Something To Try This Week – In The Nood Energy Bites

For those of us on Slimming World, staying full and satisfied is key to staying on plan. I’m always looking for things to eat that will help keep me on the straight and narrow, so when I was asked to give In The Nood Energy Bites a go I was intrigued! 

In The Nood was set up by a couple called Rufus and Carmen, who found their lives getting too hectic to stay healthy (I think we can all relate!) and so they decided to create something that gave them plenty of energy but wouldn’t take much time to make. That’s how they came up with In The Nood! Their energy balls are, as it says on the packet, gluten free, vegan and have no added sugar, and everything you need comes in the packet! You can add extra ingredients if you want, like fresh fruit, or a cocoa powder coating (like I did) but the essentials are there, ready to use! It comes in the packet as a crumbly paste, which means you can use as much or as little as you like at any given time and reserve the rest for later, or you can make them all at once and keep them in the fridge for up to two weeks! 

To make the balls, all you do is crumble the paste up and then work it back together until it can be shaped. Roll into balls, and then coat in whatever you want! I had the chocolate orange flavoured balls, which tasted fantastic! Think healthy Terry’s Chocolate Orange and you’ll have a good idea. The texture isn’t as smooth as I thought it would be, perhaps because they look like truffles so my brain was expecting smooth chocolate, but that works in their favour as they are more substantial and feel more filling. The balls on their own are plenty chocolatey enough, but I did cover them in cocoa powder (added a couple of syns to the batch) to make them a bit more fancy. This was tasty, but not necessary so I’ll probably just leave them as they are next time…after all why mess with something that’s great already right?!

The only change I made to the method, was halving the suggested serving size to make 12 instead of 6, which halved the syn value for each and made the pack last even longer. I found that having one of my smaller balls was absolutely sufficient to keep me going throughout an afternoon, and to curb my cravings! When split into 12, this works out at 2.5 syns per portion, and for something that keeps you going as well as these do that’s pretty great! Even if you wanted to double them back up and call them 5 syns each, that would be incredibly filling and much better for you than eating a chocolate bar! I’d much rather have something like this, which is full of nutrients, will keep me full, and tastes like chocolate, than eating something like a Lindt chocolate which is gone in a second and has next to no health benefits whatsoever. Ok…maybe I’d like to eat the Lindt chocolate too but that’s definitely not the point! 

Retailing at £4.99 for a pack, In The Nood energy balls come in three different flavours: 

• Orange & Cacao Energy Ball Mix (the ones I tried!)
• Hired Muscle Energy Balls (these contain dates, almonds, cacao and pea protein) 
• Crunchy Cacao Chip Energy Ball Mix

You can’t pick In The Nood mixes up from any major supermarkets yet (watch this space, they’re so good I’m sure they’ll be snapped up in no time!) but you can get them online from their website (www.inthenood.com) or from an online store called Yumbles.

I can highly recommend giving these a go, especially if you’re like me and find yourself giving into chocolatey temptations regularly! They help curb the craving for something sweet, pack you full of energy, and have about a thousand other health benefits to boot. I’ll certainly be getting them again, and I’m thinking of trying them out as a base for cheesecake next…I have a feeling that would be delicious! 

*I was sent this product to try out, however all views and opinions are my own. I never review anything that I don’t enjoy so you can be sure that I really did love these!