Kev's Snack Reviews

With this early Summer heatwave, I'm finding myself reaching for ice cold drinks a bit more often than usual, but it's hard to find one without any artificial sweeteners in. Luckily, Robinsons have come to the rescue with their new range of naturally sweetened drinks called Refresh'd, which contain fruit juices as well as stevia. If you've not heard of stevia before it's a sweetener extracted from plants, and tastes sweeter than actual sugar. Robinsons kindly sent me some drinks from the range to review, and below are my thoughts on each flavour. Raspberry & Apple:  Containing spring water, fruit juices, natural flavours and stevia this flavour was lovely. It reminded me somewhat of the raspberry juice drinks I loved as a kid, albeit without the artificial flavours and colours. It was very refreshing and had a light sweet flavour that was perfect on a hot day. 8.5 out of 10. Orange & Lime: A more citrusy variety this time, and again one that w...

Recently Home Bargains started selling this range of Go Coco Coconut Milk shakes, in three flavours; Chocolate Fudge, Banana Split and Strawberries & Cream. I had never heard of them before so snapped up all three flavours. They were around 70p or so per carton. They're suitable for vegans, dairy and gluten free and contain no refined sugars. They're sweetened with date nectar and stevia as well as fruit purees, and contain dietary fibres. Starting with the Chocolate Fudge variety, this is the one I enjoyed the most of the three. It had a very sweet but distinctly fudgey chocolate flavour that was very nice. The coconut milk made it somehow lighter and more refreshing than a milkshake containing dairy. I would definitely buy this one again, I loved it! 8.5 out of 10.  The Strawberries & Cream was my second favourite, it was a bit sweeter due to the extra strawberry puree, but very refreshing and tasty. This would be perfect on a Summers day. 8 out of 10....

Chocologic are back with some new products...yay! This time with No Added Sugar Giant Milk Chocolate Buttons, which is good news for anyone avoiding sugar or on a low carb diet. The sugar has been replaced with "alimentary fibres"; dextrin, inulin and oligofructose, as well as the sweeteners erythritol and stevia. As well as these, the buttons of course contain milk. These cost £1.20 for a bag in Tesco which is pretty reasaonable since you get a decent amount (75g) and the buttons are nice and chunky. In fact they reminded me of Yorkie Giant Buttons. Thankfully, they tasted a lot better! When I tried the Chocologic Milk Chocolate Bar last year I felt it had a slight Calender Chocolate taste...well somehow that doesn't seem to be the case here. I don't know if they've changed the recipe, but these buttons were rather creamy and tasty, I certainly scoffed more than a handful! They're a lot less sweet than regular milk chocolate buttons, and a...

Guilt free ice cream...surely such a thing doesn't exist, right? Well it does now, according to Oppo! They've created a three strong range consisting of Salted Caramel and Lucuma (which I reviewed the other day), Vanilla with Baobab, and Mint Choc Swirl with a hint of spirulina. The ice creams contain virgin coconut oil, the natural sweetener stevia, fresh milk and added superfoods. They're sugar free and low in fat and calories compared to standard ice creams. But do they taste good? You betcha they do! This Mint Choc Swirl variety consists of a minty ice cream containing spirulina extract, which is a type of nutrient-dense seaweed. Presumably this is what gives it the green colour. There's also a swirl of chocolate sauce made with Peruvian cacao and blossom honey. This ice cream usually costs £6 in Holland and Barrett but I've been lucky enough to find it for £1 in Heron Frozen Foods...needless to say my freezer is now stocked up with the stuff! Th...

I've always been curious about Oppo ice cream, I've heard so many good things about it but the price point and the fact it's so hard to find always put me off...until now, because Heron Frozen Foods have been selling the stuff for only £1 for a large tub of Mint Choc Swirl or three mini tubs of Salted Caramel for £1! This is an amazing bargain because the large tubs usually cost around £6 in Holland & Barrett (!) So I simply had to stock up on both flavours... I'm reviewing them separately because both deserve their own review, they're that good! First up is Salted Caramel with Lucuma. I ate this at the park, but for once I didn't need my faithful spoon that I take everywhere with me...no, Oppo have provided a mini plastic spoon handily tucked underneath the lid. Genius! I bought three small tubs of this for £1. The inner lids had various "Oppo Principles" printed on them, things like "You don't need loads of sugar or calories f...

Last year I reviewed the Dark Chocolate Chocologic bar and was a bit down with it, but a lower sugar version of a milk chocolate bar? Now that makes a bit more sense! The Chocologic range, which includes a hazelnut bar as well as Dark Chocolate is on offer at the moment in Tesco for £1 a pop, so I decided to give this Milk variety a go and see what the fuss is about.   It contains 60% less sugar than standard milk chocolate, which is pretty good going. It's sweetened with a mixture of stevia and inulin fibres, as well as milk of course. I like that it's foil-wrapped, that's not something you see often with chocolate bars these days. Taste-wise it wasn't too bad for a lower sugar milk chocolate. It has a nice milky flavour and because of the lower sugar content isn't as throat burningly sweet, letting the milk shine through more. It's not exactly a luxury chocolate hit but if you're on a low carb diet this will definitely feel like a treat. The s...

It's no secret that I've been trying to quit the sugar recently, and to that end I've been trying a lot of different dark chocolates that contain none. They can sometimes be too bitter, so when I heard that Chocologic were launching in Tesco with their stevia sweetened chocolate I was overjoyed! In fact I nipped over as soon as I knew these were available! Glancing at the ingredients I noticed the chocolate contains "alimentary fibres" which consist of dextrin, inulin and oligofructose. Presumably these are a bulking agent, since the chocolate contains only 55% cocoa. 4 segments of the bar contain 2.5g of carbs and 0.4g of sugars. That's a very low amount of sugar for chocolate, although 4 segments is a very tiny amount of the bar so don't be fooled. Opening the wrapper, there was a faint whiff of cocoa but it wasn't too strong. As a fan of rich dark chocolate I was surprised by this. Snapping off the top layer of 4 squares, I took a bite. ...

Coca Cola recently launched a low-sugar cola sweetened with the plant extract stevia (see review HERE ), and now Tesco have caught onto the stevia trend and boldly launched this "No Added Sugar" milk chocolate. It contains stevia, erythritol and inulin, and is described as "Milk chocolate with dietary fibre and sweeteners". There's also a dark chocolate variety. I have to applaud Tesco for launching this bar because as a large supermarket they hold a lot of clout, and anything that helps to reduce the nations sugar consumption has to be a good thing! I found the bar amongst all the regular chocolate bars in Tesco for £2. I ate the chocolate whilst out and about...hence the outdoors pic above and only managed to save a few chunks until I got home...hence the photos below! Opening  the wrapper, the chocolate had a very nice aroma; a comforting, milky smell; just like regular milk chocolate really. The blocks are shaped differently to regular Tesco chocol...