I love Nature’s Path. They have some super tasty products, they are big proponents of choosing organic, and they have a nice balance between choosing healthier ingredients for their items without sacrificing flavors (because, let’s face it, a lot of commercial whole food cereals and bars just aren’t quite the same as the ones that use plenty of HFCS). It’s so nice to be able to partner with them! Nature’s Path sent me a huge box full of goodies to review.

Here’s what I received (one box / bag of each):

• Honey Oat Crunch Bars
• Love Crunch Gingerbread Granola
• Honey Almond Granola
• Qia Superfood Chia, Buckwheat and Hemp Cereal (Original)
• Sunrise Crunchy Cinnamon Cereal
• Sunrise Crunchy Maple Cereal
• Sunrise Crunchy Vanilla Cereal
• Flax Plus Multibran Flakes Cereal
• Mesa Sunrise Corn, Flax, Quinoa and Amaranth Cereal
• Chia Plus Coconut Chia Granola
• Flax Plus Pumpkin Flax Granola
• Pure Oats Variety Pack (Brown Sugar Maple, Spiced Apple, and Homestyle)

…Like I said, quite the haul! I’ll be doing my product reviews in three installments, since there’s no way one blog post could do all of those goodies justice. Nature’s Path also directed me to a bunch of recipes on their site, and I was quite excited to try them out. Granola, for example, is tasty, but I usually just munch on it as a snack rather than enjoy it with milk as breakfast—I’m looking forward to making parfaits and cookies and pies using the granola!

For this first blog post, I wanted to try four different products: Honey Oat Crunch Bars, Love Crunch Gingerbread Granola, Vanilla Crunch Cereal, and Honey Almond Granola.

First up: Honey Oat Crunch Bars! Mr. Science and I both really enjoyed these. They are nice and crunchy with a lovely sweetness to them: not too sweet, but just the right amount. Each package comes with two thin bars in them, so you could share them with a friend, but you’ll probably want them both to yourself (just saying ;)). There’s about 2 tsp of sugar per package, but you’re also getting 3 grams of fibre, 3 grams of protein, and 21 grams of whole grains.

The ingredients are nice and wholesome: rolled oats, granulated sugar cane juice, sunflower oil, flaxseeds, honey, invert cane syrup, oat fibre, oat syrup solids, and sea salt. As far as a snack bar goes, this is pretty good! It’s also a satisfying snack for under 200 calories. I definitely devoured these immediately.

Next, we’ve got Love Crunch Gingerbread Granola. Guys. The ingredients!  Rolled oats, evaporated cane juice, molasses, soy oil, crystalized ginger, rice starch, sea salt, cinnamon, ginger, allspice, cloves, natural flavour, tocopherol (added to enhance freshness). I could pretty much make this in my kitchen, just like the bars above. This is what I like about Nature’s Path! Their stuff tastes better and has just as great of a texture as any other product you’ll find at the store, except they use more natural ingredients and choose organic and fair trade.

So, how did the granola taste? Pretty good! It comes in nice little clusters and had a subtle chocolatey / coconutty flavor to me. Of course, we had to try the granola in a recipe! We made the Gingerbread Crunch Cookies, which were quite yummy and chocolatey. I added a sprinkle of cinnamon (because cookies can always use a little extra cinnamon!) and exchanged the white flour for spelt, but otherwise kept the recipe the same. We served these cookies at our annual Holiday Cocktail Party.

After the granola, I tried the Vanilla Crunch Cereal. Super delicious! I liked that there was a combination of little crunchy puff balls, flakes, and rice-type crisps—it provides some great texture for munching on! The flavor also has that signature Nature Path subtle sweetness without being too sweet. You’re still probably getting a good 2 tsp of sugar per bowl of this stuff, but you definitely don’t need to add any sugar. Just pour some milk in the bowl and enjoy. The ingredients are much the same as the above products, too: you’ve got things like quinoa, flax seeds, and evaporated cane sugar, for example. And it’s gluten-free!

Lastly, I had the Honey Almond Granola. Oh my goodness. Mr Science and I ate nearly the entire package in one evening (and when I say “Mr Science and I,” what I really mean is “Mr Science had maybe a handful and I chowed down on the rest, Fantastic Mr Fox style”).

I could eat that stuff for every meal of the day. It’s ridiculous how tasty it was! And, of course, the ingredients are just as good as in the rest of their products. This ingredients list includes rolled oats, granulated sugar cane juice, sunflower oil, roasted almonds, clover honey, flavour, rice starch, sea salt, chia seeds, tocopherols (added to preserve freshness). It kind of blows my mind that products with names like “Honey Almond Granola” actually include real honey and almond! How annoying is it when you realize the number of commercial products out there that use “artificial flavor” instead of honey, or some combination of weird ingredients to get a taste similar to almonds rather than just using real almonds? Nature’s Path, I ♥ you.

Check back next week for the next installment of my Nature’s Path Product Review blog series!

Do you like Nature’s Path products? What’s your favorite product of theirs? Are you a cereal / granola fan? Share in the comments section below!