Your Protein Opinion

Protein Review - Reflex R-Bar (Cookies & Cream)

Reflex are perhaps a lesser known brand and they're advertising their market niche as a fully 'natural' protein bar with no artificial flavours, no gluten or palm oil and 'naturally' sweetened with stevia and nut butters. But we'll have to see if this causes a compromise with the taste.

Taste - 6.5/10

The protein bar is very Quest bar like as it is a whey-like protein block (in this case it is made using milk proteins) with chocolate and white chunks dispersed throughout. The taste of this bar isn't bad, but neither is it anything special. It has a fairly generic chocolate and protein taste, again, very similar to the cookies and cream quest bar (which also has 20 less calories). In addition, whilst stevia is supposedly more 'natural', it does add the associated bitter aftertaste which I'm not a big fan of.

Macros - 6.5/10

The macros for this bar delivers 20 g of protein and 10 g of fibre with a total of 210 kcal. Now whilst this isn't bad by any stretch of the imagination, it's most similar competitor, the Quest bar, delivers 21 g of protein and 14 g of fibre for only 190 kcal. I guess it can be argued that since the R-bar uses more natural ingredients, there is a macro compromise. Indeed, looking at the ingredient list, the R-bar does seem to be more clean with the main difference being that the Quest bar contains both palm oil and sucralose, so if you're looking to avoid those, then the R-bar is a better choice for you. Interestingly, the R-bar ingredient lists itself as containing 15 % almonds and as there weren't any whole almond/almond pieces in the bar, I assume they use almond butter, which is an interesting product choice. Finally, this product has a whopping 6 g of polyol (in the form of Glycerine) which can definitely cause some.... problems for people who are polyol sensitive.

Texture - 5/10

The texture was fairly monotonous as the bar itself was a bit hard and chewy, and I couldn't really distinguish any textural difference between the chocolate and white bits. The chocolate chunks were slightly different whilst the cookie pieces only gave a very slight crunch. Overall, I feel that the Quest bar offered more of a variation in texture (albeit only slightly).

Cost - 7.5/10

I bought a box of 12 for £17.75 so each bar worked out to be around £1.48 (~€1.69) which is fairly cheap and reasonable for a protein bar. So if nothing else, these are affordable.

Bonus - 1 Point

As this doesn't have a chocolate coating, I microwaved half of it (as I do with all non-coated protein bars) to see if that improved anything. Now, with no exaggeration, taking a bite straight after microwaving, I genuinely thought I just took a bite out of a hot cookie dough dessert (or a pizookie) as the bar was soft and moist and the melted chocolate bits was amazing. However, after a few seconds, the stevia bitterness kicked in and rudely reminded me that no, I was eating a protein bar and not a delicious calorific dessert. So, I would have given this many many bonus points if it tasted the way it did in the first few seconds but alas, it was not to be.

Total Score - 25.5 Points

As it is so similar, I can't help but to compare this bar to the cookies and cream Quest bar and in my opinion, I would prefer the latter as for me, the hard macros are better and I'm not particularly bothered by palm oil or other minor additives. However, I can see how the R-bar might appeal to someone who is specially limiting or avoiding certain chemicals or additives (which is completely reasonable as if nothing, they can't be doing any good).