I have a long history with muesli. Muesli bars were a recess staple during my school years. As a uni student, I made muesli in 20kg batches and sold it from my sharehouse back yard like a drug dealer. In lockdown, I started an Instagram account where I would review and rate a different muesli every three or four days (I am the only contributor to the hashtag #mueslireviewsli). Even before this taste test, I would guess that I’ve tried more than 80% of all the muesli and muesli bar brands available in my area.
My belief is the best mueslis have good ingredients and textural contrast – raw, unroasted nuts should be prohibited under this rule. And the best muesli bar is simply good muesli bound together.
Sadly, the muesli bar industry does not share my philosophy. Supermarket aisles are stacked with a bizarre and ever-changing roster of flavours. Would you like a muesli bar inspired by Chokito? What about rice puffs flavoured with Nesquik? Or a quasi-protein bar with mint chocolate or iced coffee?
It would have been funny and interesting to try them all, but I’m not superhuman. So I set some criteria based on the “best muesli bar” philosophy above, but also considering health-conscious parents buying muesli bars as a lunchbox snack. I excluded anything with chocolate, yoghurt (muesli bar yoghurt is mostly oil and sugar) or particularly sweet flavours. I cut anything with protein-forward branding (we’ve done a protein bar taste test already) and any product sold as a single bar – a takeaway snack is bought for a different purpose than a take-home box.
I ended up with 19 muesli and nut bars mostly comprised of nuts, grains and dried fruit. I did the blind taste test with four friends at Solstice cafe in Sydney, scoring each product for texture and taste.
Even after cutting out anything that resembled dessert, I thought we’d be tasting a lineup of candy bars, but there was barely a muesli bar that was too sweet. Despite this I didn’t really get what I wanted either: a good muesli in bar form. Instead, we tasted a middle range of basic muesli and rectangle-shaped oat products, and some very unusual products that are arguably not muesli bars at all.
The best muesli bar
Nature Valley Crunchy Granola Canadian Maple Syrup, 252g, $6.90 ($2.74 per 100g), available at major supermarkets
Score: 7.5/10
Like Anzac biscuits, muesli bars can be divided into two camps: crunchy and chewy. I don’t know what happened between my childhood and now but the former seem to have died out. This muesli is the last champion of crunch. It has such a satisfying texture and toasty biscuity flavour (it’s 60% toasted oats), it made me realise so many of the other muesli bars we tried are undercooked, with raw or under-roasted nuts and grains. “Begging for a glass of milk,” one reviewer wrote. I was an extremely fussy eater as a kid, but 10-year-old me would have loved this for recess.
Note: we also tried Nature Valley’s Granola Oats & Honey, which scored a 7/10 and tastes similar but without the maple flavour – essentially like an Anzac biscuit.
The best nut bar
Sam’s Pantry Honey Salted Macadamia With Roasted Almonds Nut Bar, 170g, $4.50 ($2.65 per 100g), available at Woolworths and select grocers
Score: 7.5/10
One of the realities of the muesli bar aisle is, due to playground needs, many products are nut-free. The nut bar is the counter swing, a nut binge for all those who have had forced nut sabbaticals. One of the most useful discoveries of the taste test was, on average, they’re better than muesli bars. Every nut bar scored well, this one scoring slightly higher due to its honey-butter appeal – there’s no actual butter, it’s just the macadamias speaking. “Energy dense but in a whole food kind of way,” wrote a reviewer, who happens to be a researcher into food policy and public health. Wrote another: “I’ll be happy to pick this out of my teeth forever, nut bad!”
The best value
Hillcrest Premium Nut Bars Almonds, Cashews & Cranberries, 175g, $3.99 ($2.28 per 100g), available at Aldi
Score: 7.5/10
If this had some grains and the nuts were more roasted it would be exactly what I asked for. The diversity of ingredients provides so much contrast in texture and flavour. Some bites have the chew, acidity and bright sweetness from cranberries, others bites are more savoury and a little creamy from the peanuts and cashews, some have more almond or sesame, some have all of the above. As one reviewer wrote: “Just a good nut bar.”
The rest
Carman’s Roasted Nut Bars Almond, Cashew and Cranberry, 175g, $7.50 ($4.29 per 100g), available at major supermarkets
Score: 7/10
Imagine if you were cloned, but it was a cheap job: it doesn’t look quite as good and it has a knockoff name. How would you feel if that clone became more popular? That’s probably how Carman’s feels seeing an Aldi knockoff – the Hillcrest almond, cashew and cranberry muesli bar – score higher than their original. I’d say they can’t complain. This is not only more expensive, it’s also unnecessarily sweeter and has a lower proportion of nuts and seeds.
Carman’s Muesli Bars Classic Fruit & Nut, 270g, $7.50 ($2.78 per 100g), available at major supermarkets, and Hillcrest Premium Muesli Bars Fruit & Nut, 270g, $3.99 ($1.48 per 100g), available at Aldi
Score: 7/10
If the Hillcrest and Carman’s nut bar battle was hard fought, the competition between their classic muesli bars is soft, like watching a wrestling match between Teletubbies. It’s hard to pick a winner but I don’t know if it matters much either way. Hillcrest’s versions have slightly more sugar and marginally fewer nuts. Both have such a huge cinnamon hit, I found myself asking, for the first time in my life, is this too much cinnamon? Ultimately, both brands’ muesli bars are so plainly within the expectations of what a supermarket-quality muesli bar is. No one will hate either, or the two brands’ other muesli bars.
Koja Oat Bites Muesli Slice, 150g, $7.50 ($5 per 100g), available from Woolworths and select grocers
Score: 7/10
The opposite of the Carman’s/Hillcrest experience – a muesli bar with ambition. Like so many things striving to be unique or different, it ends up being divisive. Every reviewer gave this an eight, a five or a four, but nothing in between. Unlike the dense chew of classic muesli bars, this is softer, like a buttery cake. The coconut gives it an Anzac biscuit feel but the chia seeds, one of the least joyful muesli grains, give me the same shivers that ward me off bliss balls, turmeric smoothies and carob. Regardless of how you feel about chia, those who like this bar will love it, probably more than any other product in the taste test. And if you do, like me, you should look for Koja’s single bar options in the health food aisle of your supermarket.
Oh So Natural Date & Chia Gluten-Free Bars, 180g, $3.99 ($2.22 per 100g), available at Aldi
Score: 5.5/10
One of the many hacks I discovered reviewing muesli was that, on average, gluten-free mueslis were far better. Instead of using oats as a base, they rely on a diversity of grains that give an incredibly textural experience, like buckwheat, rice puffs or cornflakes. I thought this would be the highest scorer of the day. Sadly, it’s undercooked, sticky (the main ingredient is glucose syrup) and homogeneously chewy. If you closed your eyes, you wouldn’t even know the cornflakes are in there. It made me think of being a wobbly toothed kid faced with a new muesli bar – would this be the food that pulls out my precious teeth?
Uncle Tobys Chewy Apricot, 185g, $5.50 ($2.97 per 100g), available at major supermarkets
Score: 5/10
I’ve eaten this product so many times, even in a blind taste test it’s hard to taste without being transported to school. I wasn’t the only one. The scorecards were littered with comments about lunchboxes, recess and childhood, but not particularly good scores. I’d never considered we can have a nostalgic experience of something we don’t particularly like – it’s the time we remember fondly, not the muesli bar. Criticisms were mostly about the synthetic flavour – the apricot is unusually powerful – and the sweetness. The one person who didn’t write about school time nostalgia thought this might be a fancy brand, albeit a terrible one.
Mother Earth Golden Oats Baked Oaty Slices, 240g, $3.80 ($1.58 per 100g), available at major supermarkets
Score: 5/10
What says “Mother Earth” about a reconstituted bar of roasted oats that looks like a dog treat? It’s not the sugar (23.6g per 100g makes it one of the most sugar-laden), the raising agents or the egg powder. Maybe it’s the fact it tastes like, as one reviewer said, “Something you’d buy from a vending machine before a walk in Katoomba.” It’s sweet, coconuty, with a mild baking powder flavour and a fibrous, dusty texture. It’s a reminder that health food is the reality TV of the culinary world, a genre with its own conventions that aren’t a true reflection of its name. But in this case, at least Mother Earth is budget-conscious.
Ceres Organics Organic Oaty Bars Banana, 100g, $6.50, available from Woolworths and select grocers
Score: 4/10
Several products elicited comments along the lines of: “Is this a muesli bar?” Both Ceres products (we also tried their berry-flavoured bar) were victims of the accusation. They look like space food designed for a tiny astronaut and smell like a health food amalgam. In flavour and texture, this is somewhere between a “healthy” muffin and second-rate cafe banana bread. I don’t mind that, but what I can’t get around is the overt use of chia seeds, an ingredient that has far more superfood hype than it does flavour. They may as well put a sign on the front of the packet saying, “Deliciousness is not a priority.”
Hillcrest Oat Bars Golden Oats, 240g, $2.99 ($1.25 per 100g), available at Aldi
Score: 3/10
This is the Pringle of the muesli bar world, a reconstituted approximation packed with salt and various ingredients that are less about flavour and more about optimising shelf stability. But unlike Pringles, once I popped, I immediately wanted to stop. Part of that is the smell, a strange and unnatural sweet aroma, like a fruit from another solar system, presumably one not compatible with carbon-based life forms. The texture is equally sad: dusty and crumbly. “How is it both dry and moist?” one reviewer asked. The grainy flavour also has an unknowable and unusual nature that lasts for far too long. “The last thing you’ll eat when you’re stranded in the bush after a hike,” one reviewer said.
