Naturebox Month 2 Review

Hello peanuts,

Well, I decided to keep my Naturebox subscription for another month. I think I convinced myself that I just needed to pick the right combination of snacks. This month I opted for the Everything Bagel Stix, Apple Pie Oat Clusters, Masa Crisps, Lemon Tea Biscuits, Italian Bistro Pretzels, Mexicana Mango, and South Pacific Plantains.

The Mexicana Mango was my favorite item in this month's Naturebox because I grew up eating dried mango. Of course, the dried mango I'm familiar with is thicker and loaded up with sugar which is why I can't have it as a regular snack. The slices of mango in this snack are much thinner and wafer-like. They aren't crusted with sugar so they aren't as sweet but they're still pretty sweet. If we're ranking things, Philippine dried mangoes are the sweetest followed by natural mangoes followed by this Mexicana Mango snack from Naturebox. Whether you like these will depend upon your personal tastes. I can see some people finding them a little bland. I was disappointed that they contained 30 grams of sugar for 3.5 pieces. I decided to compare them to Gold Key Dried Mangoes where a serving size of 7 pieces or 40 grams contains 140 calories and 30 grams of sugar. That's surprisingly more or less on par with this Mexicana Mango from Naturebox. I wasn't able to locate the brand that makes the dried mango with a ton of sugar but the Gold Key Dried Mangoes still have a good amount of sugar so Naturebox's Mexicana Mango is far from a notable improvement.

I wouldn't call the South Pacific Plantains a favorite but they were easy to snack on. Again, I'm used to dried banana and dried plantain snacks and I really didn't get any of that flavor from this Naturebox snack. The plantains are cut thin and taste more like a potato or starchy vegetable chip. I mean if you try really hard to detect it you may taste some plantain but you might also be deluding yourself. These were a bit on the salty side but I didn't find it too excessive.

The Masa Crisps were similar to the plantains in that they would be a good chip substitute. They tasted very familiar to me, probably because that corn flavor is found in so many chips and snacks. While I enjoyed these I did find them to be excessively salty and very high in calories and fat content.

The Italian Bistro Pretzels were certainly flavorful. The individual flavors are not terribly distinct but they should cure your cravings for something salty and savory. They are very high in calories and have a crazy high level of sodium but even if they didn't I don't see really having more than three or four at a time because the seasoning is a little overwhelming.

The following three snacks took much longer to finish. Actually, as of writing this post I still haven't finished them.

The lemon tea biscuits are cute little discs that are somewhere between shortbread and sugar cookies. They have a strong buttery smell and taste though I do get a little bit of the lemon. I find these a little too sweet and on the dry side for me. Again, my philosophy is that if something is healthy I can deal with it if it doesn't taste amazing but if something is unhealthy then it really should taste fabulous.

I thought the Everything Bagel Stix would be a better version of the Poppy Seed Sticks. They were worse. I just found the taste offputting. It was almost like it was too toasted or burnt and that in combination with whatever onion or garlic flavoring they added was just unpleasant.

I've barely made a dent in the Apple Pie Oat clusters. They taste nothing like oatmeal raisin cookies. They're just like dry oats clumped together. I have been using them as mouse bait.