The Nutribox - Healthy Snacking Made Easier?

I'm not a big snack eater, I think I have issues with hunger sometimes, or rather issues with not feeling hungry! I don't know if that is some sort of symptom of coeliac disease, or perhaps that I am so often faced with hunger but nothing readily available suitable to eat that I have got used to ignoring the feeling.

If I do snack, I eather want to eat something really naughty and rammed full of sugar and fat (which we don't tend to keep in the house much), or something quick and healthy. I like fruit and nuts and all that sort of healthy rabbit food, so when Nutribox offered me a sample box to try I was quite excited.

The Nutribox is a box of goodies that arrive by post and you sign up to by subscription. All the yummy things are made with gluten free ingredients (but see the note at the end of this article), all are vegetarian, most vegan and a fair few in my box were raw too. Eating raw is not a diet I know a lot about, but I know it is gaining popularity in the USA and slowly in the UK too, especially as part of the Paleo movement.

So you sign up, pick a delivery window (there are two a month) and then a box comes in the post. Easy peasy! They promise that the full retail price of all the snacks you get will always be more than you pay for the box.

My mini box slipped through the letterbox nice and easy and contained a wonderful mix of brightly colored snacks. To see a what sort of things you can get in your box take a look here, but I got a mixture of dried fruit and nuts, raw chocolate bars, raw energy balls, a 'braw' fruit bar, and some other high energy snack bars. I didn't recognise any of the brands, so that added to the interest.


I really liked the 'raw' choclate by Ombar, amazing stuff. The chocolate flavour was so pure and delicious. I wasn't excited by the fruit and nut packaging, but the mixes were nice, with cute names like 'hot cross bun'. The 'braw' fruit bar was nice (my toddler ate half of it), but I was not impressed by the raw energy bars. As I understand it, these raw bars are made by squishing up healthy things like seeds, nuts and sprouts into a ball, and this remains uncooked to preserve the vitamins and goodness and remain 'as close to nature as possible'. The ingredients do read well, with no nasties, fillers or preservative, but I was not keen on the taste really, and neither was my husband. I do understand that the energy released by these snacks is much slower and steadier than a naughty sweet snack, so that's a good thing. I think my taste buds could learn to like them, but they were not an instant hit. There were only a couple of this sort of thing in the box, and everything else when down a treat. Especially the Ombar raw pro biotic chocolate, did I mention that already? ;)

A 6 month subscription for a Nuribox Mini is of offer at the moment, at £10.41 per month, which is good value as you get loads in the box. It would make a nice gift, and having the box on your desk at work would certainly make a difference to your snacking habits. Boxes are available in different sizes and subscription lengths too.

I think its a good way to discover brands and snacks you wouldn't normally consider, and a great way to kick start a more healthy eating habit.

Overall 8/10, mostly nice snacks, and its brilliant that everything is gluten free too, but do note that the FAQs say:

Are all of your snacks gluten free?

We make sure all of our snacks are made using gluten-free ingredients. However, some are made in an environment which handles products containing gluten so we can't guarantee that there will be no gluten contamination. We suggest that celiacs consult their doctor or nutritionist before deciding whether to try them.

https://thenutribox.com

Heinz Pasta and Sauces

Gluten free spaghetti .....what can I say? I have not had good experience with gluten free spaghetti, generally it just clumps together and is inedible, but I think we may be getting somewhere this time.

Here comes the next review....

Heinz is launching their gluten free range and I have to say their spaghetti is pretty good. I had my doubts,  when it was cooking it was doing the same gloopy ‘thing’ that all other spaghetti did, but then somehow magically it stopped and we had individual strands of spaghetti.

To go with the pasta Heinz helpfully provided two sauces and we (Matt and myself) tried the Tomato and Basil sauce.

I am so excited that gluten free sauces are now entering the world of supermarkets! Whilst I am an advocate of cooking your own meals and sauces, sometimes you just want something that you can heat up in a jiffy and enjoy.

This sauce is a tasty treat.  It is made up of a rich passata infused with basil....and garlic now this is where I have a bit issue. I get that most people love garlic but there are those out there that aren’t that keen and I’m one of them I’m afraid. Too much garlic makes me ill so once I tasted this sauce and was hit by the garlic then only a couple more mouthfuls were had. I appreciate that for most people the addition of garlic will be welcomed but I would like just one sauce that was garlic free. Sorry.

The only other hesitation I had with the sauce was that it was quite sweet. I think the sweet taste would be lessened if other ingredients were added to the sauce as you choose, I’m thinking a nice bit of bacon, some mushrooms. Mmmmm a feast in the making.

All in all I’m very impressed with the Heinz range and I will definitely be buying their spaghetti when it hits the supermarket shelves. I will also be trying their other pastas which include penne and macaroni; since they’ve got the spaghetti down, the other pastas should be a treat too.  

Gluten Free Mac n’ cheese here we come!

Nairn's Gluten Free Porridge Pot - For those in a hurry

 Porridge, everyone likes it a different way. 

For my first product review I was delivered Nairn’s ‘Gluten Free Easy Porridge’ which can be easily described as porridge in a pot.

 I love the fact that some ‘instant’ type foods are now entering the gluten free market. As I’m sure many of you can remember only a year or so ago getting any instant type gluten free product was nearly impossible. Now we are beginning to see sauces, ready meals, desserts all there on our supermarket shelves.

Breakfast is a challenge for a lot of people.  We rush around getting the children ready for school, throw food into the pet’s bowls and just about manage to pull a brush through our hair as we head out of the door for work. Let’s face it many of us like that extra ten minutes in bed after the alarm so we end up a little bit behind schedule. On weekday mornings we don’t have time to make pancakes or French toast so cereal it is.

The Nairn’s ‘Gluten Free Easy Porridge’ comes in a cardboard type tub in which you are told to pour in 170ml boiling water. Now this is where I had a slight problem, helpfully Nairn’s have given a line to indicate where the water should go up to. The problem is the line is on the outside of the tub so you have to do a weird pouring whilst squeezing the tub to make sure you get the right amount it. This would be easily fixed though if during the manufacturing process an indent is put on the inside of the tub. See, problem solved and no weird head movement required.

Back to the opening line; everyone like’s their porridge different. I found the 170ml amount of water to be too much. It is recommended that the product be left for 4 minutes, stirred and then eaten. In the end I left it for about 10 minutes and it was still too ‘wet’ for me. Matt, who ate that version, did say that this could be an advantage as you wouldn’t need a spoon and could just drink your breakfast, which he successfully attempted. Sorry that just didn’t appeal to me.

So luckily Nairn’s had sent another tub. Experiment two began. I tried this time with only 110ml of water, I admit I like my porridge thick and not runny. I left the tub to stand for the recommended 4 minutes, but it was still a little thin for me, so I left it for another 3 minutes. This gave me the consistency I liked.

Tasting time.

I have to be upfront, I didn’t actually like the taste of the product. It’s hard to pin point exactly what it could be. I’m not that keen on dried milk so it could be that, but I do know that for me it was a little too sweet. Matt didn’t mind the taste (always handy to have a second opinion) but he could only eat the one as for him it was also a little on the sweet side.

I think you could get over the sweetness element by having a separate sugar sachet but I can see that this does remove a bit of the ‘instant’ element.

So whilst I didn’t like the taste of product I do think there are a lot of reasons why this product is good and would appeal to people.

I can see this product being useful for those food emergencies that do unfortunately crop up when you are gluten free. For example, say you are going away on short notice for a night and you aren’t convinced the place you are staying can cater for your breakfast requirements, these instant pots would come in handy. I can also see them being useful if you are camping, they aren’t too large and the outer packaging is recyclable, so easily got rid of.

All in all I think there is a definite market for this product. Just for me personally the taste didn’t quite meet my liking.