Kona Kase – A Saturday at Costco for Endurance Athletes

Happy Monday! I’m back from a jam packed weekend at ActiveX Endurance Camp where I swam, biked, and ran (and yoga-d) my butt off for 3.5 days. There will be a blog post on that soon!

Thanks to my affiliation with Fit Fluential, I was offered the opportunity to sample the June Kona Kase.  Kona Kase is a monthly shipment of 8 nutritional products in a cool box complete with inspirational quotes and discount codes to purchase any of the products that you like. The monthly price is $15 and includes shipping. Since I don’t eat most of the food samples that are offered at the booths that patrons swarm on Saturdays at Costco, this was my own personal samplefest.

I received my Kona Kase last week and I excitedly opened it to find the following:

1. OneBar – Mango Flavor
2. 18 Rabbits Cherry Chocolate
3. Kind Bar – Madagascar Vanilla Almond
4. Osmo Nutrition – Active Hydration Blackberry Flavor
5. Mamma Chia – Apple Cinnamon
6. Clif Shot Gel
7. Dr. Will Bar
8. HALFPOPS – Natural Butter and Sea Salt

In addition to 8 awesome nutritional products, the box also had a card with an inspirational quote on it as well as a grading card which listed all the products and prompted you to grade them 1-5.

I did share a little of my case with Mike, who consumed the Dr. Will Bar and the 18 Rabbits bar. He gave both of them a 4/5 for taste and flavor. The rest of the products were sampled by me and I wanted to give a little more detailed review of some of my favorites:

OneBar – Mango flavor

This bar promises “one pure serving of fruit” all wrapped up in 70 delicious calories. My favorite thing a botu this bar is the ingredient list – short and sweet. Dried mango, dried pears, apple juice concentrate, inulin fiber (fiber taken from plants), baobab superfruit (From Africa – apparently it has contains six times as much vitamin C as oranges, twice as much calcium as milk, and plenty of B vitamins, magnesium, iron, phosphorous, and antioxidants. source.)

The bar itself was really delicious – it was pretty dense and I could really taste the mango. It’s small but the perfect post-lunch healthy treat in my opinion. This isn’t a protein bar or even a high fiber bar (2g fiber, 1 g protein) and isn’t packed with added vitamins other than those provided by the baobab. It really just serves the purpose of condensing some yummy fruit into an easy to carry, convenient packet that can be enjoyed on the go!

Osmo Nutrition – Active Hydration Blackberry Flavor

I sampled this goody during my 15k race on the 4th of July. I know they say never try anything new on race day but it was going to be a hot day and I was racing for “fun” and didn’t have much to lose. I poured the entire packet into my handheld water bottle. The flavor was very light which I liked (too much flavor while running hard is not easy to get down), although my hands got pretty sticky by the end of the race because apparently I was dripping the liquid all over myself. Accordign to the website, Osmo Nutrition’s Active Hydration increases power output, improves endurance and reduces cramping. I like that it contains calories so I’m getting not only electrolytes but also steadily drinking fuel throughout the race.

Kind Bar – Madagascar Vanilla Almond

I really like Kind Bars. I’m already a consumer of these delicious bars and the main reason I love them is that they have much fewer ingredients than the typical snack bar. The ingredients are as follows: Mixed nuts (almonds, peanuts, cashews, walnuts), honey, non GMO glucose, chicory root fiber, crisp rice, madagascar vanilla, soy lecithin. Not too bad! Kind Bars taste amazing and have lots of natural protein from the nuts rather than the processed soy or whey protein in many shakes and bars.

I tried the other items in the box as well with the exception of the Mamma Chia pouch which I keep telling myself I’ll have 45 minutes before a hard workout (it claims to increase energy) but haven’t yet. I tried the HALFPOPS but since they are buttered I just opened the package to taste it but didn’t eat the whole thing. They were tasty and salty, but not something I would purchase for myself. The last item, the Cliff Shot gel, I used during a workout this past weekend. I’m typically a Gu girl, but this gel was pretty tasty!

I liked the idea of the Kona Kase -it’s pretty affordable and I think you get more than what you pay for. The case runs for $15 per month but for your first month you can get $5 off with the coupon code GIFTSUMMER www.konakase.com .

Do you like trying new nutritional products or do you stick to your tried and true?