste quite good. They do taste quite sweet without being sickly and unlike some other low calorie bars they don't have the texture of old sawdust. This is something that I will be buying again and I will probably be trying others in the 'light' range.