NatureBox Review

Overview:

I've been hearing a lot about Naturebox recently from various YouTubers I follow and have been eager to try out this subscription service. I was a bit hesitant since I'm not a big fan of these automatic charge-your-card-every-month kind of things, but I am pretty good about canceling after I get a free or discounted trial.

I decided to finally bite the bullet when my brother mentioned that he had gone to his friend's house and tried some Naturebox snacks there. So on a casual Monday night, my brother an I spent a good half-hour selecting which of Naturebox's many selections we wanted to try. 

We used a $10 off coupon by using the promo code PANDORA at checkout. There are other promo codes as well that give you the same discount. You can easily find more codes here. Ten dollars for 5 (+a surprise bonus snack!) seemed like a pretty good deal to me. This is half off the usual price of $20 per box.

About:

Naturebox is all about promoting healthy snacking. I personally love snacking since I eat many small meals a day rather than fewer larger meals. This helps with my metabolism and helps me never feel hungry. Read more about snacking here.

I know some may argue against snacking, but I personally believe snacking is essential in a clean eating diet paired with a lot of daily water intake and exercise.

Here's an excerpt from the NatureBox website:

NatureBox delivers a world of carefully sourced and nutritionist-approved foods right to your door. Each snack contains wholesome ingredients - with no artificial sweeteners, flavors or colors. Snacking has never been so deliciously fun and naturally easy.

I think that this is pretty accurate. Although I never though snacking was difficult to begin with, I like how the company promotes the idea that snacking can be fun and that you don't have to feel guilty about snacking. Their snacks are very kid-friendly and you are able to choose snacks based on set criteria such as vegan or low-carb. There are snacks for everyone!

For my first box, and possibly other boxes as well, I received a surprise bonus snack which means I received 6 total packages. However, my bonus was another bag of a snack I had already picked. I would have liked to try something new instead of twice the amount of one snack however. I'm not sure if this was on purpose or not, but I wish that the bonus was controlled was uniqueness.

There are several options for the packages you receive. There is a subscription were you may receive 5 snacks a month, 10 snacks a month, or 20 snacks a month, all at different costs with the price per snack decreasing the more you buy. You also have the option of buying snacking through the "Naturebox Market" without a subscription. The snacks are around $5 a bag here so I don't recumbent doing this when you can try out and cancel the cheaper-per-snack subscription service.

Shipping was pretty fast (and it's free to the continental United States!). The company now also ships to Canada. We ordered on Monday and received our snacks on Thursday morning. However, shipping may vary depending on where you live. Since I live in California where this company is located, I expected my packing to arrive quickly anyways.

Nutrition:

Obviously, nutritional content varies between snack to snack but you can control for this by choosing snacks that meet certain nutritional criteria such as "no sugar added." I believe that Naturebox has a snack for any dietary need, so that anybody can feel comfortable trying out their products.

Naturebox also claims to have no high fructose corn syrup, no artificial flavors, colors or sweeteners, and no trans-fats and partially hydrogenated oils. This is a plus in my book.

I'd say a bulk of their products range between 100-200 calories per serving, which is pretty standard. A lot of the fat content in these snacks are good fats, such as those naturally occurring in nuts. 

Below are individual mini-reviews of the snacks I received.

Dark Cocoa Nom Noms

My brother ended up choosing these ones because he loves chocolate. However, this ended up being his least favorite out of the bunch, as well as mine. Not that this snack is bad, but the others are just better. It remind me a lot of protein balls--very dense and rich. This one also has a pretty long ingredients list which I don't prefer in my snacks, and a serving size is just one of these balls. Remember serving size when snacking!

Mango Almond Bites

I'd describe this as a fruity rice cake. Definitely on the lighter side, and the taste is not too overwhelming. This one's ingredient list is not too long, but "mango" does not show up until half-way down the list. I really like how you can see all the ingredients in the bites though.

Apple Pie Oat Clusters

This one's pretty good. It has a really warm, comforting taste and and is more dense than the Mango Bites, but lighter than the Cocoa Nom Noms. However, the serving size of this snack is "6 pieces" but the actual clusters in the bag were all stuck together so I probably pulled out 4 pieces at once. In the picture above, I did not stack three pieces, but rather pulled out one glued-together cluster. This snack is pretty sticky. The ingredients list on this one is medium-long.

Sweet Blueberry Almonds

This is one of my favorites. I love almonds, and the blueberry/sugar coating is a nice touch to add some sweetness to this snack. The ingredients list is short and simple. The powder on these can get a bit messy though. Overall, I consider this to be perfect blend of nuttiness and fruitiness. My brother loves these the most.

Acai Berry Crunch

I personally love this acai so this was a perfect granola for me to try. My brother loves this as well. I put this in my Greek yogurt parfaits and it adds just enough sweetness and crunch. The ingredients list is okay, but be mindful that acai is the last ingredient (which means the least) and sugar is the second. Still super yummy however.

tl; dr

• I believe that this is definitely worth a try with the 50% off coupon code.
• I personally would continue this service if it was $10 a month standard, but not the $20. This would mean each bag is $4 which is a bit steep for me.
• I really like the "surprise gift" but it would be nice if this extra was guaranteed to be unique each box.
• These snacks are better than eating a whole row bag of Oreos, but not all of them are super healthy.
• The website makes it very easy to choose snacks based on different criteria such as gluten-free, vegan, non-GMO, etc.
• Of all the snacks I got, my favorites were the Sweet Blueberry Almonds and the Acai Berry Crunch. My least favorite were the Dark Cocoa Nom Noms.