Nature Valley Popcorn Salted Caramel, Almond and Pretzel

Salted caramel, almond and pretzel - the moment I saw this new addition to the Nature Valley popcorn bar range, I had to try it. Three flavours I loved and when mixed with popcorn, I thought this would offer loads of different textures and flavours - exactly the kind of snack I like. Nature Valley have launched lots of new bars to the range recently with a peanut butter flavour of their crunchy oat bars, this addition to the popcorn bars and a new sweet and salty nut range (in dark chocolate and peanut versions) so well worth checking out if you're a fan of the brand.

This new addition to the popcorn range is another lighter snack bar with only 89 calories per bar (probably because of the airy nature of popcorn) and with 4.4g sugars per bar as well so a nice lower sugar snack. It's a chewy popcorn bar with bits of almond and pretzel in and then a smooth, creamy salted caramel coating on the bottom.

Each bar is only 20g and at 89 calories it does look quite small when unwrapped but not as small as I expected, which was a nice surprise. Biting in it's a fairly airy bar with a slight resistance and brittleness but one that is quite easy to eat - not hard and crunchy but not soft either. Unfortunately I found the bar a real let down.

The salted caramel undercoating is the dominant flavour and whilst not awful, it's not super delicious - just a fairly standard sweet generic caramel flavour without being a high quality smooth rich caramel and I wouldn't necessarily call it salted either. The problem with this is that every mouthful although you do get a fair few textures all taste the same. I could feel the odd bit of almond here and there and the odd pretzel piece but I definitely couldn't taste them and there also weren't enough of them.

It's the lack of pretzel that really disappointed me. I love salty pretzel against sweet things (particularly the Cadbury Chocolate covered pretzels - do they even make those any more?) and this was totally lacking. It's probably better than a lot of light bars like the Alpen Lights which again I find  bit monotonous but I can't helped wishing I just stayed with one of the Nature Valley bars I know I like. This just isn't very exciting.

Price: £2.80
Bought at: Sainsburys (currently at £1.50)
Nutrition per bar: 89 calories, 4.2g fat, 1.7g sat fat, 4.4g sugars, 0.2g salt

Score: 5/10