Geo Bar Rant

We're trying to do "the right thing" but it's a bit frustrating and sometimes wonder whether it is really worth the bother.  Notwithstanding this, here's a little product review cum rant.

As a family we are being more proactive and making more effort in buying responsibly these days, accepting it will sometimes cost a little more.  For some time we have been buying more organic food and more recently, we have purchased much less meat.  A while back I tried a Geo Bar and really liked it - moist, chewy and very fruity so I thought I'd maybe keep some in stock.

Then today a mail order box arrived, from Goodness Foods, containing quite a variety of foods and the above box of Geo Bars were included.  I was amazed at how light the box felt (pictured) so I opened it and it's obvious why - just look at the tiny size of that bar in relation to the box!  So much packaging is misleading and very unnecessary.  You can see from the above photo that the Geo Bar is roughly half the box and I just can't see the justification for this, or can I?

Costing 37p each or £2.22 for a box of 6, you'd expect to get something fairly substantial for that, wouldn't you?  Why do they do this, how can they possibly justify this?

The actual bars taste fine.  They're quite moist and don't appear to be fragile - staying stuck together very well.  The first ingredient is Glucose Syrup which clearly helps the structure stay together but I wonder if the bar were more substantial, perhaps less syrup would be needed.  There is a nice combination of nuts, wheat, fruit and different flavours available - perhaps I ought to try these for a fuller picture.  For the above bar, the actual ingredient list looks fine from my perspective.  According to the box, the Fairtrade elements amount to 50.8% which isn't bad at all but could certainly be better.  With 142 kcal per bar, that's sufficient fuel for about 2 miles running, again, not too bad.  With only 1.4g of fibre in each bar, perhaps it could do better in that department!

To conclude:

• Taste-wise they're nice
• At 37p they are not cheap
• Fairtrade portion is 50.8%
• Ridiculous packaging
• Healthy