Today I have for you, what I think is one of the most unique Items that I have ever reviewed before. A smoothie drink, made with Oats. Yea, you heard that right. Oats!
Oat Works is a company that makes Smoothie Drinks using Oats. The Oats in the drinks promote heart health, give you energy, and help you sustain energy as it digest slowly not causing sugar spikes. Its vegan, gluten free, has no cholesterol, has natural oat fiber, and claims to be Non-Gmo (I’ll get to that in a sec).
Oat Works Oat Powered Smoothies come in three flavors. Strawberry Banana, Peach Mango, and Pomegranate Blueberry. I’ll talk about the consistency before I talk about the tasting of the flavors. The constancy is smooth, and a bit thick (hence the word Smoothie right?) It’s not ridiculously thick like some bottled smoothies can be. It has a smooth, rich texture. Very palatable and nice on the tongue. Which wit any smoothie is very important. Especially something that is made with Oats in a liquid form. Oat Works definitely hit the mark on texture.
As for flavors, they passed the mark as well. I think the choosing to pair classic flavor together, was a great idea. Though, I feel that more flavors could be something I would like to see in the future. Maybe a Strawberry Raspberry flavor? (Hint hint) With that being said, let’s get onto the tasting of the flavors. I will start off with the Strawberry Banana because it’s the one I liked the most. I love anything Strawberry and Banana. I personally think it’s the greatest fruit combinations ever. The fruits don’t fight with each other, and they both mellow. It’s like a Democrat and a Republican being best buddies. They are both from different worlds, yet they’re in the same world together. Happily coexisting. Weird analogy, but you get the point. I love this flavor.
The Peach Mango was also delicious. I tasted both items as promised on the rom of the bottle, and found that both fruits went well together and were very sweet. I enjoyed this allot and thought about the summer time. This would be great during hot weather, straight out of the fridge. The Pomegranate Blueberry was my least favorite. Not because of the flavor combination, but because I never really liked the paring of Pomegranate and Blueberry together. It’s both tart and sweet which was ok, but just not for me. If you do like Pomegranate and Blueberry put together, then you will like this because you can taste both fruits in it and mellow well together. I know it sounds funny that I am saying that they mellow well together if I don’t like it, but when it comes to reviews like this, it’s more about getting the flavor they promised out of the product, and less about my personal preference.
Now that the flavor examination is over, let’s look a little deeper into the product and what I found to some “hits and misses” about the product. For one, while drinking the product, I cringed at the sugar amounts in each of the drinks. Over 30 grams of sugar. Which I concluded has to be coming from the concentrated fruit juices used in the drinks. Which suddenly made a light bulb go off in my head. Because the Oats in Oat Works are designed to digest slowly, so you would not notice the high amounts of sugar in the drink, because you would get that alert, jittery feeling that those same high amounts of sugar would give you. Instead, you will get an even distributed flow of energy from the drink which will in turn, counter act the sugar. Which in turn, left me puzzled. Did they purposely put those high amounts of sugar in their on purpose? Another thing was that the drinks say they have “Oat Soluble Fiber” as the ingredient for the Oats. But not the Oats themselves. That sounded weird.
Another thing that left me confused was the words “Non-Gmo” on the side of the bottle. Yet, I looked all over the bottle for the Non-Gmo Project Approved image, and was completely dumb founded when I didn’t see it. So what did Tiffany do? Research. As you guys know I work with allot of companies that are Non-Gmo verified and know what the requirements are to become approved by the Non-Gmo Project. So I started reading the ingredient lists on all of the drink flavors, looking for a commonality in the drinks. While I found a few, one that stuck out to me the most was Xanthan Gum. Now, I don’t know the complete list of Gmo’s out there, but I know for a fact that Xanthan Gum couldn’t possibly be a Non-Gmo Project verified item. And I was right. In fact, it on their website listed as Gmo (Genetically Modified Organism). There is no way that they would ever get approved without the Non-Gmo project telling them to take the Xanthan Gum out. But it was just an observation more than criticism. Like warm feedback and cool feedback?
Eiether way, I say give them a try and be the judge yourself. For more information, check out, www.OatWorks.com
This product was given to me courtesy of Oat Works for testing/reviewing purposes only. This was NOT a paid review.
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