Marks and Spencer Kentish Baby Baminella Pears

Somehow despite all the new M&S goodies on the shelves, I managed to bypass the sugary treats and ended up with fruit in my basket. Autumn means apples and pears and these little mini baby pears caught my eye. They're tiny little whole pears that look pretty similar to a normal pear but shrunken down to less than the size of an apricot. They're UK sourced and from Kent and whilst they looked a bit gimmicky, I thought I'd give them a go.

I'm not sure if this is just the batch I got (as I appreciate quality varies with fruit, it is natural after all) or because they're so small but these were really fairly solid and didn't feel ripe and lusciously melting like a good ripe pear should.

The other problem is because they are actually whole pears they have a core in the middle and actually by the time you've cut away the good fruit there is very little flesh for you to eat. This might be why mine didn't feel very soft or ripe, there's just not enough room for the mini pears to develop eating flesh.

I wasn't overly impressed with them and it's kind of hard to see why you would buy these over a normal pear other than the gimmick. They're not soft and juicy, there's not a lot of them to eat, a lot of them is core and you can't really just eat it, you need to cut the little flesh there is off. Bar maybe a talking point to decorate a cake or dessert, these just seem gimmicky to me. Give me a decent juicy normal pear any day rather than these rock hard mini golf balls.

Maybe I should have bought all the new M&S cakes instead...

Price: £2
Bought at: Marks and Spencer

Score: 3/10

Graze Mini Strawberry and Banana

I tend to often buy the graze punnets as part of the Boots meal deal, particularly the veggie protein power and punchy protein nuts. They're nice sized snacks, much healthier than most snacks and tend to do something a little bit different. This mini strawberry and banana box is essentially just a punnet of dried fruit but whilst typically such packs are mostly raisins and sultanas, this is a little more interesting with chewy banana coins and dried strawberries, blueberries and cranberries.

It contains no added sugar with the dried fruit sweetened with juice instead. It's a lovely mix of colours and a good spread of all the different ingredients. All the fruit is good quality and nice and juicy and sweet with no dried out bits.

However, it's hard to get overly excited about it. Whilst nice, it's just dried fruit. The blueberries are sweet and bursting with flavour, the cranberries nice and tart with a good sour hit, the banana chewy and sweet and the lovely juicy strawberries are refreshing. But I know Graze do more interesting mixes and there are more interesting snacks out there. This is great for sprinkling on yogurt or cereal but a bit dull on its own.

Price: £1.19
Bought at: Boots
Nutrition per punnet: 120 calories, 0g fat, 0g sat fat, 21g sugars, 0g salt

Score: 6.5/10