January 17th: Boots Shapers Chocolate Caramel Bar

Kcal 100 Fat 3.0g Fat(sats) 1.2g Carbs 23.0g

Moving on from the Slim Fast abominations last week I continued my search for a decent chocolate option for those currently undertaking January diets. In the coming week or so I will be trying a few bars that I picked up from my local Boots store - those of you who live outside the UK Boots is Hightstreet Health, Beauty and Pharmaceuticals chain (Wiki is your friend - HERE). Having bought myself a selection of bars from their 'Shapers' range I decided to start with this Chocolate Caramel bar which came billed as 'milk chocolate and melt away with chewy caramel' ... no folks that isn't a typo ... it really said 'milk chocolate and melt away with chewy caramel' ... I think the guy who wrote the blurb on the packaging could of done with checking his work.

This bar came in a 28.0g single bar size which I ate alongside a mid-morning coffee. The 'Shapers' range is pretty extensive with a lot of different flavours so I had to be selective when choosing just a few to feature on the site. One of the things that made this bar in particular stand out was the packaging and I actually thought it looked pretty good with its clean white and beige design work. Despite it looking rather good I was somewhat surprised when I split open the wrapper to unveil the bar underneath. Firstly I noticed that I actually couldn't detect any aroma of note aside from the slightest of chocolaty scents. Secondly the bar was not as I expected aesthetically and this was mainly due to the on-pack picture not providing a realistic visualisation.

Putting these apprehensions to one side I decided to take a bite in to the product at which point I realised that this was more akin one of those refresher sweet chew bars than it was a chocolate bar. On reflection I guess the immediate likable comparison would be the Cadbury Curly Wurly, though this bar was about ten times chewier to the point that it was verging on annoying to eat. I guess one thing that would have got the most out of the longevity that the chewiness brought would have been if the taste was suitably flavoursome - unfortunately this was jut not the case and I felt both the caramel and milk chocolate especially were lacking in flavour. Starting with the chocolate it was ultra thin and offered very little to the taste aside from some mild chocolate milk like flavours. The caramel whilst ultra chewy was very one dimensional in taste and offered nothing of the desired butterscotch or toffee flavours with just a meagre sugary condensed milk like set of flavours. Whilst this did take a long time to eat due to the chewiness I still didn't feel fulfilled having eaten it.

Overall this was again yet another disappointing diet chocolate snack option and not the best of starts for the Boots Shapers range. This was by no means the worst tasting diet chocolate I have ever tasted but at the same time I found it a tad frustrating to eat and subsequently felt that I had ended up burning off more calories from the chewing than I had done consuming the actual bar :) As I have mentioned above the comparison that springs to mind for this product is the Cadbury Curly Wurly though the Cadbury Chomp also offers up the same sort of experience. What both of those offer that this bar doesn't is relatively good standard chocolate and quite tasty caramel with just about the right amount of resistance in the chew - its as simple as that. Sorry dieters but this is yet another I can't recommend to you ... don't worry I will find a good one soon surely :)

5.7 out of 10