Nakd Strawberry Crunch

Product name: Nakd Strawberry Crunch
Purchase details: £0.75 for a 30g bar or three for two (tesco.com)
Calories: 109 per bar
Country of origin: Britain

Although I eat fruit as daytime snacks, you may have noticed that, whilst I still count calories in the evening, I don’t tend to go for treats that are healthy in themselves. However, I’ve been intrigued by the Nakd range of bars from Natural Balance Foods, containing natural ingredients that had simply been ‘smooshed together’.

This new Strawberry Crunch bar came in an attractive pink wrapper that featured strawberries and various claims. Containing raw fruit, crunchies and nuts, it was also ‘packed’ with 18% protein which did make me a little concerned after my last experience with a purposefully protein-heavy product – Lenny & Larry's Muscle Brownie: Peanut butter. However, the difference here was that the Nakd bar wasn’t trying to be anything except a ‘simply yummy’ but healthy treat. It was free from gluten, wheat and dairy, contained ‘no added sugar’, and was vegan. Overall, it encouraged you to ‘love your body’, and wanted people to look and feel better by helping them to eat nourishing foods. Let’s just pretend I didn’t eat this after a chippy meal...

I wouldn’t normally list all the items on an ingredients list but I was impressed by just how ‘real’ this ‘filling’ product was. It contained 43% dates (I don’t generally like these but I know they’re in sticky toffee puddings which I love!), 17% soya crunchies (made from soya, tapioca, starch and salt), 17% cashews and 17% raisins (one of my favourite fruits!). Surprisingly, only 2% of the product was strawberries, and it also contained 2% apple juice concentrate, along with a ‘hint of natural flavouring’.

The ‘satisfying slice of simple goodness’ was a compressed brown bar with white flecks which I can’t say screamed ‘eat me!’. However, it could have been mistaken for containing cocoa, and it was a refreshing change to have a product that contained no colourings (natural or otherwise). In terms of aroma, I could just about sense raisins mixed in with a slight strawberry tang – I couldn’t wait to tuck in!

To the touch, the bar felt slightly sticky but, bearing in mind the amount of squashed fruit, this wasn’t bad at all. In the mouth, it was soft with a noticeable crisp, and had a rough and slightly bitty texture.

As for the taste, I was surprised at how many of the individual flavours came through. After first tasting the subtly sweet berry flavour, an earthy nuttiness then came through, followed by an almost muddy sweetness on the back of the tongue that was provided by the raisins. It really was nice and didn’t taste too dissimilar from Go Ahead! Fruit Bakes.

I have to say this bar has left me feeling really impressed with the Nakd brand. The product itself was great and I loved the little extra touches on the packaging like introducing the ingredients list in other languages by saying ‘Hello, world’ and ‘Hope we spelt everything right...’. I can’t wait to try the other varieties I bought! 

Appearance: 6.5/10
Aroma: 7/10
Taste: 7.5/10
Texture: 7/10
Overall score: 7/10