When you’re exercising a lot your body needs more protein to ensure adequate muscle repair and recovery. There are plenty of naturally protein heavy foods out there, but an increasing army of fitness brands are offering luxury protein enriched treats to encourage you to load up on the good stuff.

Protein injected treats usually use whey protein – which is actually a by-product of cheese production – it’s a high quality variety that is quickly ingested and absorbed.

Whey protein also has a certain powdery which you wouldn’t instinctively think to combine with common cheat-day treats such as truffles, cookies and popcorn – but that’s exactly what The Protein Works have done to help you avoid less nutritious treats in favour of their healthier varieties.

We’ve had protein rich versions of common favourite foods arrive on the market before – they look and sound amazing, but the taste is always just a little disappointing. The kind of thing you might enjoy if you’ve been drinking protein shakes and knocking back raw eggs for a couple of months, and totally lost touch with what real food actually tastes like.

So when we heard about these Protein Works treats, we thought it best to try them before we shared the good news…

Protein Works Diet Protein Truffles

Sounds unnatural, right?

Firstly, these aren’t delicate truffles like the kinds you’d find in a Thorntons gift box – they’re rather big, burly items that you’d expect to properly satiate a 4pm hunger pang until at least home time. They’re freshly made on a regular basis, come individually wrapped, and a box of 15 costs £13.99.

Each 30g truffle contains 92 calories, 2.7g of fat, 7.2g of carbohydrate (only 2.6 from sugar) plus 10.2g of protein – it’s suggested that athletes need around 1g per kg in body weight a day so that’s a fair helping.

They also contain a few more goodies – such as Chromium Picolinate which has some claimed weightloss effects and Acetyl L-Carnitine – an amino acid which can help break down fatty acids.

So we accept they’re healthier than Ferrero Rocher – 30g of which contains 174 calories and just 2.4g of protein and 11g of sugars. But how do they taste? 

Four Healthy Chocolate Flavoured Recipes 

There are various favours available – we had the Caramel Macchiato and Strawberry Cheesecake. The Caramel Macchiato had a distinctly chocolatey taste that we enjoyed – granted they weren’t nearly as sweet as a normal chocolate, but we’d enjoy munching one down with a cup of tea after a ride. We’d joke about going for two, but to be honest these are quite filling and we really don’t think we’d need to double up!

When it came to the Strawberry Cheesecake variety – we were less keen on the taste. These are very sweet and not quite up our street. This said, Team TWC is without a doubt pro dark chocolate as opposed to white, so this could be more personal preference. Regardless, you can choose a box of ‘randoms’, or select one flavour – so it’s really up to you what you go for.

Overall, we thought these were a satisfying treat that could be a good idea once all the Christmas temptations start flying around.