Product: Snyder’s of Hanover Gluten-Free Pretzel Sticks – $5.99+
Pretzels are awesome snacks. Honestly, since I was a kid, they’ve been one of my favorite things to crunch on. And when I went gluten-free…they had to be eliminated from my diet. Not that there weren’t gluten-free options out there. My local grocery store had bags of Glutino’s pretzels on the shelves…but for that price, it was hard to convince me to shell out the funds for it.
But then I won a contest during a month of gluten-free giveaways on Gluten Free Works. How exciting. My prize…a bag of the new Snyder’s of Hanover Gluten-Free Pretzel Sticks. When they arrived in the mail…I was so excited to give them a try. Pretzels were back on my snack plate and that made me stupid-happy!
My afternoon snack at work is very important to me. It falls between lunch and dinner, and must sustain me through dinner prep and the cooking time each day. I packed a serving of these pretzel sticks and found that they did do the trick.
Snyder’s of Hanover do offer up a great product here. These pretzels are light as air, so they don’t even feel like real pretzels however. One bite…and the crunchiness of them is apparent. Love a crunchy pretzel. But I find these to be a bit too loud at times. Especially when I’m sitting in my cubical at work, and I disturb the office silence with a loud CRUNCH. Ah well…one of the perils of the office, I suppose. But, these are good. I found the lightness of them to be a bit offsetting, but once I got beyond that, I found the magic of these pretzel sticks. They are also a low-calorie snack that is relatively low in sodium (for pretzels) and pack a crunch with each bite (even I don’t want pretzels that don’t have a bit of a snap to them!).
They taste good, but I found them to lack when I compared them to the pretzel twists I tried from Glutino. When I ate the Glutino pretzels, I wanted to share them with everyone at the office. I didn’t get that same rush with these. They lightness of them didn’t make them feel like real pretzels, unlike Glutino which matched the feel, texture, and flavor of regular pretzels bite-for-bite. If I’m craving pretzels and these are all I can find, however, I wouldn’t turn my nose up at them. They really do taste great…they just didn’t wow me like I hoped.
I had also hoped that Snyder’s of Hanover (being a well-known and trusted pretzel brand) would have their gluten-free bags at a more affordable price than, say, gluten-free companies such as Glutino. However…the few stores I have spotted these in, they have been just as expensive if not more expensive than Glutino’s brand. YIKES! And I wouldn’t mind shelling out almost $6 for pretzels if the bags were of equal value to the regular pretzels. But hold up a bag of Snyder’s of Hanover Gluten-Free Pretzel Sticks to one of their bags of regular pretzels, and it is much smaller. I see that trend a lot in companies that begin a gluten-free line…and with gluten-free companies in general. More cost…less product. It’s a sad reality to me these days…but one I have to give if I feel the need to splurge on a snack.
So, while Synder’s of Hanover didn’t really wow me with their pretzels, if they were on sale, I’d pick them up again. Might even dip them in some (gluten-free) melted chocolate and change things up a little. If you are craving a lot of crunch and a little salt in your day…and if you can find these…go ahead and try them. They do make a great gluten-free snack. They just aren’t my first choice for gluten-free pretzels for the moment.
The Celiathlete 