January 1st: Flyte

Kcal 194 Fat 6.0g Carbs 33.4g (whole 45.0g product)

Its a new year! Happy 2009 ChocolateMission readers!! Now I am sure there are at least a few of you that have vowed to lose a few pounds as part of your New Years resolutions - well ChocolateMission is here to help! During January I am going to be bringing you some reviews of some of the 'lighter' chocolate alternatives out there on todays market. Today I started with the Flyte bar, a product which is manufactured by Mars and consists of a 'chocolate whipped centre wrapped in milk chocolate'. The bar exhibited the slogan 'taste the chocolate, skip some fat'. 

This product came in a 45.0g pack that was split into two smaller 22.5g pieces. I thought the nutritional information was displayed quite misleadingly as it stated it per half bar (22.5g) ... sneaky huh!? I wasn't all that bowled over by the packaging - it looked very similar to the old style Galaxy design. The bar itself was also a bit boring aesthetically, though the rippled effect on top of the chocolate at least added some interest. I was really worried by the smell of the bar - it literally smelt of nothing. Despite being well contained within the wrapper, the chocolate offered only the smallest of sweet scents - it completely failed to heighten my anticipation.

From the very first bite it was pretty obvious what the fat content had been replaced with - sugar!! This bar was exceedingly sweet in every sense - from outer chocolate to inner nougat there was no getting away from the sugar based taste. Looking at the ingredients it was no surprise to see sugar and glucose syrup heading the list. Despite what the slogan of the bar said the chocolate really wasn't that prevalent in the taste of either the outer chocolate or the inner nougat - not surprisingly the actual cocoa content was very limited at 14% min. The product offered a bit of substantiality with the dense nougat, but really its lack of flavours meant that this was a very unfulfilling experience.

Overall I really hope this isn't a sign of things to come in the next month with my exploration of the lighter choices of the chocolate market. To be frank this bar lacked the one thing it promised - a chocolaty flavour hit. Ridding of some of the cocoa content obviously lowered the fat content of the bar, but at the same time it also took away the flavour - rendering this nothing more than a chewy and overly sweet, sugar laden product. Diet or no diet, this would be one I recommend you stay clear of.

5.9 out of 10