Grenade Product Reviews

Last week, I was lucky enough to be sent a bundle of Grenade goodies to try and test out. I’d always seen Grenade products sitting in fitness shops in their colour-popping wrapping and delicious sounding flavours, but had never got around to buying any, hence why I was beyond excited to receive this delivery!

I’d requested protein products, specifically bars, and sure enough this is what I’d received. I eventually want to get around to testing protein bars and shakes from leading suppliers to find out which I believe works best, and which is worth the money. So what goodies had I managed to grab this time round?

Grenade sports nutrition bundle

As you can see from the above photo, the products I’d been sent were:

• Carb Killa Protein Bar – Cookie Dough
• Carb Killa Protein Bar – White Chocolate Cookie
• Carb Killa Protein Bar – Dark Chocolate Mint
• Carb Killa Protein Bar – Chocolate Crunch
• Carb Killa Protein Shake – White Chocolate
• Diet Protein Shake – Raspberry and Blueberry
• Killa Coffee – Skinny Iced Latte

Carb Killa Protein Bars

I’m going to review all the protein bars as one, because aside from the actual flavours, the macros don’t change drastically between each one. I have this thing where I’ll always eat the most disappointing-sounding product first, because I’d rather build-up to something good.

Some of the numerous protein bar flavours that Grenande has to offer.

Introducing the Chocolate Crunch bar! My initial thoughts on the Chocolate Crunch bar was that it was just average. It didn’t taste particularly bad, but it wasn’t great either, just bland. I actually struggled to finish this bar because the more I ate of it, the less chocolate I could taste. Based on taste alone I probably would’ve given this bar a 4/10, so I guess it was good that I’d picked this one first! On the other hand, I ate this bar around 1-2 hours before I was off to the gym as I noted it could be eaten pre-workout from their website, by this point in the day I was starving as I’d had a particularly light lunch so was left praying this would fill me up. This bar actually worked wonders. Prior to this, I hadn’t really had a proper protein-heavy bar fill me up, so was pleasantly surprised how my stomach rumblings disappeared. I noticed this for all the bars I was given, not just the Chocolate Crunch, resulting in the protein bar battle fully being down to taste!

With the Chocolate Crunch bar scoring so low on taste, I was a little skeptical on whether the rest would taste nice at all, but oh was I proved wrong! The Dark Chocolate Mint bar was my second choice, I’ve always found mint okay, I love dark mint chocolate, but aside from this, I’ve always found other mint products overly-minty. This was my second choice because I was already prepared for a disappointing minty product, however this was easily the biggest surprise of them all. It was beautiful, just beautiful. If you like After Eight mints, you will love this, because it tastes exactly the same! I also found that this bar had a bit more of a cakey-texture than the rest, and if I ever come across these in a shop, this is definitely the flavour I’ll be purchasing, a definite 10/10 for taste here!

As for the White Chocolate bar I found this a little disappointing. I love white chocolate so I had high expectations for this, however I found this to be far too sickly, even for someone like me who has an incredibly sweet tooth. I’d probably still rate the White Chocolate bar a modest 6/10, but it wouldn’t be my first choice. My final choice was the Cookie Dough bar. Prior to tasting this, I read great reviews online and it seems like this came out top with many of the reviewers. Personally I’d rate this an 8/10, meaning it grabs second spot but falls just short of the mint! I liked this flavour and I would definitely consider buying it in shops (if the mint wasn’t available). I found it a little on the sweet side, but not unbearably, and certainly not as much as the White Chocolate bar!

As for the macros themselves, these bars contained between 13.6-16.9g of carbohydrates in each one, and between 20.3-22.7g of protein, resulting in no more than 220 calories in one bar. These bars pack just enough carbs to feel energised at the gym and generally I found they worked really well. If you want further information on the nutritional values, click here. The price of these bars are comparable to other protein bars on the market, for a purchase of one bar you’re looking at £2.50 each. You don’t appear to get any discount for buying the bundle of 12 on Grenade’s website (which surprised me), but I did find the 12-bar bundle cheaper online in other places such as Amazon.

Carb Killa Protein Shake – White Chocolate

This was the product I was probably most excited to try out, just because it sounded so nice. As mentioned earlier, I love White Chocolate, and white chocolate milkshakes have always been a firm favourite with me. Of course I wasn’t expecting it to taste exactly like milkshake, I assumed there would be that ‘protein taste’ that plagued all protein shakes.

White Chocolate Carb Killa Protein Shake – one of my favourites from the bundle

To start off, I was baffled by the taste of this product, and let me explain why. This product was perfection in my eyes, never had I expected a protein shake to taste to great. The shake itself was rich in flavour, had a thick texture, and tasted like it was made up entirely of double cream, basically it tasted like a luscious, full of fat and other bad things, white chocolate milkshake, I just couldn’t understand how something that tasted so fantastic had such great macros. Again, this product is £2.50 per bottle and packs 8.6g (5.0g sugars) of carbohydrates and 25.0g grams of protein into a 330ml, 214 calorie bottle. I’ve rated this with another solid 10/10 putting it joint-top with the dark chocolate mint protein bar. Out of all the products, if I was to purchase something of their website right this second, it would be this product, or some of the other Carb Killa protein shake flavours. 

Diet Protein Shake – Raspberry and Blueberry

Following on from the white chocolate shake, I was really excited to try the Raspberry and Blueberry smoothie-like protein shake. I chilled this all day prior to use, cracked some ice out, and poured it into a glass. All day I’d been drooling over this, and I’d worked myself up to a lovely refreshing smoothie drink, but was it lovely, refreshing and tasty? Absolutely not. Considering this brand has so many wonderful tasting products, I’m really really shocked this managed to make it out of the testing zone.

Raspberry and Blueberry Diet Protein Shake – Only a flop in my eyes?

For one, I don’t usually mind the taste of whey protein, it’s not the best, it’s not yummy, but I can stomach it. The whey in this almost tasted (and definitely smelt) like it was going off, which I found unusual since my product was in date. Perhaps I’d ended up with a dodgy shake here, but as I’m basing this off what I was given, I have to be honest. I saw numerous reviews online mentioning about how great this tasted, but I just couldn’t bring myself to stomach it at all, and I’m left wondering how an earth these eight people rated this 5 stars? It is stated that the fruit flavour used in this is natural, but I found it to be extremely artificial tasting and over concentrated, I also found it just didn’t mix well with the whey flavour at all. I really tried hard to enjoy the product as since it had been given to me, it seemed a shame to waste it. I kept trying to sip it on my journey home but I must’ve managed 50mls before this went into the bin. So I’m not sure if I’ve maybe received a dodgy product here, but based on my taste-test, I have no choice but to score this a 0/10. As for the macros on this product, again these are great. For £2.30 per bottle, there’s 4.3g (3.6g sugars) of carbohydrates and 26g of protein in each 330ml, 142 calorie bottle. Click here for more information.

Killa Coffee – Skinny Iced Latte

The review for this product is going to be a little flawed, primarily because I don’t like coffee.  I left this product until last because I was trying to push myself into drinking it, I was originally going to give this to my boyfriend, but forgot, then I came up with an idea of making this into a frappe. Ideally I wanted to limit the coffee taste enough so that it was drinkable, so I grabbed my Killa Coffee, some ice, and some chocolate milkshake and threw it all together in a glass. Now you can see why my review here is flawed…

On the plus side, the frappe I concocted actually tasted fairly nice. I wouldn’t be rushing to make it again, but it wasn’t a terrible drink. After looking on Grenade’s website, I know that they offer a drinks bundle in which the Killa Coffee is included, so I think a frappe is a fair suggestion for any coffee haters left with this product wondering what on earth they should do with it. The product iself is low in carbohydrates as it uses Sucralose, with only 1.0g in the can, and somehow it packs 22.7g of protein into this 250ml, 99 calorie can. For more information, click here.

Summary

Aside from the horrible fruity shake, I found everything else to be to a high-quality standard. The flavours are fantastic compared to some other brands and I think this is what sets Grenade out from the rest. Although you’re drinking and eating protein products, they definitely don’t taste like you are! I also found that the macros are pretty good, and at least comparable to other brands for the price that you’re paying. Although £2.50 per bar may seem expensive, you can usually grab some pretty good deals if you shop around and pick these up for around £1.70 per bar in a bundle. Following this taste test, I’m quite excited to pick up more of the shakes especially when I next walk into fitness shops purely because there’s so many wonderful flavours still to try (I’m looking at you Jaffa Quake).

I’m hoping to grab some more fitness bars soon so I’m able to compare the different brands on the market, but for now, I hope this review helped!