I received this product as part of the chick advisor product review club and I was very excited to try it out. I eat granola bars a lot and I was looking forward to finding a new healthy one. I however found this one too sweet for my liking. The fruit overpowered the flavour along with the chocolate it was just too see for me. I would recommend this product to others and it is a decent price. I would not buy it again.

I received 3 of the Brookside Dark Chocolate Fruit & Nut Bars (different flavors) from Chick Advisor to review.

Cherry with Pomegranate:

I have to admit, I was a bit disappointed in this bar. Did it taste great? Oh it sure did. Did I eat the whole thing. Yup :-(

So why the sad face?

At first glance, the packaging for this fruit and nut bar is attractive, with about half of the front using a clear window to display the bar. (I like seeing what I'm about to eat/buy - as opposed to a picture of the product that some other bars use where they blow up the picture to show the healthy ingredients.) Looks good! But hold on a sec.

I read the label and notice some oddities. "Made with real fruit" with the french version below reading "fait de vrai jus de fruit" - not quite the same saying real fruit in english and real fruit juice (from concentrate btw) in french. Which is it? Let's flip the bar over and read the ingredients.

Almonds. Organic? No. And not a deal breaker. Dark Chocolate? Yes but sweetened with sugar- and it doesn't say what % of cocoa. So? Well, for dark chocolate to have real health benefits, it needs to contain 70-85% cocoa. Oh well.

2 strikes. Still here? Cool.

The ingredients go on to list sweetened cherries (cherries, sugar), high maltose corn syrup, sweetened cranberries (more sugar!) and even lists sugar as a main ingredient.

Total sugar for the 39g bar? 13g. Ugh. It took me 5 bites to eat this fruit & nut bar, and it tasted sweet (aka tasted really good), but felt more like i was eating a dessert (heck, the bar is 33% sugar!)

Like any busy health conscious chick, I'd like to take full responsibility for what I eat. I'm trying to cut out refined sugars from my diet (with my ultimate goal to even cut sugar from my coffee...arg - so tough!!) - so I unfortunately have to say that this bar, although it tasted great, struck out.

Brookside's Dark Chocolate Cherry with pomegranate fruit and nut bar is trying to look healthy. Non-GMO, gluten free buzzwords: check. Natural flavour label: check. Dark chocolate: check. But look a little closer and you'll see its mostly sugar and definately falls short on providing a healthy snack alternative.

But hey, if this isn't meant to be a healthy snack - then I guessI can say pardon me, my bad. After all, I probably could've eaten two (maybe 3).

Pros:
- non gmo
- source of fibre
- tasted great, a bit too sweet though.
- rice crisps are a nice touch and provide a neutral taste barrier between ingredients.
- chocolate: mmmmm.
- one of the freshest tasting bars I've ever eaten, as if it was just made the other day.

Cons:
- too much sugar
- dark chocolate didn't list cocoa % so is likely of no health benefit
- fruit is all sweetened and label read as real fruit (juice) but is from concentrate

This flavor is my least favorite. Still quite surprised about how good these things are. Looking at them you wouldn't think that they are as good as they are, especially that the flavors seemed a little weird to me.

Thank you so much for this opportunity. ..I received the brookside chocolate bar cherry with pomegranate as a sample to try and I really liked it..the nutritional value is pretty good...the taste is great not to sweet not too salty. I would buy it again

I received this product as part of the Product Review Club. I really enjoyed the taste of these bars. They have a large amount of nuts, so the protein level is higher than a regular chocolate bar. However, the large amount of sugar would make them not a choice for a healthy snack on a regular basis. As a caution, they become rock hard if you store them somewhere cold. Be careful! Overall, a tasty bar, but not a health food.

Of the three flavors of Brookside fruit and nut bars I got to try for free from chickadvisor, this was my least favorite. It's still good, but the cherry was quite overpowering and tasted a bit artificial- even though it's not. I also didn't get much of the pomegranate burst of flavor that I was expecting.

Still good for free but I probably would not purchase this flavor.

I liked this fruit and nut bar, especially since it had a touch of dark chocolate. The texture balance between chewy and crunchy was perfect; however I found it just a tad bit sweet for my taste. Otherwise, it's the perfect snack to keep you full and satisfied between meals.

Considering I could really get behind the other two flavours this one fell pretty short. The cherry tastes pretty fake.. Although looks and smells real. I couldn't really get over the taste and therefore won't be purchasing this particular flavour. I do love the cranberry!

This one was very sweet but did enjoy it as a nice treat. It is great for a quick snack for all the on the go people. I will possibly consider this on in the future.

I received this product for free as part of the ChickAdvisor Product Review Club.

While I did enjoy the other flavours in their series, I did not enjoy the cherry with pomegranate. I'm not a big fan of cherry, so I am biased because of that. Still a good snack for on the go. If I were to choose, I'd go with another flavour like blueberry with acai.