Graze: Review & Discount Code

I used to have a graze box sent to my office on a weekly basis a few years ago. They're little boxes of four different snacks delivered straight to your door. I really enjoyed receiving them, they brightened up my working day and I thought they were a great way to make sure I ate healthy (and importantly, tasty!) snacks. But eventually I felt like I'd sampled the entire menu several times over and lost interest, and so I unsubscribed.

However, I recently took a peak at their website again and they have really upped their game. They have a much wider variety of snacks available now, and are tapping into what's on trend at the moment with options including protein flapjacks, beef jerky, kale chips and gluten free brownies. They've mixed up their snack box format with some hot options (broths), microwavable popping corn bags and breakfast box varieties. It all looked much more inviting and innovative than the olives and nuts I remembered, so I was willing to give it another go.

I received a graze box last week, which contained a mixture of sweet and savoury snacks and looked like this:

Here are my thoughts after sampling the lot (which didn't take me very long!)

Cocoa and Vanilla Protein Flapjack
Upon tasting this I had to compare it to my favourite protein flapjack, the Trek Cocoa Coconut bar. This compared pretty well. It actually reminded me of Coco Pops (in a good way!). A dark chocolate glaze on the top wouldn't have gone amiss and would have given the flapjack a more luxurious feel. Seeds were a nice addition to the recipe: you couldn't taste them too much but they give a nutritional boost to the snack (omega 3 from the linseeds, vitamin E from the sunflower seeds). Looking at the ingredients, it turns out this flapjack is made with margarine - come on guys, would it have been that much more expensive to use real butter?

Hot Cross Yum
This snack contained a mixture of orange flavoured raisins, honeyed almonds, and sponge pieces. I loved the combination of these flavours, which created a pretty good approximation to your regular hot cross bun, but with a fraction of the calories (just 132). It was a touch too sweet for me however, mainly because the almonds were really sugary, which they didn't need to be as both the raisins and the sponge were sweet.

Sriracha Peas with Jumbo Corn
This was definitely my favourite snack of the bunch. I just loved the crunchy texture and the contrast between the salty corn and sweet and spicy peas. Really satisfying.

Tandoori Spiced Beef Jerky with Pomegranate Chutney
The jerky wasn't bad, but definitely didn't live up to the standards set by companies like Naked Ape (biltong rather than jerky) and Big T's. The chutney was a clever addition though, as jerky can be quite dry eaten on its own. However, because the jerky strips were so small it was actually quite hard to scoop up any chutney with them!

Graze boxes come with a little booklet that gives you the nutritional breakdown of each of your snacks. Having taken a look at it, it was quite revealing. One thing that stood out for me was that each of the snacks had added sugar, which was quite surprising given that half the pack was savoury, and that graze describe themselves as creators of 'healthy food'. I'm not sure whether it was just chance that I got a selection of snacks that all had added sugar, or if this indicative of the entire line - I'd be interesting to hear from graze on this if they're reading. As graze aims to cater for the health-conscious consumer, I think introducing a no added sugar section to the menu would be a good move, as would re-designing some of the snacks to lower the sugar levels across the range.

As I'm about to leave my office job (hurrah!) this box was sadly a one off for me. If you want to give graze a go, use my code 7DCLTPC4E and you'll get your first box free (as well as your fifth and your tenth if you stay subscribed).

Enjoy the code and let me know what you think!