Cinnabon Bar No Emotional Crutch

Depending on your size, lifestyle, and overall nutritional disposition, 730 calories is probably a fairly good chunk of calories for a healthy meal. It’s also the number of calories in a single old-school Cinnabon cinnamon roll, the desperation fallback comfort food of stranded air travelers throughout the country. Attempting to split the difference—capturing the taste of the Cinnabon while shearing off most of the calories—Kellogg’s has cranked out the new, heatable Cinnabon bar. Simply nuke this sucker and you are, in theory, enjoying all of the decadent taste of a real Cinnabon with about one-fifth of the calories.

Except, no, you’re not. A real Cinnabon is what it is: an overly sweet, gooey, fatty mess that can (emphasis on can) be an emotional crutch during times of crisis. The Cinnabon Bar, when heated, does approximate some of the cinnamon flavor and an element of the sweetness, but quite frankly, it goes down far too easily. There’s no unctuous moistness. There are no wads of dough to stuff into one’s mouth, which, in turn, beg for big swallows of hot coffee. Take away most of the egregious, offensive, unhealthy aspects that make a Cinnabon the American naughty delight that is, and you’re left with a cinnamon-flavored snack bar of average quality.

That the bar is best microwaved is a neat twist, making it a new crossbreed between a Pop-Tart and a candy bar—there may yet be future bars that put this morally dubious breakthrough to better use.

James Norton edits the Upper Midwestern food journal Heavy Table. He's also the coauthor of a book on Wisconsin's master cheesemakers. For his Supertaster Daily videos, he samples offerings from supermarket aisles and fast-food menus. (Click here to see all of James's previous Supertaster work.) You can follow him on Twitter and fan him on Facebook.