fitnessprincess’s BodyBlog

My coach Cathy Savage Fitness recommended these - they are made locally by a fitness competitor and her husband - so after visiting the Vegetarian Barbarian website (http://thevb.myshopify.com/) and reviewing the nutritional facts I decided to give the mini loaves a try. The ingredients are truly all natural - no preservatives. For example, the chocolate peanut butter bar contains tofu, ground almonds, chocolate whey protein, avocado, peanut butter, apple sauce, hemp protein, water, peanuts, hempseed, coconut palm sugar, walnut oil, cocoa, agave, flaxseed, chocolate extra, peanut butter extract, cinnamon, salt, 85% chocolate bar.  I thought wow!  sounds terrific!  I ordered the variety 12-pack for $27 plus shipping. The loaves came in a couple days - pretty quick, by USPS. I brought two different flavors home to try them out with my mom. We ate the first one, pumpkin pie, after dinner as an evening snack. Both of us were a bit disappointed with the size - these things are tiny!! You won’t find any photos of the bars on the company’s website and my guess is that’s why there aren’t any photos - would have been an immediate tip off! Anyway, the pumpkin pie mini loaves don’t taste anything like pumpkin. There are lots of different seeds and things in them including cranberries - not something I have ever had in any pumpkin pie I have ever eaten. The bar didn’t taste bad but it sure didn’t taste like pumpkin pie and both of us were hungry and unsatisfied afterwards. I ate an apple and enjoyed it a lot more than I did the pumpkin pie mini loaf. Today mom and I ate our second VB mini-loaf chocolate peanut butter with tea after lunch. Mom said not to bring any more of those “things” home. I agree. We both came to the same conclusion: not worth it! The chocolate peanut butter mini-loaf was disappointing because it really didn’t taste anything like chocolate peanut butter - yes there were some small chocolate pieces and raw peanuts in there but this was no more chocolate peanut butter than the pumpkin pie mini loaf was like pumpkin pie in flavor. Neither was satisfying and the mini loaves are high in calories (ca 200) and fat - admittedly so-called healthy fat (ca 14 g) but fat nonetheless and relatively low, from my perspective, in grams of protein (ca 14 g). Each tiny loaf (ca. 1″ x 1″ x 3″) is packaged in heat shrink plastic that was very difficult to remove without injuring the loaves. The nutritional information is written in tiny letters and is virtually impossible to read on the packaging. If you want the nutritional facts you are best off going to their website and reading it there. Finally these things are tiny! LOL! Did I say that before? I really wish I could recommend these but I can’t. If I were in contest prep I would probably end up binging from hunger after eating one of these things. Flavor-wise very disappointing as they don’t taste anything like what you were hoping for.

This low-fat, meatless jerky, made from seitan (wheat gluten), is simply the best jerky product I have ever had! It comes in 1-oz strips in a wide range of flavors including mesquite lime, teriyaki, hot & spicy ****ake, and thai peanut. The strips which cost $1.50 at Whole Foods but which you can find at 1.25 on-line come in double-sealed packages that you really can take with you anywhere. They taste simply amazing!

I am by nature a vegetarian but I will eat fish and I like shrimp so when I saw this product at Whole Foods I was willing to give it a try. The soup is sold in a 5.1-oz single serving package and comes in a rather substantial (reusable plastic container with lid (recyclable). Inside there is a pellet of concentrated soup/stock and 5 decent sized shrimp wontons. Simply add water, microwave for 3-4-min oh high and enjoy. The broth and the wontons are flavorful and tasty. My only criticisms of the product are that (1) the soup contains 1.5-g sodium (the FDA recommendation is 2400 mg of sodium PER DAY!); (2) the nutritional facts on the packaging are incorrect as the nutritional facts doesn’t include the data for the broth which you can find on the CP website, and (3) the product costs $3.50. That said, I really like the soup - good on a cold fall day and I think the product’s worth the cost.Nutritional facts 115-calories 7 g protein, 2 g fat, 17 g carbs, 0.75 g fiber. 2 WW pts

As a general rule, I prefer to only discuss products that I really like and therefore endorse.  I guess part of me always feels that just because I don’t like something this doesn’t mean that someone else won’t like it, right?  Also, I am a good girl.  I always do what my mom taught me and she taught me that good girls keep their mouths shut if they don’t have anything nice to say.  LOL!  From time to time though I have experiences that remind me that I also have a duty to share information concerning those products that I try and which I don’t like.  Today is one of those occasions.  Recently, I paid a good amount of money and bought several products that were just awful so much so that I threw out what I baked and I threw out the mixes as well.  Both were products of Parillo Performance.  I paid $20 for a container of the pancake & muffin mix and $35 for a container of the protein frosting mix.  Both were super sweet - sickeningly sweet - they are sweetened with a mix of three sugar substitutes (why, I don’t understand) erythritol (a sugar alcohol), sucralose, and stevia.  I bought the banana flavored muffin mix and attempted to make a batch of 12 mini-muffins.  The mix had an odd bumpy texture to it when I added water and MCT oil as specified on the bottle.  The next problem I encountered was trying to figure out when the muffins were done.  The muffins didn’t brown like regular muffins would.  When I finally decided (by sticking a cake tester into one) that the muffins were cooked, I set them aside to cool and turned toward making the vanilla frosting.  I prepared half the recipe given on the side of the frosting mix bottle and that was enough for who know how many million muffins!  The frosting also had an odd texture to it and was a bit off-white.  When I finally sat down to eat a mini-muffin, the muffin had a very odd spongy texture to it that was really objectionable.  The taste was absolutely awful - the muffin itself was sickeningly sweet and honestly you didn’t need any icing on the thing!  The icing really didn’t taste like vanilla.  All I could taste was sugar - sickening sweetness.  I spit it out and threw the rest away - now this is saying something for me as I love everything sweet.  Consider yourselves warned:  do not buy this vile stuff!! 

12-oz cans sold in a six-pack of aluminum cans for $5.69 (not including $0.30 bottle deposit) at Whole Foods. A bit expensive but if you want a diet root beer that doesn’t contain artificial sugar then perhaps the cost is worth it. You have to decide what you are willing to pay and what you are going to put inside your body. Zevia is marketing a pretty wide range of diet soda flavors including root beer, black cherry, traditional cola, orange, gingerale, and a lemon-lime twist. For my first foray I decided to try my favorite flavor: root beer.

OMG! I love, love, love Coach’s Oats. Gotta write a review on these oats!

If you are in the market for a personal blender for light use such as blending up a quick protein shake at work, it is worth taking a look at this little blender. My personal favorite, as far as blenders go, is - no surprise - Magic Bullet. However, the Magic Bullet requires a fairly hefty cash or credit outlay of over $50. You also need electricity in order to use it. These considerations have led me to investigate and test several “personal” blenders recently. On the balance there is much to like about the Ontel Personal Power Mixer. It retails for less than $10 and you can use it with AA batteries or with a 3V power supply (not included with the unit). When I first unpackaged the unit I was a bit scared that I might have wasted my money: The blending action is accomplished by a relatively small wire wrapped ring (yep! no actual blades) at the base of the unit, which I must say actually does a surprisingly good job of blending even large volumes (16-oz) of liquids. Not a major consideration for me but very quiet - not loud and noisy like the Magic Bullet. The plastic container allows you to blend as much as 16-oz of liquid at one time. One side of the unit is marked with approximate solution volumes both in English and Metric units. The plastic cap on the blender has a nice slit in it so you can drink your shake right out of the mixer. It is easy to clean, too. Overall not a bad light purpose unit for on the road or in the office.

This is a relatively new product from the folks at BodyWell. It is sold in pink packaging with a photo of IFBB Figure Pro Kristal Richardson on the package. You can either buy a box of packets or a bag of protein powder. I have tried both the bag and the packets in both berry and vanilla flavor. One serving boasts 90-105 calories, 14-15 g protein from a mixture of predominantly soy isolate and casein hydrolysate, about 1.5 g fat (canola oil blend so relatively healthy), and 3 g carbs. The blend also contains green tea extract, calcium (75% RDA requirements) and 0.5 g of a proprietary blend of who-knows-what that includes St. John’s wort and Black Cohosh (herbs). It is presweetened with a mixture of acesulfame potassium and sucralose (splenda). It blends fairly completely with water and produces a relatively thick shake. I have to say that it is rather gritty and I have no idea why. Flavor-wise I liked both the berry and vanilla bean and found the shake pretty satisfying. The product packaging and the BodyWell website claim this protein powder does a lot of things - don’t know about any of that but as far as protein powder goes this is better than some and most of you know I don’t like protein powder - bleah!