Friday, April 15, 2016

Quest Bar REVIEW: Every Quest Bar Ever Made)

Guest Blog Feature By: Junk Male
Excluding Oreos, candy, cupcakes, beer, Twinkies, potato chips, and ice cream, I’m pretty healthy! Don’t let this blog fool you –  I spend a great deal of time and energy in the gym. I regularly stock protein bars at home and at work to ensure I have quick access to protein on lifting days. I also have an overflowing closet of junk food that I review so that people will like me on Instagram (@JunkBanter).
I’ve received several requests for Quest Bars. If you’ve never heard of them, Quest Nutrition markets these bars as “cheat meals without the cheating.” They boast that their use of cutting-edge ingredients with clean nutritional profiles will make you feel like you’re eating something unhealthy. Well, who better to judge whether or not something tastes unhealthy than the people responsible for this? On that note, let’s eat every single damn Quest Bar ever created.
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In lieu of a standard review of every Quest Bar, I’m going to rank all 19 Quest varieties from my most favorite to least.
Note: All bars reviewed below feature Quest’s new recipe that uses soluble corn fiber instead of the former isomalto-oligosaccharides (IMOs) as the prebiotic fiber source. Quest Nutrition maintains that the change, among other purported benefits, keep the Quest Bars at peak freshness longer. This change has been met with mixed, more-often-negative reviews from consumers in my wildly nonscientific research. You can read more about the change on Quest’s blog.
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1) Mint Chocolate Chunk: These Quest Bars use peppermint oil to add a minty, cooling sensation to every chocolatey bite. Even though they contain radioactive green chunks that look like leprechaun shit, these remind me of Thin Mints or York Peppermint Patties. They also contain chocolate cookie chunks because America is the greatest nation in the world.
2) Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough: These bars contain real chocolate bits instead of cocoa butter or cocoa powder that other bars use. They’re plenty sweet, kind of buttery, and just a little salty like a chocolate chip cookie. They have a dense yet chewy texture that remind me of eating raw cookie dough straight out of the refrigerator. Not that I’ve ever done that. (Editor’s Note: I’m quite famous for doing that).
3) White Chocolate Raspberry: By far the sexiest Quest bar, the dried raspberries add a tart sweetness and unique chewy texture that make these bars one of the more indulgent flavors. These remind me of eating fresh berries with whipped cream. I recommend eating everything with whipped cream.
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4) S’Mores: One of the newest offerings, S’mores is also one of the most unique. The base does taste a good deal like graham, perhaps drawing from the cinnamon used in this recipe. It also contains chunks of unsweetened chocolate and cocoa butter to infuse plenty of chocolatey goodness and added texture. I don’t really get any marshmallow flavoring, but I’m ok with this because of my well-documented disdain for marshmallows. If marshmallows are your thing, just broil these and slather on your own marshmallow fluff because who gives a shit?
5) Double Chocolate Chunk: Look, are you really surprised everything with chocolate is dominating these rankings? This bar has cocoa, cocoa butter, and unsweetened chocolate. The Quest chocolate trifecta. Chocolate flavorings always mask the chalky taste of whey protein the best, so it’s no surprise this flavor is one of the better ones. It has a rich cocoa flavor and a big chunks of chocolate. As an added bonus, this is one of the all-natural flavors that use only Stevia and no artificial sucralose as the sweetening agent. This is the base bar that gave birth to Mint Chocolate Chunk, but I would take a Thin Mint over a Double Chocolate Chip cookie every time.
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6) Cookies and Cream: These Quest Bars suffer most from the change to soluble corn fiber and the new ingredients. They once tasted exactly like Oreos and were my #2, but the new recipe doesn’t deliver the same sweetness they once had. It’s possible I’m eating from a bad batch or am just an unqualified jackass, but the new Cookies and Cream makes me long for the return of sweet, sweet IMOs despite having absolutely no idea what IMOs are.
7) Lemon Cream Pie: Hands down the most underrated Quest Bar out there. You do have to like lemons because there is a kick-ass lemon sourness to every bite. It contains enough stevia to sweeten it to a point that evokes “lemon cream pie.” I feel like nobody gives this bar a chance, and that makes me sad. Sad enough to eat 19 Quest Bars and review them for the entire world (my Mom and that one guy from Armenia that really likes this blog).
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8) Pumpkin Pie: This flavor is a limited edition and you know how much that turns me on. Pumpkin Pie is the first ever coated Quest Bar, wearing a warm jacket of graham cracker crumbles and pumpkin orange icing. We reviewed this bar solo and found it to taste like smooth vanilla and subtle cinnamon spice. I was hoping for more pumpkin spice from this bar, but then again I hope for more pumpkin spice in everything I eat. It’s still quite tasty, so just eat it with whipped cream or cram it into an actual pumpkin pie.
9) Chocolate Brownie: These bars are darker than night with a deep cocoa flavoring. They taste saltier than some of the other chocolate flavors, which is necessary to try and capture the essence of a brownie. Because these bars are a health product, they don’t contain enough sweetness to be a fair representation of an actual brownie. If brownies are your thing, just bake some real brownies and fit them into your macros. Nobody is keeping track anyway.
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10) Cinnamon Bun: Of all the Quest Bars on the market, this one tastes the most like its name. By far the stickiest Quest Bar, the flavor is a cinnamon explosion. There’s a rich butteriness to this bar, even though there is no butter of any sort used. It also smells divine, because the scent of fresh-baked cinnamon buns is one of the most powerful forces on Earth. This bar would make Poppin’ Fresh proud.
11) Coconut Cashew This is one of my personal favorites, so I’ve inexplicably ranked it 11th. It’s one of the most unique as it uses both dried coconut and real cashews that aren’t featured in any other bar. The coconut adds so much natural sweetness that this bar still manages to taste sweeter than most despite not using sucralose. They’re no Toasted Coconut Oreos, but they’re a real treat. I know coconut is polarizing, so I stuck it here in the middle to maintain some credibility (is anybody reading this?)
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12) Vanilla Almond Crunch: Does anyone even know this bar exists? I see people eating Quest Bars all the time, and it’s never this one. I know I’ve got it ranked all the way down here, but this bar is quite good. Bold vanilla flavor with crunchy bits of almond. The type of person who eats Quest Bars also probably drinks Vanilla Almond milk so this bar should be more popular than it is. What holds this bar back is its severe lack of chocolate or pumpkin. I love this bar, but I never buy it either.
13) Peanut Butter Supreme: I have a personal issue with this bar. It’s more or less fine, but the image shows what appears to be a chocolate peanut butter pie with whipped cream, chocolate syrup, and a metric ton of peanuts on top of it. This just tasted like roasted peanuts. The ingredient list contains both peanuts and almonds. It does NOT contain “delicious slice of chocolate peanut butter pie.” Let’s relax before we call ourselves “Supreme.” For this reason, Peanut Butter Supreme is the most pretentious asshole on the market.
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14) Chocolate Peanut Butter: I like this bar upon first bite, but it suffers from an odd aftertaste. A Reese’s peanut butter cup this Quest Bar is not. Because it contains only 2g of sugar and no sucralose, the mostly unsweetened cocoa combines with mostly unsweetened peanut butter flavor to land in a somewhat bitter place. Some sucralose probably would have fixed this, or about 30g of actual table sugar. This bar still has chocolate in it, so I’m going to keep eating it until I look like The Rock.
15) Apple Pie: Now that we’re finally done with chocolate, let’s talk about some of the other bars. This bar is a nice fall flavor. It tastes like a cinnamon-spiced apple more than it does an apple pie. It kind of reminds me of eating applesauce as a small child. I got made fun of as a kid. Moving on…
16) Banana Nut Muffin: This bar doesn’t get its due, not even from me.  While it tastes quite good, it’s at a severe disadvantage on shelves merely because banana is the lead flavor. It combines bananas with walnuts and cinnamon to taste like a fresh banana nut muffin or banana bread. Could be a little sweeter. Donkey Kong would absolutely eat this if Mario didn’t kill him.
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17) Strawberry Cheesecake: This bar uses dried strawberries to deliver a well-executed strawberry flavor. I’m less impressed with how they went about capturing “cheesecake.” There is a general creaminess here that, when combined with the softer texture of this Quest Bar, makes you at least think about cheesecake. I think about cheesecake quite a bit, and this bar doesn’t suppress that craving.
18) Peanut Butter & Jelly: This bar smells like a peanut butter & jelly sandwich, which is a promising start. The flavor is roasted peanuts with a fruity tartness that could pass as either raspberry or strawberry. The fruit flavor tastes slightly fake, probably a direct result of the sucralose. The ingredient lists only gives me the mysterious “natural flavor,” which doesn’t help me identify the fruit. I’m not sure why they didn’t use dried fruit like in other bars. To see how authentic this PB&J flavor was, I ate it between two slices of white bread. It was terrible, so I ranked it all the way down here.
19) Mixed Berry Bliss: These bars contain dried blueberries and dried strawberries. Ok, NOW I know why PB&J didn’t use real dried fruit. These bars are funky. They simply aren’t sweet enough to stand out amongst all the other desserty flavor varieties. Is this what real food tastes like? I feel like this bar is the healthiest, which is why I’ve ranked it dead last on this list.
And that’s it, folks… a review of every Quest Bar ever created. I’m going to go lift (take a nap) because I just consumed 399g of protein.
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Original content: http://junkbanter.com/2015/10/01/review-of-every-quest-bar/
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