The food world is bowl-shaped, to borrow from XTC's Senses Working Overtime. Food somehow tastes better when combined in a bowl.
A bowl where the first 4 ingredients are kale, broccoli, white beans, and seaweed may not be that appetizing, even if the food is in a bowl. Somehow a blendie bowl can make that group of foods taste good, even like chocolate.
The blendie bowl is not a term you would likely use to describe your breakfast in a casual conversation. My first exposure to a blendie bowl came with not having the sense of what I was eating but more about the taste.
My logic was simple: if the taste doesn't work, who cares about how much nutrition is contained within the bowl. The taste was kind of like chocolate pudding but you knew you weren't eating chocolate pudding. You didn't want to eat it because it was so good but you definitely didn't mind eating it all.
The ingredients list looked pretty solid. Fairly simple, basic ingredients. You could wonder about pure sugar in the list but the taste wasn't too sweet.
There are only 142 calories in the 5.7 oz. bowl with 8 grams of dietary fiber and 8 grams of protein. Not huge for protein but a nice source of dietary fiber. Hard to find a processed food with only 86 mg of sodium. The bowl has a better than 3:1 ratio of Omega 3 to Omega 6 (1229 mg/405 mg).
The label points out that top allergies are avoided: no dairy, gluten, soy, and nuts.
This was good and good for me.
Your humble narrator is as shocked as you are that these ingredients in a bowl doesn't taste like those ingredients.
If your significant other was going to make you breakfast in bed, and that person said you were having kale, broccoli, white beans, seaweed, bananas, and sweet potatoes, you might not know if you can finish all of that food.
You don't get huge portions of any specific food in a blendie bowl. You don't have any issues with any specific food in a blendie bowl.
The cherry and chocolate flavors are on the label but are further behind in the ingredient list. Yet you taste the cherry and chocolate more than kale or broccoli.
At $3.99, you may not be able to eat this 3x/day. As a supplement when traveling or as a snack, you can do much worse.
You might be tempted to wonder about a bowl that gives you some nutrition without sacrifice. Is it too good to eat even with some nutrition? Well, no, it's not. You don't have to feel guilty to have these bowls every so often.
BalanceofFood.com What's Tempting coverage
This is not meant to be an endorsement of the Worthy Superfood Blendie Bowl or any other blendie bowl. The idea of the story is to make you aware that companies are trying to present nutritious foods in more appealing packaging inside the bowl.
I did try several flavors from Worthy and the dark chocolate cherry was the best taste for your humble narrator. Your tastes may vary.
The reality is we eat a lot of vegetables with fat or dressing or some other tastier food. This isn't that much different. Cherry and cocoa are more palatable for most people than kale or broccoli.
We do need to develop a palate for the real taste of vegetables. Having a palate tuned to sugar will not work out well over a longer period of time. Some sugar, sweetness is good but not all the time.
The average life is built to have moments where a blendie bowl gives a boost of nutrition where you otherwise might not eat well. You can't live your way just on these products. A blendie bowl with a healthy salad is a better option than just the bowl.
photos credit: me
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