Quick Review: Banana and Almond Butter GoMacro Macrobar

I'm a huge fan of food bars and make it a personal challenge to find ones that are minimally processed and have good ingredients. On a recent grocery trip to Whole Foods I saw these Macrobars on sale for $2 each and grabbed the Banana and Almond Butter one to try.

Some of the reasons it caught my attention is because it is high protein, vegan, gluten free and non-GMO. I'm a big fan of almond butter as well and as long as it's done well banana flavored products can taste great too. When I opened up the wrapper the first thing that I smelled was the banana and the bar had a shiny slightly greasy touch to it probably because of the fats in the almond butter. It reminded me of a bigger and flatter Larabar due to the ground up appearance of it. 

Taste wise it gets two thumbs up from me. I can taste the almond butter, walnuts, raisins, and banana in almost every bite. I was hesitant about the banana because I've tried many banana flavored foods that taste artificial but the banana taste in this was very natural and delicious. It was enough to fill me up for breakfast and hold me over until lunch time. For 270 calories I would probably recommend this as a meal replacement due to how filling it is or maybe add some fruit on the side to make it a more complete meal.

My only complaint is that it is high in sugar and brown rice syrup is the first ingredient on the list. If it was replaced with another dried fruit like dates I probably wouldn't mind the sugar content as much because it would be coming from a less processed source. Besides the brown rice syrup the other ingredients are pretty good and are definitely a whole lot better compared to other protein bars. Besides being vegan, gluten free, non-GMO it is also USDA Organic, Kosher Certified and Soy Free. Overall I would recommend this flavor Macrobar and would be interested in trying the other flavors they have available.

Review: Crunchmaster Grammy Crisps, Cheezy Crisps and 7 Ancient Grains

Hiya! I'm back from my sister's wedding which was beautiful and now have more time to write down product reviews for you guys :) My first post back will be a Crunchmaster review as stated in the title. Shortly after trying Mary's Gone Crackers I was on the hunt for a new cracker to try and discovered Crunchmaster crackers. I tried the sea salt multigrain crackers and I was hooked! I looked on their website to see what other flavors/products they had and decided to email them to ask if they would be willing to send some of their products to try and I quickly got a response back saying yes! I asked to try the Grammy Crisps, Cheezy Crisps (also known as Kids Crisps) and 7 Ancient Grains crackers since I have not seen any of those in my local grocery stores. Crunchmaster Crackers make gluten free crackers and use exclusive proprietary rice baking techniques to bake their crackers "Usuyaki" style. They only use Californian grown GMO free rice, sesame, quinoa, amaranth and flax seeds. All of their crackers are made on dedicated, certified gluten free rice cracker production lines at their plant in Rockford, IL or Henderson, NV using only gluten free ingredients.

I love cinnamon sugar so I was excited to eat the Grammy Crisps and it was the first one I tried.The Grammy Crisps are certified gluten free, peanut free, 100% whole grain (21g per serving), saturated fat free and cholesterol free.  If you have ever eaten Crunchmaster crackers before they're the same square shape and size and there was plenty in the box. The taste of these are great, they're crunchy, subtly sweet and addicting. It reminded me of a healthier cinnamon toast crunch cereal and I love that these aren't sickingly sweet. While eating these the cinnamon sugar sticks to your fingers which makes it fun to lick off once you're done eating :) Overall the ingredients are pretty good and I would consider this a healthier choice for an occasional treat and I bet you could use these to replace Golden Grahams in Golden Grahams S'mores.

The Cheezy Crisps are also certified gluten free, peanut free, 100% whole grain (22g per serving), saturated fat free and cholesterol free.  Due to being on a dairy free diet as well I recruited my mom to try the Cheezy Crisps. Unlike their other crackers the Cheezy Crisps are little triangles and were covered in a bright orange cheesy powder. They are about half the size of their regular square crackers but there were plenty of them in the box. The texture and crunch were the same as the Grammy Crisps and my mom said there was a lot of cheesy flavor and reminded her of a better tasting thin crunchy Cheeto. The ingredients list on these are a lot longer due to the cheese and has some ingredients I would prefer not to see like corn syrup solids and maltodextrin but out of the long list those are the only two I have a problem with but unlike Cheetos and Doritos it does not contain any artificial food colorings.

The 7 Ancient Grains crackers are low sodium, certified gluten free, saturated fat free, cholesterol free, vegan/dairy free and contains 24g of whole grains per serving. These have the typical square shape as Crunchmaster's other crackers and seemed to have fewer in the box. You can also see some of the seeds in each cracker. I love the ingredients list for these and I would consider this a real food and a great option to pair up with cheese, avocado, deli meat, soup, salads etc. They are crunchy, slightly salty and reminded me of a regular rice cracker. I probably wouldn't eat these by themselves since they are on the bland side but paired up with other foods I would.

 Overall the Grammy Crisps and Cheezy Crisps get two thumbs up from me and I would highly recommend buying them especially if you have kids. The 7 Ancient Grains crackers were okay, they didn't stand out to me and I wouldn't go out of my way to go buy them but I would eat them again. A big thank you to Crunchmaster for sending me these products to review on my blog!

*I did not pay for these products and it was sent to me for review purposes. This review is strictly my opinion and I was not paid or influenced in any way.