This morning, I attended the Starbucks Better Breakfast hour, an event hosted by Starbucks, where food bloggers and magazine editors were invited to sample and discuss Starbucks new line of healthy breakfast options.

In attendance:

Chesna Closs of Fit Esteem
Ed Levine of Serious Eats
Jaime Green of Cheap Healthy Good
Kelcey Kitner of The Mama Bird Diaries
Linda Rogers of Parenting
Melissa Chapman of Single Minded Women
…and a few more (sitting on the other side) who I didn’t get a chance to exchange cards with.

It was a truly enjoyable event, meeting other foodies, hearing some mommy insights, and of course I just love talking about food. I don’t think I can do justice to rehashing the whole 1+ hour conversation, so here’s just my thoughts.

Apple Bran Muffin – $1.75
7 grams of fiber, 7 grams of protein, 330 Calories

It tastes healthy (you’ll know there’s bran in there), but still very sweet, and heavy on the cinnamon.

Apple Bran Muffin

Baked Berry Stella – $1.75
100% whole grain, 200+ mg of Omega-3s, 280 Calories

This cute star shaped thing (I don’t know what to call it), is denser than a muffin, drier, less sweet, but still tastes healthy. Ok fine, it’s quite terrible.

Baked Berry Stella.jpg

Chewy Fruit & Nut Bar – $1.75
4 grams fiber, 5 grams of protein, 250 Calories

Like a granola bar, natural in taste, not too sweet.

Chewy Fruit & Nut Bar

Power Protein Plate – $4.95
16 grams of protein, 5 grams of fiber, 330 calories

We didn’t taste this one, but it’s basically a small whole wheat bagel, some fruit, cheese, and a hard boiled egg.

Power Protein Plate

Multi-Grain Roll with Spreads – $1.60
7 grams of protein, 6 grams of fiber, 280 calories

This was an average roll at best, average supermarket refridgerated kind, not average bakery roll. It comes with Almond Butter (100 calories) and/or Strawberry Preserves (40 calories).

Multi Grain Roll with spreads

Perfect Oatmeal with Toppings – $2.45
140-390 calories

Instant oatmeal ( I prefer old fashioned oats but this is ok) with a choice of three toppings, brown sugar, nut medley, dried fruit. The toppings are packed in smart 100 calorie packs and you can have as much as you want. (Hurry! I think they’ll eventually put a limit on this.)

oatmeal oatmeal with toppings

You all know that I don’t go to Starbucks anyway. It’s not my thing. I don’t need convenience or a place to chill. I need super delicious scrumptious phenomenally orgasmic food. That’s not their business plan but here are my thoughts anyway (hey they asked me for it): Aside from the protein plate, the prices are not bad. I don’t like “healthy”versions of things, like the apple bran muffin. It doesn’t satisfy my muffin craving because it’s not that good. Same goes for the Baked Berry Stella. I’m ok with the Chewy Fruit & Nut Bar and the oatmeal because that’s stuff that was always healthy and tasted good that way. They didn’t try too hard to play around with it to make it healthy. I like healthy, but not at the expense of yummy. BTW, I know of yummy and healthy multi-grain rolls so I think they could find a better one but does anyone just buy a roll with some spreads at a coffee shop?

On a side not, I wrote about Starbucks aquisition of Clover before. Unfortunately, there are no plans to bring it to NY yet.

posted by jessica at 03:00 PM Filed under Coffee, Tea, and Dessert, Events, Restaurants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.