Spiro Sport Foods - Original Beef Bites

Spiro Sport Foods is a company based in Park City, UT that produces these "Spiro Bites", which they market to athletes and fitness buffs, touting the "8 essential amino acids" that beef provides.

They come in four flavors, including this Original Beef, as well as Cranberry Beef, Original Turkey, and Glazed Turkey. These are actually manufactured by Jerky Snack Brands, of Mankato, MN.

The best I can tell these things don't contain any additional vitamins or energy ingredients. They're just plain old processed meat snacks like any other jerky or kippered meat, but marketed up to sound like something way healthier than beef jerky. To their credit, Spiro Bites don't contain sodium nitrite, no antibiotics, no hormones, and no MSG. However, there's already tons of beef jerky out there that don't contain these ingredients either. So, I'm not sure what advantage Spiro Bites offers aside from beef jerky.

Ingredients

Beef, Brown Sugar, Salt, Sugar, Spices, Hydrolyzed Soy Protein, Potassium Lactate, and Garlic Powder.

Taste

The first thing I taste from the surface of these pieces is a light smoky flavor, followed by a greasy feeling coating my mouth. With some sucking I can get a bit of saltiness.

The chewing flavor starts with a beefy flavor, and a bit more saltiness. There's also faint garlic flavor noticeable.

The flavor that seems to dominate these Spiro Bites is that "beefy" flavor I described. It's not a natural meat flavor by means, but more comparable to the beef flavor you find in a salisbury steak frozen dinner. There's a significant greasy coating in my mouth when I eat these things.

Other than that, the only other noticeable flavor is the saltiness, which I'd consider to be at a moderate intensity.

That faint garlic flavor is there, but if you were to snack away on these things you wouldn't notice it.

I also pick up a light black pepper flavor, but only after eating several of these.

Overall, these Spiro Bites largely offer that "beefy" flavor similar to a salisbury steak frozen dinner, and some saltiness. Not much else.

Meat Consistency

This a chopped & formed product, shaped in small bite-sized chunks, about the size of a brazil nut.

These are moist, very soft, and very easy to chew.

The chewing texture starts out feeling tender and moist, with some greasiness. Just a few chews and these Spiro Bites break down quickly to a soft mass. At that point, they feel mushy, more like mushy meat loaf.

Looking at these nuggets, I can easily see chunks of gelatinous tissues, which could be gristle, cartilage, or some other connective tissues, organs, or what not. In some of these nuggets, the chewing revealed some small rubber-like chunks that produced a crunch when crushed between my molars.

In terms of clean eating, these Spiro Bites do leave a very thin oily film on my fingertips, but not enough to require a wiping or licking.




Snack Value

I paid $2.99 for this 1.5oz package of Spiro Bites at a Vitamin Shoppe in Menifee, CA. I bought two packages for this review. That works out to a price of $1.99 per ounce.

For general snacking purposes, at the $1.99 price per ounce, these offer a weak value. I'm not getting much snackability out of these. The flavor is uninteresting, and that greasy coating in my mouth is not that fun either. And the $1.99 price per ounce is actually higher than what you'd pay for standard beef jerky at the grocery store, and I think you'll get better snackability, and just as much energy and all the 8 essential amino acids from that instead.

Rating

I'm giving this a fair rating.

These Original Beef Bites from Spiro Sport Foods don't have much to be desired. The flavor doesn't excite me, offering only a salty, beefy flavor very much like a salisbury steak from box of Hungry Man TV Dinner. The consistency is actually comparable as well, mostly like a mushy meat loaf but with some crunchy connective tissues in a few of these nuggets.

These nuggets also coats my mouth with a noticeable greasiness. The only thing that kept me from assigning a lower rating is that I still found the flavor tolerable enough to eat all the contents.

But as for being a "sport fuel", I just don't see what this offers that a bag of beef jerky would not. These contain no additional nutrients, and no energy ingredients. While these Spiro Bites do not contain sodium nitrite, MSG, or hormones, you can still find a plethora of jerky brands that offer the same thing, but with better flavor.

A good beer pairing for this is something with a lot of flavor, like an IPA.

Rating: Fair

Buy this online:

• http://www.spirosportfoods.com/