It's continually amazing to me how much the energy/protein/snack bar industry has expanded in popularity over the years. It shows no signs of stopping, or even slowing down. A couples of decades ago you basically had the choice of only a few--say Nature Valley granola bars, Power Bars, or Clif Bars. Now even tiny gas station minimarts have like 8-10 kinds, and supermarkets like my Shop-Rite have dozens of options. Today we'll explore yet another brand--the Nick's protein bars. Their salty peanut flavor and their caramel chocolate one.
The Nick's origin story begins in 2013, in Sweden, when founder Niclas Luthman (sometimes spelled as Lutman) received a troubling medical diagnosis from his doctor: He was pre-diabetic. His extreme love of chocolate and ice cream was one of the main culprits for this. Niclas was a mechanical engineer by training, and he reacted to this news by teaming up with a "food enthusiast" to experiment and develop a food that included his culinary vices but still wasn't that unhealthy. The stated goal was "to mimic candy bars' taste and texture while providing high protein (15 grams) and low net carbs (3 grams) for keto-friendly diets." By 2017 the duo was successful, and the Nick's company was founded. In addition to protein bars, Nick's also makes candy bars, nut bars, and ice creams. Their products are free of gluten, palm oil, and sugar. The sweetness is provided by substances such as stevia and xylitol. By 2019 and into 2020 Nick's was exported to the United States. Additionally, my bars were distributed by LUB Foods USA Inc., based out of Manchester, New Hampshire in the U.S. However, the bar labels also state that they're products of North Macedonia, so somehow that country is involved, as the location of a manufacturing facility, at least. (As an aside, this country name was news to me--I thought there was a country called Macedonia, but not North Macedonia. But this nation officially changed its name in 2019. The reasons why they did this, and some folks' thoughts about this, are quite heated and controversial. If you're interested the internet went into a lot of detail about the history of this region, and which group is actually considered to be true Macedonians. Anyway, I missed this name change, so my bad on fairly recent geography events.)
Nick's salty peanut protein bar: The bar itself was about 3 cm. by 10 cm. (or about 1.25 inches by 4 inches). It looked like a regular chocolate candy bar, with its dark brown color with visible lumps underneath the outer chocolate coating. It had an odd odor, maybe due to the dark chocolate? The texture was like a typical chocolate bar too--chewy. But that's where the comparison ends, as the taste was kind of bland. It wasn't very salty, nor were the peanuts that strong. So it was disappointing--not terrible, but not very good. And not very candy-like, which is what they were going for, as "tastes like candy" is also printed on the label. I wouldn't recommend this.
Nick's caramel chocolate protein bar: This one was the same size, shape, and color as the previous bar. The texture was softer, and there were no nuts. The taste was sweeter--almost cloyingly so, but not quite. It was definitely better than the salty peanut kind. It wasn't great, but it was alright. I would recommend this one slightly. I guess I'll try other flavors if I see them, or other Nick's products. As usual, if/when I do, I'll add to this post.
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