Year: 2013

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Smart Balance Butter Blend Helps Block Cholesterol?

Many consumers switched from butter to margarine decades ago to help reduce their intake of cholesterol. Now Smart Balance has come out with a combination product that blends butter with canola oil, impliedly claiming that it is a healthier version of butter. Some would say that is kind of like sprinkling vitamins on Twinkies and calling it a health food. But wait, there’s more.

The product label says it “helps block cholesterol.”

Smart Balance

Huh? Eat butter to block cholesterol?

The label says it contains 100mg of plant sterols, which according to the company’s website helps block absorption of the cholesterol that is contained in the butter.

*MOUSE PRINT:

According to Shop Smart magazine, Consumer Reports’ sister publication, you would have to eat 13 tablespoons of this butter everyday to help lower your risk of heart disease. That is 1300 calories and almost the whole container.

The makers of Smart Balance failed to answer questions about their product when asked.

To be fair, the company is claiming in essence to only reduce some of the cholesterol in each serving of their butter blend and not to lower your cholesterol. In any event, eating products with no cholesterol to start with is still a healthier idea.

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Questioning Carbonite’s “Unlimited” Backup Service Claims

Over the years, cell, long distance, and cable companies have advertised “unlimited” services, but a close reading of the fine print almost always reveals that the services are not truly unlimited.

Last year, in the UK, ASA, the private organization that enforces a voluntary advertising code, came down hard on Carbonite — the online file backup service that sends a copy of the files from your home computer up to the “cloud” for safekeeping.

In both the US and UK, Carbonite advertised “unlimited” backup service for an annual service fee:

Buried in their UK website was an unexpected catch:

*MOUSE PRINT:

Bandwidth Throttling: Yes (35GB, 200GB)

Huh? Even buried deeper in the site in a blog post was an explanation:

*MOUSE PRINT:

Carbonite Home allocates more bandwidth to users doing a typical initial backup of less than 35GB, and less to users after their backup exceeds 200GB. Once your initial backup is complete, updates to your backup usually take only a few minutes each day.

This bandwidth policy has three tiers. Users performing a smaller backup will usually see faster upload speeds than users with larger backups. However, depending on your Internet connection, your computer’s configuration, other Internet-enabled software you may be running, and how often you use your computer, actual backup speeds may vary. The current maximum upload speeds are as follows:

— The first 35GB of data can achieve upload speeds of up to 2 mbps (megabits per second).
— Between 35GB and 200GB of data, upload speeds can reach up to 512 kbps (kilobits per second).
— At 200GB or more of data, upload speeds are limited to around 100 kbps (kilobits per second).

In plain English, just like some cell companies that slow down your connection when you use more than a certain allotment of data, so does Carbonite. They throttle your upload connection down to a crawl when you are uploading a lot of files. The result is that while you think you have backed up all your files, it may take weeks to actually do so, if you have a large hard drive.

The advertising watchdog in the UK felt this limitation was not made clear to consumers who signed up for unlimited service and therefore ruled against them ordering that they more clearly disclose the upload limitation.

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The Little Secret Inside that Big Pill Bottle

A couple of years ago, MrConsumer’s doctor recommended that he take 1000 iu of vitamin D a day. Recently he switched from tablets to softgels, and got quite a surprise when he opened the bottle.

Here is the CVS pill bottle with contains 300 softgels:

CVS D3

Upon opening the bottle, MrConsumer discovered that most of the bottle was just filled with air, with the softgels way at the bottom.

*MOUSE PRINT:

CVS fill line

In this roughly five-inch high bottle, the pills only occupy the bottom one-and-one-quarter inches.

Had MrConsumer had his trusty x-ray device with him at the store, he would have seen this:

*MOUSE PRINT x-ray:

CVS D3 x-ray

Presumably there really were 300 softgels in the bottle, so that is not the issue. This is, however, an example of over-packaging or “slack-fill” as it is known. Slack-fill is the difference between the actual capacity of a container and the volume of product contained therein. If the extra space is really non-functional and not required for filling machines to operate properly, the product can be deemed misbranded under federal law.

It certainly would be cheaper for CVS to use a smaller bottle, and better for the environment. One has to wonder, then, why they continue to sell pills in oversized bottles. So we asked them.

“The front label on our over the counter products clearly states the number of pills/capsules/tablets contained in the bottle, as evidenced by the sample photo you provided, to ensure that customers are aware of the quantity being purchased. We also need to ensure that the container is sufficient in size to accommodate the required drug fact information. Generally speaking, manufacturers choose the container size.” — Public Relations, CVS/pharmacy

Coincidentally, Consumer Reports in its August issue shows more examples of air-filled pill bottles and gets other explanations of why this is a common practice.