Flavors Tried: Peanut Butter & Dark Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter
Price: $29 for 8 bars through their website ($3.60 per bar)
Nutrition: 340 Calories, 19g Fat, 27g Carbs (3g Fiber & 19g Sugar), 17g Protein
Ingredients: Peanut Butter, Honey, Nonfat Dry Milk, Dried Whole Egg Powder, Rice Protein, Dried Whole Food Powders, Flax Seed Oil, Sesame Seed Oil, Olive Oil, Pumpkin Seed Oil
When Perfect Bar first launched, there was nothing else like it. Before they came along, we had never seen refrigerated protein bars in grocery stores.
These days, you’ll find multiple options, but Perfect Bar still stands above the rest as the most popular.
Perfect Bar launched in the early 2000s, and yet this is the first time I have ever tried them. As someone who has tried so many protein bars, I can’t believe I’ve avoided Perfect Bars for so long.
In my mind, these have always been a “health food” bar, so I never expected them to taste amazing. They advertise whole foods, superfoods, and minimal ingredients, so my expectations have always been pretty low.
Since Perfect Bars are peanut butter-based, they’re quite high in calories. With 340 calories and 17 grams of protein, they certainly won’t blow you away in the nutrition department.
We’ve seen quite a few other peanut butter-based protein bars out there now, like Anabar and Authentic Bar, and all are relatively high in calories because of it, but Perfect Bar still tops them in that area.
Perfect Bar has a few different variations of their classic bars, but I kept it simple for this review. I’ll be trying the classic peanut butter protein bar, as well as the chocolate chip version.
Peanut Butter Perfect Bar Review
When you open up a Perfect Bar, you’re greeted with pretty much exactly what you’d expect: a bar of peanut butter.
The bar itself is very firm right out of the fridge, so I definitely recommend letting it sit for a few minutes before diving in. Don’t worry, a few quick minutes is all you need to allow these to soften up enough to enjoy.
Once the bar softens, it remains thick, but it has a cookie dough-like consistency. There is definitely no mistaking that the base of this bar is peanut butter, that’s for sure.
Now, imagine what a bar of peanut butter & honey would taste like… and that’s exactly what you get here. If you’ve ever enjoyed honey-roasted peanut butter, that’s pretty much what you can expect.
Honestly, if you love peanut butter, there’s really no reason why you wouldn’t love these bars. Considering there is no artificial or bitter aftertaste and you can’t taste any protein powder, that already puts these ahead of a lot of other options.
Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Perfect Bar Review
Let’s all take a moment to appreciate the impressive amount of chocolate chips they managed to pack into this bar.
However, due to the addition of chocolate chips, the protein content of this bar is actually a bit lower than the regular peanut butter version. This bar has only 15 grams of protein, which isn’t a huge difference, but you’d still hope for more protein with over 300 calories.
Much like the regular peanut butter bar, you get exactly what you expect with this one. As someone who appreciates the combination of chocolate and peanut butter (Reese’s is the greatest candy of all time), I enjoyed this flavor more than the original.
The base of this bar is the exact same as the peanut butter flavor, but the addition of the chocolate chips really helps to transform the flavor and add an extra layer of texture to the bar.
If I had to choose between the two, I would definitely grab the chocolate chip bar in the future.
Perfect Bar: Final Thoughts
I waited years to try these bars because I felt I knew what to expect, and I was not met with any surprises here: these are bars of peanut butter.
That may sound negative, but it’s certainly not. I love peanut butter, so I found these to be delicious.
Right out of the fridge, they are far less enjoyable, but once you let them soften up and become more cookie dough-like, they’re fantastic.
There are two things that hold Perfect Bar back from being an elite bar for me:
- They’re very greasy. That’s the nature of peanut butter, but my hands were very oily after I ate these bars. If you want a convenient snack to eat at your desk during work, these may not be the best choice for that reason.
- The protein-to-calories ratio is far from impressive. With over 300 calories and only 15-17 grams of protein, there are better options out there. But, as a meal replacement (versus a snack) it’d work pretty well.
On taste and texture alone, I really enjoyed Perfect Bars. I can certainly see the appeal, and it’s not surprising that these are as popular as they are.
I’m curious to try other flavors, such as salted caramel or pumpkin pie, to see if they just taste like peanut butter with an essence of those flavors, or if they were able to truly capture those flavors.
As it currently stands, these are really just bars of peanut butter and honey. I love that you can’t taste any protein powder in these, but you definitely have to love peanut butter for these to become a staple!
