REVIEW - Tesco Goodness Cereal Bars

I have an on-off relationship with cereal bars - I really want to like them (they're convenient and good snacks to keep hunger pangs at bay) but I'm always left feeling slightly underwhelmed by them. They're always too crumbly, too crunchy, too sweet or simply just a bit bland. I haven't yet found a brand that I can be consistently loyal to and for that reason I'm always on the lookout for new and different bars.

I noticed a while ago that Tesco had brought out their own range of cereal bars, many of which are uncannily similar to some of the big brand leaders (the 'oaty granola' bars and 'fruity bakes' specifically spring to mind!) and seem to be on a permanent 2 for £2 offer. Also included in the range are their 'Goodness Cereal Bars' which are supposedly aimed at children; but, being drawn to all things banana-flavoured, I still ended up picking up a pack to try out. I mixed up my selection and also got the strawberry flavoured ones to try. There are 6 bars in a packet and they've been described as "oat cereal bars with banana/strawberry flavoured pieces".

 In all honesty, knowing that these are aimed at children, I wasn't expecting much - which is probably just as well! Firstly the bars are very small (21g) which might be fine for a little human but doesn't really do much to satisfy the hunger of a much larger human. Still, the packaging if fairly cute although won't do much for your street cred if you're eating these in public.

On unwrapping one of the banana bars, I wasn't hit by a wave of banana-scent but you can detect it if you give the bar a sniff. Visually I wasn't very impressed - I could see a grand total of two small pieces of banana (although with a 3% contribution I shouldn't have expected more); trying to be optimistic I rationalised that there might be more pieces embedded in the bar itself. Sadly that thought didn't come true - the bar was essentially banana-flavoured cereal pieces with very few pieces of actual banana. Still, on a positive note the texture was good - some cereal bars can be too hard and chewy but this one was soft and fairly pleasant to eat. And there definitely was a flavour of banana - it would have been nice if it was stronger but it was present nonetheless.

1% strawberry...duly noted

At least the packaging is cute

I didn't fare much better with the strawberry bar. Checking the ingredients list I saw that freeze-dried strawberry pieces only contributed 1% (!) and that was definitely confirmed after opening the packet. Again, the smell was there but it was fairly faint and I feel like the taste of these strawberry bars was actually slightly weaker than the banana ones. The texture was also more chewy - sigh - overall not a great snack experience.

I'm giving the banana bars 3 out of 10 and the poor strawberry bars 2 out of 10. My hunt for the perfect cereal bar continues...