In my earlier days of cycling and reading up on BikeForums.net which I’m a [lurking] member of these days, I learned about various different nutritional supplement companies such as Nuun, Accelerade, and Hammer Nutrition. I never took the opportunity to try any of those products until now.
Attendees of the NY Metro Endurance Sports Expo on March 2-3, 2013 received a Hammer Bar of the Cashew Coconut Chocolate Chip flavor in their goodie bag. Well, at least that’s what I had in mine. There are four total flavors – Cashew Coconut Chocolate Chip, Chocolate Chip, Cranberry, and Oatmeal Apple. You can get them from Hammer Nutrition’s website for $2.50 per bar (and they have a buy one get one free deal at the time of writing this).
On the outside
The Hammer Bar wrapper
It’s a 1.76oz (50g) snack bar of typical proportions. Wrapped in a foil wrapper with satin-printed graphics and metallic detail, it carries the USDA Organic logo. On the front of the package is a bicycle-inspired design next to a large HAMMER logo. The wrapper says it is made of 100% raw non-GMO natural ingredients. One serving (1 bar) is 230 calories with 5g protein, 27g carbohydrates, and 11g fat.
On the inside
A bit of the bar stuck to the Hammer Bar wrapper on the inside
Inside the wrapper is the goodness itself. I was expecting to see something where you can easily identify all the ingredients. However, this was not the case. It seems like a simple mass of the main ingredients mixed together in the form of a bar. The only truly identifiable part was the cashews which there seemed to be good halves of for some crunchiness. I’m not sure if there were really chocolate chips in there or if it was mixed into the bar-shaped mass. It is a very soft-textured food bar, brown in color with contrasting white of the cashews.
Sadly I don’t have any pictures of the bar itself. The reason is coming up.
The Taste
To put it very simply, it’s amazing. It seemed a little sweet at first but not too much. After all, coconut can be pretty sweet at times and there’s definitely a good chocolate flavor to it. The flavors blend and complimented very well, at least to this taster. I made sure not to eat it too fast so I could enjoy it since it was the first and only one available to me. That aside, once I did finish it, I was sad that there wasn’t more. It tasted that good and I’m very pleased with it. It was only after I ate it that I realized, “I could review this for my blog,” so that’s why I didn’t get any pictures of the bar itself.
Other thoughts
It is a very soft food bar. Although I have no way of methodically testing this theory right now, I’m not sure it would be a good snack to take outside with you in the summer. If it’s kept at a room temperature it will be OK. You can see in this picture that the product sticks to the wrapper a bit, but in a melty sort of way, and it wasn’t difficult to remove from the wrapper at all. I’m suspicious that such a type of food bar may melt in the packaging. I wouldn’t recommend taking it with you if you’re going to be outside for a while on a hot day.
The Bottom Line
On the outside it looks pretty nice, on the inside it doesn’t look appetizing, but in actuality it is very much so. It tastes really good, and it’s easy on the stomach which is good for me since I’ve had some sensitivity issues since having antibiotics late last year. If you have a box of them, you’ll want to hide them from yourself so that you don’t eat them all in one sitting. And since it’s so soft, I wouldn’t recommend taking it into the heat since it may get messy (for which reason I took off only half a star).
Very well done, Hammer Nutrition. I look forward to buying\trying more of your products!
Since this is my first review, my star rating scale for is as follows: Very Bad (1) | Bad (2) | “Meh” (3) | Good (4) | Very Good (5)
I have not been compensated by Hammer Nutrition in any way for this review.
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