The heavily industrialized frankenfood known as Smart Balance should more aptly be named Stupid Balance when you examine the ingredients list!
I’ve had it. Everyone has her limits and I’ve reached mine. If one more person who claims to eat healthily tells me that he/she uses Smart Balance or any of those health robbing butter substitute “spreads”, I think I’m going to scream. This includes other pseudo-foods like Egg Beaters too.
A loud, obnoxious, ear piercing, wine glass shattering SCREAM!
You see, there is nothing remotely “smart” about Smart Balance unless of course, you happen to be a shareholder of the company. In that case, you would be very happy with the cheap, rancid, genetically modified vegetable oils used to manufacture substitutes for butter resulting in a very low cost of production and handsome profit margins.
Don’t think for one moment that Smart Balance could possibly be made in the comfort of your own kitchen the way lovely yellow butter can easily be churned from cream in a bowl with a hand mixer.
No way! A frankenfood as complex as Smart Balance or any of the many other “spreads” on the market requires synthesis in a factory in all its high tech, food denaturing glory. Smart Balance and margarine spreads like it is chemistry experiments, not food!
Get a load of the catchy marketing on the Smart Balance website:
It’s funny how these margarine manufacturers always talk about “using it” and “loving it” like butter.
Why would people do that anyway?
Mmmm. Maybe because these folks need some healthy fats like REAL butter perhaps??
I know a die-hard vegetarian who once told me that every now and again when she craves a big, thick juicy steak, she gives in and eats one.
Smart gal. Cravings can tell us a lot about ourselves – if we’ll only listen – from the state of our gut as in the case of craving sugar and having a gut imbalance problem to craving a steak due to the complete proteins only animal foods can provide (soy is NOT a complete protein, by the way. Don’t even get me started on that one).
So, when that craving for all things buttery comes over you, it is always best to get some Real Butter and slather it on anything that seems remotely feasible at the moment.
A vegan community in South Florida suffering from severe dental decay issues likes to eat raw butter straight out of the tub with a spoon, I’m told. Now, that’s a serious craving for the “buttery taste”!
What Exactly is in Smart Balance?
Let’s take a look at the ingredients in Stupid, er – I mean, Smart Balance:
When this post was originally published, here were the ingredients in Smart Balance (original):
Natural oil blend (soybean, palm fruit, canola, and olive oils), water, contains less than 2% of whey (from milk), salt, natural and artificial flavor, vegetable monoglycerides and sorbitan ester of fatty acids (emulsifiers), soy lecithin, vitamin A palmitate, vitamin B6, vitamin B12, Vitamin D, dl-a-tocopheryl acetate (vitamin E), lactic acid, beta carotene color, and potassium sorbate, and calcium disodium EDTA (to preserve freshness).
Ingredients Analysis
Shall we analyze this rather long list of ingestibles?
- The soybean and canola oils are almost certainly genetically modified. Frankenfood at its finest!
- The olive oil isn’t even extra virgin olive oil and is likely cut with cheap vegetable oils like most olive oil on the market. Can we say cheap, cheap, CHEAP?
- Natural and artificial flavor – this must be where that “buttery taste you crave” part comes in. Excellent stuff if you dig tricking your taste buds (newsflash, you won’t trick your tummy though. At least not for long. You’ll be craving that “buttery taste” soon after and more than likely sticking your head in a big bowl of ice cream by 9 pm).
- Soy lecithin – yet another genetically modified ingredient.
- Vitamin A palmitate – the synthetic form of vitamin A – the kind that is dangerous. Since there’s not much natural about Smart Balance in the first place, “fortification” with synthetic vitamins seems logical!
- Vitamin D – the label doesn’t even specify what type, but I can pretty much guarantee it’s synthetic D2, which won’t help at all in avoiding vitamin D deficiency symptoms. Is this the wondrous, natural vitamin D3 everyone – even Oprah – raves about? Brilliant marketing and wishful thinking don’t make it so.
- Beta carotene color – the normal color for factory-produced margarine like Smart Balance is a very unappetizing grey, so the color is definitely needed here to fool the masses. Don’t be fooled that this beta carotene adds natural Vitamin A either. Beta carotene is not true vitamin A!
- Potassium sorbate – a supposedly safe food preservative that inhibits microbial growth. Safe at least until they find it isn’t. Three cheers for being a guinea pig!
- Calcium disodium EDTA – an organic pollutant which breaks down in the environment into ethylenediamine triacetic acid and then diketopiperazine. Diketopiperazine is a persistent organic pollutant, similar to PCBs and DDT. Not only does Smart Balance pollute the bodies of those who eat it, but it also pollutes the environment too!
Smart Balance 7 Years Later
Let’s analyze the ingredients again 7 years later. Smart Balance has, in the interim, gotten significant press on its “pledge” to remove GMOs from its ingredients. Has it happened yet? Apparently not. Don’t hold your breath on that one. Not much improvement here despite an outcry from consumers to do better.
- Vegetable oil blend (canola, olive, and palm oil)
- Water
- Contains less than 2% salt
- Pea protein
- Natural and artificial flavors
- Sunflower lecithin
- Vitamin A Palmitate
- Beta-carotene (color)
- Vitamin D
- Monoglycerides of vegetable fatty acids (emulsifier)
- Potassium Sorbate
- Lactic acid
- Calcium Disodium EDTA
Let’s analyze the (few) changes.
Little Improvement in Smart Balance Ingredients
First, the GMO soybean oil has been removed. While this is a positive, unfortunately, GMO canola oil is still in there as the primary vegetable oil.
Second, pea protein has replaced the whey protein from before. This is apparently an effort to make Smart Balance dairy-free. Is pea protein any healthier than whey protein? Unfortunately not. All protein powders are highly processed and not a healthy choice.
The GMO soy lecithin has been replaced with sunflower lecithin. This is a solid improvement and a step in the right direction.
Two new ingredients include lactic acid and monoglycerides of vegetable fatty acids. While lactic acid is not really a problem, it could be from a GMO source. The originating food for lactic acid is not specified. Similarly, the vegetable oil that is used to derive the emulsifying fatty acids is not specified. In those situations, I’ve learned to pretty much assume the worst … they are most likely of GMO origin. If they were nonGMO you can be sure Smart Balance would trumpet as much on the label like they have identified the source of the lecithin as nonGMO sunflower.
Everything else appears to be the same.
All in all, Smart Balance has improved from a grade of “F” to a “D-” in seven years. Is it healthy to use? Nope. It’s still frankenfood and not a good choice for those who understand the critical importance of natural, healthy fats in the diet.
Butter is Always Best!
Nothing manufactured in a factory can ever beat the simple, natural, whole nutrition of plain BUTTER and other whole traditional fats. No genetically modified, artificial flavors or organic pollutant preservatives needed. Loads of natural form of vitamins A, D, and E that really will boost your immune system unlike the synthetic versions in margarine spreads like Smart Balance.
Be sure not to buy butter from cows fed genetically modified feed, however, like Kerry Gold is rumored to do.
Grass-fed butter is what you are looking for (quality sources)!
Butterfat is far superior to the rancid, highly processed vegetable oils in Smart Balance. While not hydrogenated, the edible oil processing, called interesterification, is still very much denaturing and is arguably worse for cardiovascular health than transfats.
On the other hand, butter, particularly grass-fed butter, is one of the richest sources of vitamin K2. Vitamin K2 is the magical X-Factor written about by Dr. Weston A. Price which is known to prevent arterial calcification which is a very strong (if not the strongest) predictor of cardiovascular disease risk, NOT cholesterol levels. Natural cholesterol in the diet supplied in forms such as grass-fed butter and eggs are extremely beneficial to health!
Folks with low cholesterol suffer from heart disease at the same rate as those with high cholesterol. Don’t tell that to the folks in the marketing department at Smart Balance, though. They’re doing really well with that catchy marketing slogan that associates the use of Smart Balance with “healthy” cholesterol levels.
What if You Have a Dairy Allergy?
For those with dairy allergies, natural and truly healthy butter substitute spreads made with unrefined traditional oils are now becoming available. This one is my favorite which blends virgin coconut oil and that anti-oxidant powerhouse, red palm oil without any additives, fillers, GMOs or destructive processing.
Once you get past the marketing hype, it sure seems that the more appropriate name for Smart Balance would be “Stupid Balance”, don’t you think?
References
Interesterification of Vegetable Oils, by Dr. Mary Enig
Whole Health Source, Butter, Margarine, and Heart Disease
I HAVE GONE BACK TO GOOD OLD FASHIONED BUTTER !! SMART BAL IS A RIP OFF !! THE PRICE HAS DOUBLED !!! NOW I GET REAL BUTTER AND SAVE MONEY !! SCUMS !!
You are one weird woman. You go ballistic over SB. You must work for one of the big butter producing co.’s. Go eat some grass nutjob !!
I agree she is a nutjob – need to research gmo’s/hormones and other crap they give/feed the animals humans consume and the effects of it.
i agree that a lot of fake butter is unhealthy but smart balance and earth balance are both gmo free. you should really do your research before making a post like this.
GMO free is a marketing gimmick. First of all I doubt very much if anything with soy beans in it is GMO free. Second if you did your research instead of listening to some nut job that post crap on the internet you would find that there is no difference in GMO grain. Third just how much butter in made from milk from cows that are only grass fed.
I love butter as much as the rest of you but I DO have to stick up for smart balance. I found out 10 years ago my cholesterol was 131. The ONLY thing I changed in my diet was the margarine I used. I switched to Smart Balance. And I use ALOT of butter and spreads. In 9 weeks my cholesterol went down to 100 and NO I do not own stock in the company. lol And the taste isn’t really bad at all….
But what type of inflammation do you have? Cholesterol is not dangerous on its own, it is dangerous with inflammation. Smart Balance can cause inflammation because of the ingredients it is made with (gmo products).
What type of butter did you eat all the time? Was it from the store, a pasteurized homogenized butter? Or was it from the farm, from raw clean grass-fed milk from A2 cows? They are completely different, almost as different as butter and margarine. These types of butter are nothing alike, one is pure, live and full of nutrients (raw milk butter), the other is a dead processed butter (butter from the store).
might want to take a 2nd look.
Mike, you can clearly see from that site that there is soybean oil in it, along with canola oil. Canola canNOT be organic, as it is a genetically modified plant. There is no “canola” plant, it is rapeseed which is a natural pesticide. Making oil from it is not healthy at all. And then they put that rancid oil in smart balance and claim it is healthy….
Canola is a coined word.. It appeared out of nowhere and is not listed in any but the most recent reference sources.
The flip side of the canola coin reads: “rape”! You must admit that canola sounds better than rape. The name canola disguised the introduction of rape oil to America.
Canola oil comes from the rape seed, which is part of the mustard family of plants. Rape is the most toxic of all food-oil plants. Like soy, rape is a weed. Insects will not eat it; it is deadly poisonous! The oil from the rape seed is a hundred times more toxic than soy oil.
Canola is a semi-drying oil that is used as lubricant, fuel, soap and synthetic rubber base, and as an illuminant for the slick color pages you see in magazines. It is an industrial oil and does not belong in the body!
Canola oil has some very interesting characteristics and effects on living system! s. For example, it forms latex-like substances that agglutinate the red blood corpuscles, as does soy, but much more pronounced. Loss of vision is a known, characteristic side effect of rape oil which antagonizes the central and peripheral nervous systems=20 again like soy oil, again worse. The deterioration takes years, however. Rape (canola) oil causes emphysema respiratory distress, anemia, constipation, irritability and blindness in animals-and humans. Rape oil was widely used in animal feeds in England and Europe between 1986 and 1991 when it was thrown out. You may remember reading about the cows, pigs and sheep that went blind, lost their minds, attacked people and had to be shot.
Officially, canola oil is known as “LEAR” oil – Low Erucic Acid, Rape. Industry experts love to tell how canola was developed in Canada and that it is safe to use. They admit it was developed from the rape seed, but that through genetic engineering, i.e. irradiation, it is no longer rape seed, but “cano! la” instead.
To my understanding there is a difference between breeding a plant a certain way and genetically modifying it. One is taken into a lab and we alter it with artificial means, and the other way is my picking out the plants with the qualities that we need and allowing them to breed together, but not modifying it ourselves. I believe the second case is true of *some* canola which would make it possible to be non-gmo.
I’m not going to argue that one is better for you than the other because it depends on the person. I’m lactose intolerant AND allergic to cow’s milk. The runny nose, achey joints, headaches, and acne I get from butter and dairy lets me know that arguing over this is pointless–we probably shouldn’t be ingesting either. And yes, I’ve tried raw, organic, you name it…I just can’t ingest it, so when I need ‘butter’ I really don’t have another option. I bake with coconut oil, but you can’t make good garlic pasta with coconut oil. lol
And I’m sorry if this sounds mean to the author, but calling an entire diet unhealthy because one one product that may get consumed once or twice a week or so is just a bit much. That person may have a generally healthy diet, one food won’t make or break it…unless you’re allergic to it.
Interestingly enough, my body no longer tolerates bad fats since we made the switch. Immediate stomach aches.
I read one article that says saturated fat is bad…that is the fat that is in butter and isn’t saturated fat the one that leads to heart disease?
So SB has the GOOD fats of poly and mono unsaturated fats yet it is viewed as BAD and butter is viewed as good..puzzling to me
I buy pounds of butter now (used to use the crap) and I also made tallow for the first time for homemade fries. They were awesome.
Some of the comments on this article page just make me sigh. I am always amazed at people commenting on things they have no clue about or compare apples with oranges, so to speak! *heavy sigh* 🙁
Disgusting! I used to eat it up until a few years ago. It’s what they taught us is Dietetics school was the healthiest. Smh!!! I’d love to go back to school and demand a refund for my “education”!!