So today we are going to review one of the two healthy pancake options available to Costco. The “Birch Benders Paleo Pancake & Waffle Mix”. Now that’s quite a mouthful. I was intrigued as most Paleo and Keto diet experts in their Costco runs were recommending these but I had to have a look by myself.
Ingredients and Nutrition
Before we get into the ingredients and nutrition, if you are reading this and you are from Birch Benders, please fix all your serving models and packaging. You need to be a math major to understand how the servings map to any of the actual recipes. Is it deliberate? Maybe, however not giving discerning consumers an easy way to calculate their calorific input is a poor strategy.
Delving deeper into nutrition, on an average you will be consuming close to 420 calories per 6 small pancakes which a normal athletic person would be expected to ingest.
This obviously does not include any toppings you may use. Please do not use syrup if you care about your health, I use nut butter which adds another 190 calories for 2 table spoons. So this is definitely not a low calorie or a weight loss food once you make it a lunch replacement.
In terms of ingredients it has Cassava Starch(note that deceptively almonds is the first ingredient on the packaging) with a low glycemic index (46 per livestrong), very good! They use organic coconut cloud which is the only organic food used here. It matters a lot in Almonds IMO wherein they are sprayed with a ton of pesticides but they use regular almond flour to keep costs low. For the sweetener they use monk fruit and no other sugar alcohol so that’s really great and has unnamed spices and leavening agents. Monk fruit adds no calories and does not evoke an insulin response like other sweeteners. Overall very clean ingredients, would be even better if they had used organic almond flour and Eggs.
The eggs are actually an interesting twist to this saga though, organic eggs have a much better nutrition profile than regular eggs but at least you save on cost and messes because eggs are already there in the powder. I prefer to have my pancakes with organic eggs for what its worth. So I will deduct half a point for the non-organic ingredients.
Taste
The proof of the pancakes is ofcourse in the eating. I made my pancakes with the original recipe first which I found to be too thick and my pancakes werent cooking fully. Later I modified it by adding more water for perfect fluffy pancakes. The pancakes stick together well due to the egg and no additional binders or milk is needed. I added some organic blueberries because why not.
However when I ate it, overall I was not very impressed with the taste. It tastes like eating fluffy paper with a hint of sweetness. No real taste comes out in my opinion. I have tried cheaper brands like Krusteaz and not to cheaper ones like Kodiak and they do taste a lot better but they have worse ingredients. I will finish this pack and then I look forward to trying their new Keto blend instead hoping that the keto blend tastes better.
Verdict
If you are in it purely for the health, you probably sacrifice taste all the time. Only then would I would recommend getting this. Otherwise I will probably recommend the Krusteaz whole grains protein pancakes as a much better tasting alternative to the Birch Blenders Paleo Pancakes. The pancake mix at my Costco costs $11.49 for 42oz which is 27 cents an ounce, compare that to Amazon which sells it for a pricey pricey 41 cents an ounce 🙂
