A tier list and ranking of the best flavored David Protein Bars, from best to worst. I break down taste, texture, and composition to see which flavors are actually worth getting!
Overall Review & Verdict
David protein bars are famous for their superb macros. However, they’re also infamous for potentially false information regarding just that.
That aside, are they worth a bite?
First, let’s compare, say, to the popular Quest bars. All of these have the outside feel of a waxy Quest bar, but they’re less chewy overall, yet thicker, softer, and in general, feel less artificial when biting in. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, they’re also much less sweet, making their flavors less pronounced and dull.
Needless to say, all the flavors are very mild, as there isn’t enough sweetness to give them a sufficiently tasty kick. In their composition, they all have white, crispy bits, and some have additional pieces depending on their flavor. The bars as a whole feel generic overall.
To put it nicely, these David protein bars are boring. They’re great for beginners or those looking for something that’s definitely not artificial-tasting and inoffensive. And going back to the Quest comparison–in a way, while there are some differences to those, these are a worse version, at least flavor-wise.
If I had to sum it up further, there’s something about these bars–they’re not artificial per se, but they taste and feel like regular protein bars that you would imagine in your head if you’ve never had one. I actually found myself altering this list several times because of how similar they all were! That genericness and overall lack of sweetness dull the bars down to an incredibly low level.
Verdict: Generic, boring, unfun.
Flavor Ranking
1. Cake Batter
It looks like a uniform white bar–smooth white shell and inside, biting in, a white filling with a small crunch and chewiness, easy to bite through, reasonably dense. It’s average. Taste-wise, it’s lightly sweet, with an authentic vanilla birthday cake flavor, but it’s not sweet enough to bring it out. For the most part, it’s quite bland, though the composition and mouthfeel are pleasant and unoffensive, offering a lightly, non-standout, balanced chewy and crispness.
2. Cinnamon Roll
Outside is moist and almost waxy, like a Quest Bar, notably more moist than others on the list. It has a few white rice bits on the inside, but it remains mostly uniform, chewy, and thick in texture. It’s mildly sweet, and honestly, I didn’t get a cinnamon roll; I got a generic protein bar with a mild, sugary, vanilla-like taste and the slightest hint of cinnamon. Where is that sweet, creamy icing and buttery dough? That generic bar taste seems to suppress all of its full flavors.
3. Salted Peanut Butter
Similar to the Blueberry Pie in terms of sweetness–a nudge more than the others on this list. It also has a noticeable salty peanut aroma. Biting into it, there are some rice bits with a mild salt and sugary taste alongside the peanut. Still, it’s really just too tame overall. I at least appreciate the addition of the peanut bits alongside the white rice ones, which makes it slightly more chunky than most others here.
4. Fudge Brownie
A darker chocolate-looking bar with the usual embedded white pieces. Nevertheless, it still comes across as a generic protein bar with a slightly dark and mildly sweet chocolate flavor, which dulls it down.
Essentially, just a dull, semi-dark chocolate bar with a few crunches and moderate chewiness. It’s barely trying to be a brownie at this point, maybe a watered-down one at that.
5. Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk
This is pretty chunky, just like the Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough flavor. It contains large chocolate pieces with the usual rice bits. Notably, however, there are no peanut bits, unlike the Salted Peanut Butter version. In general, it’s slightly peanutty with a hint of chocolate—mostly reminiscent of a plain protein bar—and not very sweet.
This fails on both fronts in terms of the flavors it’s going for.
6. Blueberry Pie
A strong scent of sweet blueberry, this bright purple bar features noticeable white pieces that stand out colorfully. Biting in, it’s a lightly sweet, authentic blueberry flavor. Not punchy, and definitely not sweet enough, though, a tiny bit sweeter than the majority on this list.
It’s inoffensive overall, and texture-wise, it surprisingly has the softest mouthfeel out of all of the David Protein bars, as well as being just a hair sweeter overall. Other than that, it has the generic protein bar taste and lacks sufficient sweetness to really bring out any aprecitable form of blueberry or blueberry pie flavor.
7. Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough
Chonky! Like the Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk flavor, these have additional mix-ins: extra-large chocolate chips alongside the usual David white crispie bits. This should be good, right?
Biting in, it’s definitely chunky, soft, and some light crunches, though the chocolate is surprisingly very light, and what you end up getting is exactly that: a light chocolate cookie-ish taste hindered by the lack of sweetness. It kind of just tastes like a generic, almost unflavored protein bar with no artificialness. Sure, the mouthfeel of these is more enjoyable than others on this list; however, the flavor is so, so boring and bland–It’s like cookie dough without sugar!
I reviewed these previously as well.
8. Red Velvet
The white bits stick out from the very dark red protein bar–neat! And that’s where the fun ends.
I genuinely don’t know what flavors are even trying to be represented here. I love red velvet, I know what it tastes like, but what comes out here is something almost odd-tasting. It’s not bad, it’s like a generic protein bar with some sugar and some other lightly sourish taste that’s perhaps supposed to resemble red velvet, I guess? Weird, and as a red velvet lover, very disappointing.
I reviewed these previously as well.