Meal replacement shakes
This page provides quick review notes on the different shakes as I try them.
I chose Exante meal replacement shakes from the range of options, because:
- Mix with water rather than milk, making them even more convenient.
- Seemed some of the cheaper options out there (and they provide a discount for diabetics).
- They have vegan and low-sugar options, which I aim to test at some stage.
Tip
I found them a little thick when mixed with 200ml water, and also a little unpleasant if the water was just cold water from the tap. I strongly recommend experimenting with adding more liquid, and blending with ice.
Milk - high sugar
| Shake | Notes |
|---|---|
| Almond Vanilla | Smells like marzipan. Taste is very mild, not unpleasant. Am wondering if you could mix one of these with a cherry one and get a Bakewell tart? |
| Banana | Tastes exactly like foam banana sweets. Not overly sweet though, so ok. |
| Birthday Cake | Sweet, no real flavour. Bit meh. |
| Caramel Latte Frappe | I don't usually like frappes, and only got this shake to try so I could review. But I actually liked it. Not strongly flavoured, but enough, and also not sweet. |
| Cherries & Berries | Taste like cherry drops. Very fake-sweet-berry. |
| Chocolate | Nice. Not overly sweet, decently chocolatey. |
| Chocolate Mint | Nice! Like drinking a mint matchmaker. |
| Chocolate Orange | Hoped this would be like drinking a chocolate orange, but it was more like a Fry's orange cream. For me, they overdid the orange. |
| Chocolate Peanut Butter | Unpleasant. Overwhelming fake peanut flavour (which lingered - I could still taste it even after a cup of tea), but even worse was the smell. |
| Cinnamon Swirl | Liquid cinnabon but a bit less sugary. Quite nice. |
| Cookies & Cream | Not nice. Not sure how to describe it - overly sweet, weird-tasting cream? With an aftertaste of overly-sweet weird tasting rice pudding? |
| Creamy Coconut | Not bad. Not much flavour (smell was stronger than flavour). Not a favourite, but not unpleasant. |
| Honeycomb | Nice. Not overly sweet. Slightly like toffee icecream? |
| Lemon Cheesecake | As you'd expect, quite sweet. But also had a tang. Not bad at all, for a sweet option. |
| Raspberry Brownie | Offputting smell, strong fake raspberry flavour, almost no flavour of chocolate. Bad. |
| Salted Caramel | Apparently so underwhelming I forgot to log it until days later. However, if you want a nice caramel/toffee, I'd recommend honeycomb instead. |
| Strawberry | Not overly sweet, or strongly flavoured, so quite nice. |
| Strawberry & Banana | Weirdly, very little flavour. Not unpleasant, but a bit 'meh'. |
| Toffee Caramel | A bit underwhelming, not very flavourful. If you want a toffee flavour, go for Honeycombe. |
| Unflavoured | |
| Vanilla | Mild vanilla flavour, moderately sweet. Decided to try adding allspice to it, and this was nice. Think this would work well as a bland but sweet base to add other flavours to. |
| White Chocolate & Raspberry | This is another "hey, I'm drinking liquid cherry drops" moment. Too sweet for me, but not nasty. |
Vegan - high sugar
| Shake | Notes |
|---|---|
| Banana Bread | |
| Carrot Cake | I can't tell if this is genius or horror, but I never want to drink it again. I suspect this is what drinking carrot cake mix would be like? Only . . . sweeter? |
| Chocolate | |
| Coffee and Walnut | |
| Double Chocolate |
Milk - low sugar
| Shake | Notes |
|---|---|
Vegan - low sugar
| Shake | Notes |
|---|---|
| Double chocolate | Nope. Odd test and bad texture/harder to mix than others. Disappointing, as other chocolate shakes have been good. |