National Nut Day

Happy national nut day everyone! I bring you great and might I add nutty tidings for today. Hope your cashews remain crunchy and your hazelnuts hard. Whats that you have never heard of national nut day! Well actually neither have I, in fact I thought I had made it up as a exciting and engaging hook for todays post.

Howver as it turns out on the 22nd of October this very year (2013), the Uk celebrated not it's first but forth National Nut day. After a little research, (if I'm honest it was literally just reading the side bar on the official website.)  I found out that actually this is an American holiday brought over here recently to encourage healthy eating and environmental responsibility. Not sure how much of that actually applies to todays items, If I'm realistic the nuts here probably haven't even heard of sustainable!

Just how many m&m characters are there now?

Todays two nutty products are both m&m's and both clearly are on the nutty side of the fence. I have a bag of Almond m&m's which you don't find here in England. So when I saw a pack I knew immediately I wanted to compare them to the standard peanut m&m's. Surely I though they can't be that different to warrant two different sub products, please don't point out the fact that there are both a dark chocolate and milk chocolate m&m's. Nor the fact that there is actually a dark chocolate peanut m&m variant, can we just agree that perhaps that MARS are a bit m&m happy in their ideas department.

So bright and attractive and well nutty!

So let's look at these and make a decision, Do we need both? I'm going to throw a wild guess out there and say no. Lets not be too hasty ,however, after all perhaps they taste completely different (doubtful). Ok so firstly in mascot we have two guys here in the peanut corner we have classic Yellow guy (voiced by J.K Simmons, think we have a clear winner already!) and in the Almond alley Blue guy. Yellow wins he's one of the first thing that springs to mind when you think m&m, other than good old red. Next in size, which believe me matters people, well in candy at least it does. Yeah the Almond wins this round rather although remember no more chocolate is on offer it is just because almond is the bigger nut.

The important part now taste!the peanut has a great peanut taste that mixes with the chocolate in the best kind of way to give a nice sweet and nutty taste. Almost like nutella but much more subtly chocolatey, it's very nice and very more-ish. The shell adds slight sweetness and extra crunch. It's not quite as smooth as peanut butter but it's close and thats never a bad thing.

Remember folks size doesn't always matter!

Next the almond, as I've mentioned almonds are the bigger nut. Yet they don't usually have such a good and intense taste as peanuts do, after all who would buy almond butter over peanut butter (nutters thats who HAHAHA... sorry). I was right, barely any discernable nut taste but I was also wrong turns out there is more chocolate here. This just ends up tasting like a blander than average m&m with an odd texture inside. Not unpleasant but definately not enough of a nut hit for any fan.

Overall it's a clear winner in the Yellow corner, but than again what did I expect it's peanut after all!

Score
Peanut - 8 out of 11
Almond - 5 out of 11


Found
Peanut ones can be found pretty much anywhere, literally these are more availeable than the normal ones. The Almond ones I bought from an import store.


Final Thoughts
Hope non of you guys have a nut allergy and suffer as a result of my post