*UPDATE*: Quest Nutrition released the Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Quest Bar to the general public on July 19, 2016! The review that follows was published on April 28, 2016 when the bar was available exclusively to Quest Lab members. The bar can now be purchased at GNC, Vitamin Shoppe, their respective websites, and QuestNutrition.com. The photos have been updated to showcase the official packaging.
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Oatmeal will never get its due, no matter what. Oatmeal is rich in all kinds of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. It’s cheap, easy, and heart-healthy. It provides you with plenty of complex carbohydrates (the good kind) to give you the energy you need to tackle all those early-morning tasks, such as making a better-tasting breakfast because oatmeal is boring as hell. Real talk, people.
Oatmeal sucks by itself, which is why some flexible dieting extremists will put all kinds of things like brownies and chocolate syrup and sprinkles and pizza in their oatmeal. Oatmeal, however, does taste great in cookies! The folks at Quest Nutrition agree, and now they’re letting us decide if their Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Quest Bar will become the next flavor in their lineup.
Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Quest Bar
The Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Quest Bar is competing against the Blueberry Muffin Quest Bar and the Rocky Road Quest Bar to become the next Quest Bar. (Update: It did!) This one contains almonds, pecans, rolled oats, unsweetened chocolate, cocoa butter, and cinnamon amongst its ingredients. There’s a lot going on here, but there’s a lot to love about that list. The look and feel of the Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Quest Bar is very similar to the Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Quest Bar, which bodes well considering I ranked the latter as my #2 overall when I reviewed every Quest Bar ever.
Let’s start with the good: chocolate chunks. Quest excels when they incorporate huge chocolate chunks. They somehow manage to take one of the worst words in the English language (chunk) and make it a great thing by pairing it with one of the best words in the English language (porn). There is some serious #ChunkPorn in this bar, and the unsweetened chocolate chunks are downright delicious. Every single bite in my Oatmeal Chocolate Chunk Quest Bar had some chunkage, just as the Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Quest Bar does.
#ChunkPorn
Now onto some of the bad. I love cinnamon to death, but the Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Quest Bar has far too much for my liking. While there is some natural rolled oat flavor true to the name, the entire bar is flavored so heavily with cinnamon that it’s incredibly overpowering. The attempt at sweetness to balance this out lands largely on the artificial side; more so than in most bars. Think about those Quaker Cinnamon & Spice Instant Oatmeal packets. The bar carries the same flavor as if you had sampled those packets before you even cooked the oatmeal: very sweet clashing with a a lot of spice. A more mellowed use of cinnamon would have done this bar wonders.
Since most oatmeal chocolate chip products are of the cookie variety, the next step was an obvious one. Let’s see how the Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Quest Bar fares when baked into a cookie:
Some Quest Bars really benefit from baking/broiling, but I can’t say that’s true for the Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Quest Bar. Baking into cookies was successful in dialing down the aggressive cinnamon flavor and bringing out more elements of the oatmeal, but along with it came a chalky whey protein mouthfeel and flavor that I didn’t love. I was still treated to some bursts of chocolatey goodness via the #chunks, which makes this bar good enough to enter the rotation for now. But if Quest is listening to me (they’re not), this shouldn’t be the winning flavor in this contest without some adjustments.
In summary, oatmeal will never get its due. Not even today.
Odds That Oatmeal Ever Gets Its Due Rating: 0 out of 10
#ChunkPorn Rating: 9 out of 10
Overall Rating: 6.5 out of 10
Nutrition: 180 cals, 20g protein, 22g carbs, 8g fat, 15g fiber (soluble corn fiber), 1g sugar
Related Protein Reading:
- REVIEW: Quest Protein Crunch Bars (Every Single One)
- REVIEW: Every Quest Bar Ever Created
- REVIEW: Oh Yeah! ONE Bars (All of Them)
- REVIEW: Chef Robert Irvine Fit Elite Bars
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With that picture, I DIG the size of those chocolate chunks. Interesting too that they have pecans.
They really need to explore pistachio as a flavor.
My first bar had a really good amount; the second not quite as many. I’m hoping the first was a truer representation of what others will experience. #ChunkPorn. You’re the second person that’s recommended pistachio as a flavor in the last two days; I would have never thought about it! Like a pistachio ice cream, perhaps?
NICE!!!!! This is the place for news indeed.
Just ordered a few boxes from their site.
Thanks brother.