Smart Start Healthy Heart Bars

By: Tanya Taylor, PhD | Jun 21, 2007

I am a big fan of Kellogg's Smart Start Cereal and so I had high hopes for their bars. I grabbed the Strawberry Vanilla variety to try out and I must say (and it pains me to say this), but this bar tastes just like most of the other oats/ soy nutrition bars out there - crispy oats taste and very sweet. 10 is the number of times sugar appears on the ingredients label (in different forms).

The only thing these bars have going for them is a great marketing gimmick ... name, "Healthy Heart". BUT, what's in these bars that are so healthy for your heart? Well, one of the reasons (and I quote from the box) is that, "3 grams of soluble fiber daily from oat bran in a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol, may reduce the risk of heart disease. But these bars only have 1 gram of soluble fiber each! Ahh ... marketing at it's finest!

I think I'm sticking with the natural bars like BumbleBar, Gnu and Lara - better flavor and better overall nutrition, in my opinion.

One 40 gram Smart Start Healthy Heart Bar has 150 calories, 4% of the RDA for total fat (2.5 grams), no saturated or trans fat, low sodium, 3 grams of protein and 30 grams of total carbohydrate, which includes 13 grams of sugars and 2 grams of fiber which is 9% of the RDA.

It's not bad but it doesn't really stand out in taste or nutrition like I expect a "Heart Healthy" bar to. A box of 6 bars is $4.00, so it's not exactly the cheapest option out there either. I'm not usually a very strong supporter of natural, organic and all that jazz - although I must confess I'm starting to get more into it - but in the case of nutrition bars, I am finding that the natural bars win hands down.

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