Taste Test: Meal Replacement Bars

July 24, 2004 -- Can't find the time to eat right? Just try what millions of other Americans do — tear, blend or shake your way to your next meal.

For dieters on the go, products like Balance bars and Slimfast shakes are used as substitutes for breakfast, lunch or dinner, making meal replacements a quick and convenient way to be healthy and lose weight.

"Absolutely, convenience, portability … I mean, what's easier than just tearing open a wrapper, or popping open a can?" said Good Housekeeping's head nutritionist Delia Hammick.

That convenience has hundreds of thousands of people chowing down this way each day, to the tune of $2.5 billion a year for the industry.

So how do they taste? Good Housekeeping put them to the test, using 15 people in a blind sampling of chocolate-flavored products from four different brands in each category:

Powder Mixes: Slimfast, GNC Total Lean, Avon Slim Well, Dr. Phil Shape Up

Shakes: Wal-Mart Equate, Slim Fast, Dr. Phil Shape Up, Atkins

Bars: Balance, Slimfast, Dr. Phil Shape Up, Bally's Meal Replacement

Results: Cardboard, Chalk

Good Housekeeping's test found that while the Slim Fast powder and bar, and the Equate weight-loss shake tasted better than some, overall the descriptions of these chocolate goods were that they were not very savory.

We then asked some folks on the street to give the samples a try and they described the items with phrases including: "tastes like chalk," and "meal replacement bars taste like cardboard."

"They were hoping that they really would taste like a milkshake, or a brownie," said Hammick. "But for most people, they fell short."