Product Review: Larabar Original Fruit & Nut Bars

[runpunkrun]

LÄRABAR Original Fruit & Nut Bars are gluten free, vegan, and kosher. Their products are clearly labeled, and their chocolate is vegan and doesn't contain soy. In fact, according to their FAQ, the bars don't contain any soy, though they don't claim to be soy free.

I found the fruit and nut bars to have a soft, pleasant texture. Pureed dates and chopped nuts are pressed into in a short, stout bar, and it's satisfying to bite into, easy to chew, and isn't sticky or tough or gritty. Depending on the flavor there might be a bit of crunch from the nuts or chocolate chips, or some chewiness from dried fruit, but the dates are mostly just the flavorless glue that holds everything together. I don't find these very sweet at all, not anything like biting straight into a date, which I did once and will not do again.

Arranged in roughly the order of how likely I am to buy them again:

Cherry Pie: Almonds and tart cherries at the front of this one. Very tasty, and easily my favorite. When they went on sale I bought two boxes. Ingredients: Dates, Almonds, Unsweetened Cherries.

Peanut Butter Cookie: Tastes like chunky peanut butter, with just a hint of sweetness. Very good. Ingredients: Dates, Peanuts, Sea Salt.

Peanut Butter & Jelly: Mm, peanuts and cherries, less smooth than the Peanut Butter Cookie—the nuts are chunkier here—but it really does bring to mind a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I've had a couple of these, and the smaller the cherries are chopped the more it reminds one of a PB&J. Ingredients: Dates, Peanuts, Unsweetened Cherries, Sea Salt.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip: I was hoping this would taste like a peanut butter cup and of course it didn't. Still, you can't go wrong with peanuts and chocolate. The chocolate's in little pellets that are just the right size for the bar, and it's semisweet, which means it has added sugar, but I enjoyed its flavor; more gentle than that full-bore bitterness you get from unsweetened chocolate, but still with a nice edge. Ingredients: Dates, Peanuts, Semisweet Chocolate (Unsweetened Chocolate, Cane Sugar, Cocoa Butter, Vanilla Extract), Sea Salt.

Blueberry Muffin: Smells like grape jelly and...tastes like it too. Way closer to a nut butter and jelly sandwich than any kind of blueberry muffin. The nuts are very mild in this one. Ingredients: Cashews, Dates, Apples, Blueberries, Vanilla Extract.

Lemon Bar: The first bite is lemony in a way that almost reminds me of furniture polish, but it grew on me by the end. Ingredients: Dates, Cashews, Almonds, Lemon Juice Concentrate, Dried Lemon Juice Concentrate, Lemon Oil.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough: The chocolate chips are nice and the cashews are mild and buttery. Ingredients: Cashews, Dates, Semisweet Chocolate (Unsweetened Chocolate, Cane Sugar, Cocoa Butter, Vanilla Extract), Apples, Sea Salt, Vanilla Extract.

Banana Chocolate Chip: Mildly sweet banana flavor, not at all like being socked in the face by a bunch of overripe bananas, which is what I expected. Chocolate still gets a little lost though. Ingredients: Dates, Almonds, Unsweetened Bananas, Semisweet Chocolate Chips (Unsweetened Chocolate, Sugar, Cocoa Butter, Vanilla Extract).

Chocolate Covered Almond: The chopped nuts are real obvious in this one, but the chocolate's the best part. Ingredients: Dates, Almonds, Semisweet Chocolate Chips (Unsweetened Chocolate, Sugar, Cocoa Butter, Vanilla Extract).

Almond Butter Chocolate Chip: This tasted like it'd been too close to a banana, so I can't accurately determine its flavor, but I wasn't impressed, mainly because almonds don't taste like anything next to strong flavors like chocolate (or banana). Ingredients: Almonds, Dates, Semisweet Chocolate Chips (Unsweetened Chocolate, Sugar, Cocoa Butter, Vanilla Extract), Apples, Cocoa Powder, Sea Salt.

Apple Pie: Tastes like cinnamon and vaguely of apples, and in that reminds one of apple pie. Lots of crunch from the nuts. No sign of the raisins, though, must have been whirred up with the dates. Ingredients: Dates, Almonds, Unsweetened Apples, Walnuts, Raisins, Cinnamon.

Pecan Pie: This was kind of slippery when I opened it. Anyway, if you removed all the sugar and the crust from a pecan pie, I imagine this is what it would taste like: pecans. This one was also a little gritty. Ingredients: Dates, Pecans, Almonds.

Chocolate Chip Brownie: The cocoa powder and walnuts make this one kind of bitter, even with the sweetened chocolate chips. Ingredients: Dates, Semisweet Chocolate Chips (Unsweetened Chocolate, Sugar, Cocoa Butter, Vanilla), Almonds, Walnuts, Cocoa Powder, Sea Salt.

Cashew Cookie: Tastes—very mildly—of cashews, with some caramel notes from the dates. Very bland, but I liked the dry clay-like texture; very satisfying to bite a piece off. Ingredients: Cashews, Dates.

BONUS:

Almond Butter Chocolate Brownie Protein Bar: Chalky, dry, hard to chew, unpleasant as heck. I took one bite of this and decided to save the rest "for later." Ingredients: Dates, Almonds, Pea Protein, Semisweet Chocolate (Unsweetened Chocolate, Cane Sugar, Cocoa Butter, Vanilla Extract), Cocoa Powder, Sea Salt.

These are convenient and tasty (most of them) and cost about a buck a piece or less if you get them on sale.

Edited: The Larabar FAQ changed between me writing this, and me posting it, so I rewrote the opening paragraph to reflect those changes. Here's what it used to say.

And check out the comments for additional reviews from indywind!

Comments

[sonia]

Looks like you had fun tasting a bunch of different kinds!

I used to eat the chocolate coconut Larabars as a major component of my diet. Sadly a year or two ago they discontinued the 1.8oz bars, reintroduced them as 1.6oz, raised the price, and I started having cross-contamination symptoms from them. So I think they moved production to a facility that processes wheat, unfortunately for those of us affected by that.

[runpunkrun]

That's disappointing. I'm sorry you had to find out that way.

I went to go consult their FAQ on the subject and discovered all my FAQ links are now broken. So who knows what's actually going on over there. Let me fix that.

[sonia]

I looked at the FAQ, and it claims gluten free but doesn't say anything about the facility or certification.

As a side note, at the bottom of the FAQ it says they participate in TerraCycle wrapper recycling. I used to recycle my wrappers that way. A couple of years ago that program abruptly ended.

With all the changes that happened, makes me wonder if the company got bought out. Hm, found an article that says General Mills bought them in 2008. Maybe changes took a while, or something else happened.
https://www.newhope.com/blog/larabar-acquired-general-mills

[runpunkrun]

It took me a while to write this post (all that taste testing!) and in that time the FAQ changed at least twice. First their stance on soy changed as they were apparently in the process of eliminating soy from their chocolate, and now their gluten policy seems to have weakened. Originally--back in April--it said:

LÄRABAR products have no gluten-containing ingredients, and we have manufacturing controls in place to assure there are no cross-contact concerns. We also periodically verify our practices using Gliadin gluten testing.

But all that's now gone from their FAQ. It used to be on its own page; the Wayback Machine has a copy from October 2017.

[sonia]

Thanks for the Wayback link! *snif* about their change in manufacturing...

I think the chocolate being fair trade is a positive change, anyway. I don't remember that being the case before.

[jesse_the_k]

I wonder what the economics of the GF market is like. Cause Larabars GF-freedom was (IIRC) a major marketing point. Would it make economic sense to pivot away from that?

[runpunkrun]

Their products still say "gluten free" on them. Going by sonia's experience, that's not good enough. For someone like me, who can tolerate a little cross contamination, it's been fine. My guess is that the expense of maintaining a GF product probably costs more than they're making from people who can't have any gluten in their diet at all.

However, this stuff gets around the online GF community, and once you've lost someone's favor, it's hard to get it back, and it spreads. So it's a bold move they're making if they've decided to slack off on their gluten-freeness.