ON (Optimum Nutrition) Cake Bites

I've seen these in my local Walmart Neighborhood Grocery store for a few months and decided to give them a try. There is now a glut of new food products which marry the ideas of healthy, high-protein with cakes/cookies. There are expensive, low-carb products with natural sugar substitutes and organic ingredients (think $2.99 for two small snack cakes) to products that are not quite as healthy but still promise to trick you into thinking you're having something decadent. As this package of cake bites claims, "any day can feel like cheat day." On a personal note, I never quite understood the lure of "cheat day." When I was eating keto/low-carb, I wanted to keep my body in that state of ketosis and feared the consequences if and when I "cheated." My idea of cheating usually involved eating a bite of an apple. I did find many protein bars which were pretty tasty and low-carb/high-protein and stuck with those when I wanted something other than vegetables and meat. 

I chose the Red Velvet flavor over the Chocolate Dipped Cherry, Chocolate Frosted Donut and Birthday Cake flavors. 

There are three cake bits in each individally wrapped package. Each box contains four packs. 

Let's take a look, shall we? 230 calories is a little bit more than an average protein bar (Quest, One Bar, etc.), so that's not horrible. 7 grams of fat is right on par for a product like this. 20 grams of protein is quite high, so if you're looking for a very high protein snack, this might be right for you.  The ingredient list has not listed the fiber content, which is very confusing considering this product contains chicory root fiber. The only thing I can surmise is that there is not enough fiber to list. The sugar alcohol grams are also not listed and since this contains maltitol, there are sugar alcohols in this product. If there were sugar alcohol and fiber grams listed, you would subtract those grams from the total carbohydrate grams (22 grams for this flavor) to obtain a new "net" carbohydrate amount. If Optimum Nutrition is trying to appeal to the low-carb/keto crowd, it would be in their best interest to list the sugar alcohol content. Also, some people's digestive systems react poorly to sugar alcohols, so they really should have listed those in the nutrition facts. 

You may not have ever heard of isomalto-oligosaccharides, so here is the link to tell more about this additive: ​https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isomaltooligosaccharide
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I see that there are artificial colors in this particular flavor.

The inside. It certainly looks "cakey," but it did not taste anything like red velvet cake. The texture was very chewy, almost like a low-carb protein bar (Quest, etc.). It wasn't particularly terrible, but the flavor and texture was disappointing, as I was expecting something a little more light in texture. 

Bottom line is that for something that I found in the sports nutrition aisle, this isn't very nutritious at all. I doubt that any health food store carries this product due to the questionable ingredients, including two very controversial artificial food colorings. I would rather eat a low-carb protein bar than these and there are some very good ones out there that taste much better and are healthier than this product. I can't say for sure how many net carbs this contains and that is an important consideration when choosing a high protein "treat." This is another one of those products that I find myself asking, "to whom are they marketing this?" If you are eating high protein, you most likely are avoiding carbohydrates. If you are just trying to eat healthier and choose this product thinking it's healthy, then I would suggest doing your research. Artificial colors, sucralose (Splenda) and sugar alcohols are generally not considered healthy. If you just like the taste of these and want to spend $6.00 a box, then go for it. Just be warned that excessive consumption of sugar alcohols might lead to lots of time spent in the rest room.