Flavors Tried: Chocolate & Vanilla
Price: $24.99 for 9 packs ($2.77 per pack)
Nutrition per serving: 210 Calories, 10g Fat, 14g Carbs, 15g Protein
Optimum Nutrition protein wafers are a unique spin on your average protein bar. If you’re tired of exercising your jaw on thick & chewy protein bars, these may be a very welcome addition to your rotation.
In terms of nutrition, I was very excited to see that these bars are not loaded up with fiber. For many people, high fiber may be a positive.
For me, I enjoy having protein bars post-workout, and having too much fiber after my workout doesn’t really sit well in my stomach. So the fact that these bars don’t contain any fiber was actually a big positive for me!
These protein wafers are definitely “light and airy” as advertised, but let’s see how they taste…
Chocolate Creme Protein Wafers
On the surface, these chocolate creme protein wafers are everything you’d want them to be.
They are very light & airy, and when you bite into the wafer it flakes apart beautifully. In fact, you can easily separate the layers, which is what you expect to find in a wafer cookie.
There’s a nice chocolate coating along the bottom, and each square is a great size. Considering each square is only 100 calories, it makes for a really solid snack.
The flavor, however, is very underwhelming.
In fact, the flavor reminds me very much of chocolate whey protein. If you’ve ever had chocolate protein powder before, the flavor of these wafers is going to be very familiar.
If you’ve specifically had Optimum Nutrition whey protein, you know exactly what these wafers taste like.
Are they terrible? No, certainly not. To me, the light & airy texture helps to make up for the lackluster flavor.
If these tasted like true chocolate, they’d be a home run because I truly love the texture.. But because the flavor is really mediocre, these are quite average.
Vanilla Creme Protein Wafers
I was really excited about these vanilla wafers because that is my preferred wafer cookie flavor.
But I was super disappointed to find out that these are vanilla and chocolate. Had these wafers contained a white chocolate coating, I would have been over the moon! I guess that’s my fault for not looking closely at the photo.
This particular flavor was interesting because it has zero smell to it, so I could immediately tell that the vanilla flavor would be underwhelming.
If I had to describe the flavor, it mostly just tastes like artificial sweetener. Considering the chocolate flavor tastes like chocolate protein powder, I expected this one to taste like vanilla protein powder, but I got very little actual vanilla flavor.
It’s overly sweet, and there’s a slightly bitter aftertaste to it. Surprisingly, I enjoyed the chocolate wafers much more.
The texture is still awesome, and I love the flakey wafer cookies, but the vanilla flavor (or lack thereof) is incredibly disappointing.
Optimum Nutrition Protein Wafers: Overall Thoughts
My expectations for these wafer cookies were definitely too high, but even with tempered expectations, there are a bit disappointing.
Not because they’re awful, but because they have so much potential!
The texture of these wafer cookies is exactly what you want. They’re light, airy, flakey, and have soft creamy layers in between each wafer layer. It’s awesome.
But, the flavor is disappointing.
The great texture helps offset the bland flavor to a certain extent, but not enough to make me love these wafer cookies.
At the time of writing this, these protein wafers have nearly 5 stars on 800 reviews on Amazon, so maybe I’m just too tough of a critic. If you come across these, I do think they’re worth trying, but you might want to temper your expectations.
