Megan Geall
I am a huge, huge foodie. Call me a weirdo but food shopping is one of my favourite things and taking me to a supermarket or food hall is like taking a kid to a sweet shop. I love to spend money on trying new products. Food and drink, savoury and sweet. Luckily for you, I’m here to review all the best new food products in the shops and advise which are the ones worth trying— and, of course, which to avoid…
This Week’s Food Trips
My first supermarket purchase this week was on a trip to M&S after I discovered they had released some exciting new products that I couldn’t wait to try. During the week, I also went down to a local independent shop (originally to send a parcel returning clothes from an online shopping spree that went a bit overboard—oops!) and ended up browsing the foreign sweets section. Finally, I picked up a couple of exciting new releases in my usual weekly supermarket shop. Keep reading to see what products I tried and, most importantly, whether it’s worth you trying them too.
M&S Low Calorie Vanilla Iced Dessert
Low calorie ice cream alternatives often have a bad reputation. For good reason too— they simply don’t taste as good as proper ice cream. Now, I know the point is that you can enjoy these desserts without worrying too much about breaking a diet but some low calorie products are just not worth it. The new M&S alternative isn’t terrible. Named as an iced dessert, the vanilla-flavoured product honestly advertises itself without pretending to be actual ice cream. It is very creamy with a gorgeous vanilla flavour but its consistency is much runnier than ice cream meaning it melts incredibly quickly. By the time I had finished my bowl it seemed more like I was drinking the dessert than actually eating it.
As an ice cream alternative it really is not a bad option. The flavour is delicious but, as it is plain vanilla, it isn’t anything special.
Rating: 6/10
You can buy this new product here.
Haribo Balla Bites
Wow. My local shop really presented me a hidden treasure in these Haribo sweets. I’ve never come across these sweets before so I have no idea whether these are a foreign import or not but I’m extremely glad to have tried them. Balla Bites are small, bite-sized fruit gummy sweets with a soft, fondant centre—think of the long Haribo filled-pencils, but bite-sized. They come in a variety of colours and flavours, including strawberry, apple, cherry, and lemon. These little sweets are incredibly addictive. As bite-sized sweets, it is easy to devour a huge handful in one sitting but I’m really not complaining! In my opinion, the best flavour are the green sweets with the yellow and pink fondant centre (I’m assuming these are apple flavour) but none of the flavours are in any way bad at all. Definitely try these if you spot them.
Rating: 10/10 .
If you’re really desperate to try them, you can buy them online here.
Sainsbury’s Nacho Cheese Bites
After trying the Sainsbury’s BBQ pork cocktail sausages last time, I returned to their newly released summer range to pick up another exciting product. This time I went for the nacho cheese bites, which sounded heavenly.
Sadly, I was left disappointed. I think my mistake was that I ate them cold. If they were heated, I would hope that the cheese would melt and be gooey. As a cold bite, the outside of the breaded cheesy snack was very soft when I was expecting it to have a little bit of crunch to it. The cheese itself didn’t seem to have a lot of flavour either, you could taste it was nacho cheese but the Mexican flavour and spice was lacking. The only way I would be tempted to try these again would be heated up, otherwise it is a major disappointment.
Rating: 3/10.
If you want to try these yourself, you can purchase them here.
Müller Light Banana Split Yoghurt
My final purchase of the week was the limited edition banana split flavoured yoghurt from Müller Light. This is a banana-flavoured, fat-free yoghurt with dark chocolate sprinkles, recreating that heavenly flavour of a banana split dessert. The yoghurt is super creamy and flavoursome with the dark chocolate sprinkles perfectly balancing out the sweetness of the banana, also adding a slight crunch to the otherwise smooth texture.
I really loved this limited edition flavour and it would be amazing if this became a permanent product that you could buy as a multipack as they are only available as a single yoghurt currently. I’m deducting a point for the fact I have to keep making trips to buy more of the separately sold yoghurt because, let’s be real, who can afford the petrol right now?
Rating: 9/10
I believe these yoghurts are sold in most supermarkets but you can buy them online here.
Catch up on my last review here.
Featured image courtesy of Louis Hansel on Unsplash. Image license can be found here. No changes were made to this image.
Megan Geall
Megan is a 23-year-old recent English and American Literature graduate and aspiring journalist. Her interests include food, fitness, lifestyle writing and dance!