After reviewing nearly 40 different protein bars and over 10 different Oreos in Junk Banter’s short life, it doesn’t take an Arnold Schwarzenegger to see that my fitness has reached an Elite level. My lifts have been insane. In just seven months, I’ve added a whopping 20 lbs to my max bench at the expense of only 100 lbs of fat tacked onto my core. Fitness, people! It ain’t rocket science. Eat for abs, or something.

My protein game needs to catchup to my massive gains in the gym, which means it’s time to go Elite. Let’s see if Chef Robert Irvine’s Fit Elite Bars are a worthy snack for this Fitness God:

Chef Robert Irvine’s Fit Elite Bars

Unlike Chef Robert Irvine’s Fit Crunch Bars, which have the same macros as a full cow, Chef Robert Irvine’s Fit Elite Bars are only 180 calories with 20g of protein, 5g of fat, and 24g of carbs. To boot, they only use 2g of sugar. Excellent nutritional profile here. Chef Robert Irvine’s Fite Elite Bars are advertised as gluten-free soft-baked cookie bars made with whey protein isolate. They use isomalto-oligosaccaharides (or “IMOs” for dumbasses like me) as the prebiotic fiber source for the 15g of dietary fiber crammed into into each bar, something that should make Quest Bar junkies nostalgic. But will they give me the strength to do an unassisted pull-up for the first time in my life? Tonight, we find out. 

The newest flavor that has Instagram abuzz is Chef Robert Irvine’s Fit Elite Birthday Cake bars, so I’m going to make you wait until the end of the review to cover it.

Chef Robert Irvine’s Fit Elite Cookie Dough

Chef Robert Irvine’s Fit Elite Cookie Dough is incredibly soft and slightly sticky. This is the softest, most pliable protein bar I’ve encountered as of this writing (more on that, later). Fit Elite Cookie Dough advertises “large chocolate chunks” on the front of the package, and there are indeed large chocolate chunks that taste awesome because they are large chunks of chocolate. Problem is, there aren’t many of them. Fit Elite Cookie Dough uses unsweetened chocolate, cocoa butter, and natural flavor to taste the way it does. This bar is alright, but it isn’t elite on cookie dough flavor. It’s a little salty like a cookie, but it ain’t that sweet and it ain’t that buttery. Chef Robert Irvine’s Fit Elite Cookie Dough tastes like cookie dough in the same way a cookie dough-flavored salt water taffy tastes like cookie dough. This just doesn’t stack up anywhere close to Quest Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough (my #2 Quest Bar) or Combat Crunch Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ().

0-for-2 Rating: .000 out of 10
Tastes Like Taffy Rating: 9 out of 10
Overall Rating: 5.5 out of 10

Chef Robert Irvine’s Fit Elite Cookies ‘N’ Cream

Uh oh. Here’s the best thing I can say about Chef Robert Irvine’s Fit Elite Cookies ‘N’ Cream: it’s one of the worst protein bars I’ve ever eaten in my life. On a scale of 0-10, this is Negative Cookies. Not only that, it tastes like you burped up barf. I’m throwin’ all my cards on the table, people. Come at me, reps.

Chef Robert Irvine is a famous chef for crying out loud; this is completely unacceptable. If you’re a rep for Fit Crunch or Fit Elite Bars and you tell people Fit Elite Cookies ‘N’ Cream is “uh-maz-ing!”, shame on you forever. This bar is disgusting. This is good in the same way that garbage is good to raccoons. How do you possibly screw up cookies n’ cream in the year 2016? Fit Elite Cookies ‘N’ Cream is how. Good God. I bought several of these, but I’m going to donate the rest. Somewhere, a homeless man is going to agree that this tastes terrible. The only thing saving this is the macros, but it’s not worth the price of admission: sadness.

Elite Failure Rating: 9 out of 10
Cookies ‘N’ Barf Rating: 8 out of 10
Overall Rating: 2 out of 10

Robert Irvine’s Fit Elite Birthday Cake

It was hard to be excited over Robert Irvine’s Fit Elite Birthday Cake after the other two flavors, but thankfully this is the far superior one. It’s not the prettiest protein bar I’ve ever seen (it’s actually one of the ugliest), but this flavor is a good one. Unlike a lot of other birthday cake protein bars, there is no weird lemony, Froot Loopy vibe to speak of. Robert Irvine’s Fit Elite Birthday Cake is vanilla-forward with a floury taste reminiscent of a yellow base-cake. Still not close to Oh Yeah! ONE Birthday Cake (my spirit animal), but I can put down several of these. It doesn’t taste artificial at all, so that’s a huge plus. I’ve got this one right near Combat Crunch Birthday Cake. Though it tastes a lot more like cake than Combat Crunch, it’s not as sweet nor as indulgent.

Now onto the elephant in the room (other than me). The texture:

This took no effort at all.

Chef Robert Irvine’s Fit Elite Birthday Cake is the softest of the three, but this is absurd. Protein bars aren’t supposed to do this. Neither are soft-baked cookies, which these bars advertise a likeness to. Remember how Lenny & Larry’s Birthday Cake Complete Cookie tasted exactly like Play-Doh? This bar operates exactly like Play-Doh. Yeah, I get it… don’t play with your food. But I couldn’t help not to when I realized this stretched and molded like pizza dough or sticky tack. This is where Chef Robert Irvine’s Fit Elite Birthday Cake loses its points for me, but the flavor is solid.

Molds Like Play-Doh Rating: 8 out of 10
Non-toxic Like Play-Doh Rating: 10 out of 10
Overall Rating: 7 out of 10

Bottom Line: Chef Robert Irvine’s Fit Elite Bars have elite macros but have non-elite flavor. Weighing in at 180 calories with 5g of fat, they are a tick below most of the offerings by Quest, OhYeah! ONE, and  in these regards. The protein and carbs, however, are nearly identical. The tradeoff in calories for flavor is simply not worth it in my opinion, so unless you have some special dietary concern that these bars satisfy… I would look elsewhere 9 times out of 10. Let the 1 time be Fit Elite Birthday Cake, but for the love of The Rock… avoid Fit Elite Cookies ‘N’ Cream at all costs.

Chef Robert Irvine’s Fit Elite Bars Overall Rating: 5.5 out of 10

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