Quest Bars

Excluding Oreos, candy, cupcakes, beer, potato chips, and ice cream, I’m pretty healthy! Don’t let this blog fool you –  I spend a great deal of time and energy in the gym. I regularly stock protein bars at home and at work to ensure I have quick access to protein on lifting days. I also have an overflowing closet of junk food that I review so that people will like me on Instagram (@JunkBanter).

I’ve received several requests for Quest Bars. If you’ve never heard of them, Quest Nutrition markets these bars as “cheat meals without the cheating.” They boast that their use of cutting-edge ingredients with clean nutritional profiles will make you feel like you’re eating something unhealthy. Well, who better to judge whether or not something tastes unhealthy than the people responsible for this? On that note, let’s eat every single damn Quest Bar ever created.

Below I rank all the Quest Bars from my most favorite to least:

Current Flavors

1) Mint Chocolate Chunk: These Quest Bars use peppermint oil to add a minty, cooling sensation to every chocolatey bite. Even though they contain radioactive green chunks that look like leprechaun shit, these remind me of Thin Mints or York Peppermint Patties. They also contain chocolate cookie chunks because America is the greatest nation in the world.

2) Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough: These bars contain real chocolate bits instead of cocoa butter or cocoa powder that other bars use. They’re plenty sweet, kind of buttery, and just a little salty like a chocolate chip cookie. They have a dense yet chewy texture that remind me of eating raw cookie dough straight out of the refrigerator. Not that I’ve ever done that. (Editor’s Note: I’m quite famous for doing that).

3) White Chocolate Raspberry: By far the sexiest Quest bar, the dried raspberries add a tart sweetness and unique chewy texture that make these bars one of the more indulgent flavors. These remind me of eating fresh berries with whipped cream. I recommend eating everything with whipped cream.

4) S’mores: S’mores is one of the more unique bars.The base does taste a good deal like graham, drawing from the cinnamon used in this recipe. It also contains chunks of unsweetened chocolate and cocoa butter to infuse plenty of chocolatey goodness and added texture. I don’t really get any marshmallow flavoring, but I’m ok with this because of my well-documented disdain for marshmallows. If marshmallows are your thing, just broil these and slather on your own marshmallow fluff because who gives a shit?

5) Double Chocolate Chunk: Look, are you really surprised everything with chocolate is dominating these rankings? This bar has cocoa, cocoa butter, and unsweetened chocolate: the Quest chocolate trifecta. Chocolate flavorings mask the chalky taste of whey protein the best, so it’s no surprise this flavor is one of the better ones. It has a rich cocoa flavor and a big chunks of chocolate. As an added bonus, this is one of the all-natural flavors that use only Stevia and no artificial sucralose as the sweetening agent. This is the base bar that gave birth to Mint Chocolate Chunk, but I would take a Thin Mint over a Double Chocolate Chip cookie every time.

6) Mocha Chocolate Chip: Everything I just said about the Double Chocolate Chunk bar, just dip it in coffee – that’s what the Mocha Chocolate Chip Quest Bar tastes like. The base tastes strongly of chocolate-flavored coffee. It contains tons of highly sweet chocolate chunks, and the slightly bitter coffee flavor helps soften any excessive sweetness from the sweetening agents. It just tastes more natural… unlike your gains.

7) Cookies and Cream: These Quest Bars suffer most from the change to soluble corn fiber and the new ingredients. They once tasted exactly like Oreos and were my #2, but the new recipe doesn’t deliver the same sweetness they once had. It’s possible I’m eating from a bad batch or am just an unqualified jackass, but the new Cookies and Cream makes me long for the return of sweet, sweet IMOs despite having absolutely no idea what IMOs are.

8) Blueberry Muffin: It’s all about muffin chunks for this bar, though they’re definitely not real muffin chunks. The Blueberry Muffin Quest Bar was released as part of a fan-vote through the Quest Labs testing community. This bar has a huge floury graham characteristic with notes of sweet and tart blueberry. Though I’ve never had a Graham Muffin in my storied career as a fatass, the Blueberry Muffin Quest Bar made me want to. Muffins are one of my favorite fruits, and we all need more fruit in our diets.

9) Cinnamon Bun: Of all the Quest Bars on the market, this one tastes the most like its name. A little sticky by nature, the flavor is a cinnamon explosion. There’s a rich butteriness to this bar, even though there is no butter of any sort used. It also smells divine, because the scent of fresh-baked cinnamon buns is one of the most powerful forces on Earth. This bar would make Poppin’ Fresh proud, if Poppin’ Fresh lifted.

10) Peanut Butter Brownie Smash: If you like to workout to smash things both inanimate and with a pulse, destructively and sexually, then the Peanut Butter Brownie Smash Bar is for you. This is a double layered protein bar that tastes a lot like two Quest Bars welded together – Chocolate Brownie and Peanut Butter Supreme, but Quest threw in some chocolate chips and roasted peanuts to make it more smashable. Good call.

11) Coconut Cashew: This is one of my low-key favorites, so I’ve inexplicably ranked it 11th. It’s one of the most unique as it uses both dried coconut and real cashews that aren’t featured in any other bar. The coconut adds so much natural sweetness that this bar still manages to taste sweeter than most despite not using sucralose. They’re no Toasted Coconut Oreos, but they’re a real treat. I know coconut is polarizing, so I stuck it here in the middle to maintain some credibility (is anybody reading this?)

12) Oatmeal Chocolate Chip: Oatmeal is generally boring as hell, but chocolate can fix anything. This bar manages 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 chocolate chunks are highly appreciated. There’s a crazy amount of cinnamon in this bar which will please many, but it was a bit too aggressive for me. Chocolate though.

13) Chocolate Brownie: These bars are darker than night with a deep cocoa flavoring. They taste saltier than some of the other chocolate flavors, which is necessary to try and capture the essence of a brownie. Because these bars are a health product, they don’t contain enough sweetness to be a fair representation of an actual brownie. If brownies are your thing, just bake some real brownies and fit them into your macros. Nobody is keeping track anyway.

14) Vanilla Almond Crunch: Does anyone even know this bar exists? I see people eating Quest Bars all the time, and it’s never this one. I know I’ve got it ranked all the way down here, but this bar is quite good. Bold vanilla flavor with crunchy bits of almond. The type of person who eats Quest Bars also probably drinks Vanilla Almond milk so this bar should be more popular than it is. What holds this bar back is its severe lack of chocolate or pumpkin. I love this bar, but I never buy it either.

15) Rocky Road: The Rocky Road Bar is Quest’s first attempt at an ice cream flavor, but it misses the mark a bit. Ice cream is supposed to be sweet, and this bar is too bitter to satisfy your craving for that bowl of ice cream you haven’t allowed yourself in the last two and a half years. The fresh almonds are the highlight of this bar, but where the hell are my marshmallows, dammit? The Rocky Road flavor combination was crafted during the Great Depression to lift spirits; this one left me a bit depressed. Stick to the protein fluff.

16) Chocolate Hazelnut: I was really hoping for more of a Nutella vibe from this bar, but it least it has loads of hazelnut throughout The base bar only has a dim chocolate flavor and would have benefitted from more cocoa like in the Chocolate Brownie or Rocky Road bars. It does have some chunks of chocolate, though, so I’m going to keep eating it until I look like The Rock.

17) Chocolate Sprinkled Doughnut: This bar has a promising scent that actually reminded me of the mini bagged chocolate-frosted doughnuts I ate for breakfast today. The taste, however, falls far short of that promise. It has a very similar artificial sweetness level that the Birthday Cake Quest Bar has (more on that abomination later…). There are no chunks, bells, or whistles within the bar itself, where any doughnut vibes are but a figment of the imagination. It’s what lingers in the aftertaste that hurts it most. The chocolate coating and sprinkles help pick up some of the slack to make it passable, but this is a sad, sad donut.

For the purposes of this review, and because most of you are here to read about the Chocolate Sprinkled Doughnut Quest Bar today, let’s call this one a 5.5 out of 10.

18) Peanut Butter Supreme: I have a bone to pick with this bar. It’s more or less fine, but the image shows what appears to be a chocolate peanut butter pie with whipped cream, chocolate syrup, and a metric ton of peanuts on top of it. This just tasted like roasted peanuts. The ingredient list contains both peanuts and almonds. It does NOT contain “delicious slice of chocolate peanut butter pie.” Let’s relax before we call ourselves “Supreme.” For this reason, Peanut Butter Supreme is the most pretentious asshole on the market.

19) Chocolate Peanut Butter: I like this bar upon first bite, but it suffers from an odd aftertaste. A Reese’s peanut butter cup this Quest Bar is not. Because it contains only 2g of sugar and no sucralose, the mostly unsweetened cocoa combines with mostly unsweetened peanut butter flavor to land in a somewhat bitter place. Some sucralose probably would have fixed this, or about 30g of actual table sugar.

Editor’s Note: The Chocolate Peanut Butter Bar has since been reformulated, and this review will need to be updated when I feel like it (never). 

20) Strawberry Cheesecake: This bar uses dried strawberries to deliver a well-executed strawberry flavor. I’m less impressed with how they went about capturing “cheesecake.” There is a general creaminess here that, when combined with the softer texture of this Quest Bar, makes you at least think about cheesecake. I think about cheesecake quite a bit, and this bar doesn’t suppress that craving.

21) Peppermint Bark (seasonal): Dear Santa, can you fix my entire body for Christmas? And maybe fix this bar too, because it’s nowhere NEAR as good as the Mint Chocolate Chunk Bar that sits atop these rankings. The Peppermint Bark Quest Bar has a decent amount of mint flavor but only minimal chocolate. The bar is coated and that may be where a lot of the pungent artificial sweetness that typifies most of Quest’s new bars is coming from.

22) Maple Waffle: If you’ve been looking for a low-carb, high-protein waffle, look elsewhere. The second coming of the deceased Beyond Cereal Bar, Quest says the Maple Waffle Quest Bar has sweet maple inclusions and buttery flavor. The problem is it doesn’t taste much like maple, and the buttery flavor is strong and fake. It has random white chunks and those “muffin” chunks last seen in the Blueberry Muffin Quest Bar, but neither provide any impact. It all just tastes like artificial butter, and the entire bar is stickier than a barroom floor. Hard pass…

23) Pumpkin Pie (seasonal): There used to be a Pumpkin Pie Quest Bar with graham cracker crumbles, but most people hated it. So they brought it back, lost the graham cracker crumbles, and somehow made it worse. You really cannot taste much (if any) of the pumpkin pie spices that should be loaded into this bar. They threw in some cinnamon, but all I taste is pumpkin spice erythritol. The coating on this is just very blah, and my pumpkin spice heart is broken.

24) Birthday Cake: Have you ever realized you forgot someone’s birthday moments before you’re about to see them, so you pulled over to the nearest drug store and bought them a tin of shitty cookies? That’s the Birthday Cake Quest Bar. What was supposed to be a gift ends up being a dud. It doesn’t taste anything like vanilla, buttercream, or any kind of cake that I’ve eaten – it tastes like flour, nothing, and erythritol. It’s oddly unsweet, though the unpleasant taste of erythritol lingers on the tongue for far too long. It took like six years for this bar to finally come out and it ended up sucking. Hold onto your gift receipt.

And that’s it, folks… a review of every Quest Bar. I’m going to go lift (take a nap) because I just consumed over 400 grams of protein.

Odds You Agree With My Rankings Rating: 0 out of 10
How Much Money This Review Costed Rating: $59.99 + Shipping out of 10
Quest Bars Overall Rating: 6 out of 10

For completion purposes and a trip down memory lane, see our review of discontinued flavors below:

Retired Bars

Apple Pie: Apple Pie had a nice fall flavor. It tasted like a cinnamon-spiced apple more than it did an apple pie. It kind of reminded me of eating applesauce as a child. I got made fun of a lot as a kid. Moving on…

Lemon Cream Pie: I thought this bar was overlooked, and it turns out I was right because it got the axe. There was a strong lemony sourness to every bite. Turns out a lot of people thought it tasted like Lysol. I guess I like Lysol because I thought it was pretty good and felt like nobody gave it a chance. It makes me sad – sad enough to eat more than 20 Quest Bars and review them for the entire world (my Mom and that one guy from Armenia that really likes this blog).

Banana Nut Muffin: This bar definitely never got its due. While it tasted quite good, it was at a severe disadvantage on shelves merely because banana is the lead flavor. It combined bananas with walnuts and cinnamon to taste like a fresh banana nut muffin or banana bread. Could have been a little sweeter.

Peanut Butter & Jelly: This flavor had roasted peanuts with a fruity tartness that could pass as either raspberry or strawberry. The fruit flavor tasted slightly fake. I’m not sure why they didn’t use dried fruit like in other bars. To see how authentic this PB&J flavor was, I ate it between two slices of white bread. It was terrible, so I’m glad it’s gone.

Mixed Berry Bliss: These bars contain dried blueberries and dried strawberries. Ok, NOW I know why PB&J didn’t use real dried fruit. These bars are funky. They simply aren’t sweet enough to stand out amongst all the other desserty flavor varieties. Is this what real food tastes like? I feel like this bar is the healthiest, which is why I’ve ranked it dead last on this list.

Cinnamon Beyond Cereal Bar: If this were a cereal, it would have been Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Actually, this product already exists without the protein: Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cereal Bars. These were those. Just a blast of cinnamon and graham flavor and great dipped in milk. Much like Cinnamon Toast Crunch was the best cereal, Cinnamon is the best Quest Protein Crunch Bar.

Chocolate Quest Protein Crunch Bar: If this were a cereal, it would have been Oreo O’s. The flavor was more in the cookies n’ creme arena than it is just chocolate, with the white drizzle helping that fact. You know how an Oreo wafer has that bitter element to it? So did the Chocolate Quest Protein Crunch Bar, and this isn’t a knock against it. Any time you can draw a comparison to anything Oreo, you’re doing a damn good job. And now it’s dead.

Waffle Quest Protein Crunch Bar: If this were a cereal, it would have been Waffle Crisp by default. These bars taste like Eggo waffles that were buttered with a pretty heavy hand and then finished off with maple syrup. The crispy not-rice has a good chew that emulates biting into a toasted waffle. I got butter first (a lot of it) before it transitioned to maple syrup. Maybe like… the sugar-free kind, though, because there’s something artificial about the Waffle Quest Protein Crunch Bar that I didn’t love. A weird aftertaste settled in and stuck around for a bit. Not really sad to see it go.

Quest Hero Bars

Check out our review of all the Quest Hero Bars at the following link: REVIEW: Quest Hero Bars

Other Protein Reading

• REVIEW: Oh Yeah! ONE Bars (All of Them)

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