Peeled Snacks - Shock-olate
When putting together snacks for my husband and myself lately, mixed dried fruits and nuts seemed to be the smartest plan. We have been doing a pretty intense workout schedule and need snacks that have a good balance of protein, carbs and a little bit of fat to get us through the day. I had been making my own blend, but when I heard of Peeled Snacks, they sounded like just the thing for those busy days when we can barely get ourselves out the door in the morning. You know the ones - you manage to snooze through your alarm clock until finally one of you opens your eyes and manages to focus on the time only to find that you are expected in the office for a meeting in 10 minutes. Needless to say, on those days you don’t really have time to pack your own snack. A pre-packaged healthy snack like Peeled Snacks could be just the thing.
The first combination that I got to try was Shock-olate: pears, apricots, almonds, walnuts and best of all, dark chocolate! How could I go wrong? Upon examining the product, I noticed that within the little 190-calorie pack, there were two additional plastic bags, one containing the nuts and one containing the chocolate. Unfortunately, it took me a while to recognize the latter because the coloring of the little chips was decidedly not dark. It was even lighter than milk chocolate chips would be, a pale beige. I hesitantly tasted one chip and determined that while it was indeed some form of chocolate, it wasn’t that good - it almost seemed like it had gone bad, the texture as well as the flavor were lacking, almost chalky.
My understanding of this compartmentalized breakdown was that it is intended to keep the nuts crunchy and make sure the ingredients don’t just turn into one big sticky clump. That part worked quite well: the walnuts and almonds were decidedly crunchy and fresh and provided a nice contrast to the chewiness of the fruit. The combination of the fruits and nuts were very tasty - the pears were particularly good. Without the snack’s namesake, the chocolate, the rest of it was quite good. Perhaps that’s the shock part?
Aside from the chocolate issue, my main concern about this snack is its packaging. While the multiple plastic bag setup does make for better quality individual ingredients, it still makes my environmentally-friendly spidey sense tingle. I don’t know that I’m comfortable buying a product with extra plastic bags just to have this fleeting perfection of crunchy nuts and dried fruit.
It also occurred to me that it would be nice to see some organic selections from Peeled Snacks. My solution might just be to pack my own selection of fruits and nuts the night before or try more diligently to wake up earlier in the mornings.
