Babybel cheese is one of the most distinctive cheese brands, sold in bright red, peelable wax containers. The brand describes its product as a "100% real cheese snack" free from artificial growth hormones, flavors and preservatives.
But is Babybel cheese healthy, or are these just marketing claims? How can you determine the healthiness of a dairy product? And is Babybel Plant-Based Cheese healthier than Original?
In this article we'll answer all of these questions and more, as we analyze the ingredients in Babybel cheese to give our take on whether or not it's healthy.
We'll explain how we determine the healthiness of dairy products, and compare the healthiness of Babybel Plant-Based Cheese to the Original version.
What Makes Cheese Healthy or Not?
Healthiness is subjective, but in our view, there are two primary criteria that determine the healthiness of a cheese:
- Sourced exclusively from grass-fed animals
- Free from unhealthy additives
A medical review published in the Frontiers in Nutrition journal found grass-fed dairy products to be more nutritious than dairy from conventionally-raised animals.
As we discussed in our is brisket healthy article, the ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acids is more optimal in grass-fed animal products.
The second point is simpler: avoidance of processed additives is optimal for human health, especially in cases where those additives are clinically shown to be harfmul.
Is Babybel Cheese Healthy?
The ingredients in Babybel cheese are shown below:
This cheese meets point 2, but not point 1, of our healthiness criteria.
Babybel cheese is free from harmful additives, but appears to be sourced from conventionally-raised animals, so we do not consider it to be optimally healthy.
We'd also prefer salt to be replaced with sea salt, which is clinically shown to have more favorable effects on blood pressure, but this is a minor consideration.
Is Babybel Plant-Based Healthier?
The ingredients in Babybel Plant-Based Cheese are shown below:
Calcium comes in the form of added calcium citrate, rather than the naturally-occurring calcium in cheese.
Modified food starch has essentially zero nutritional value (source).
Citric acid is a food additive that can cause inflammatory reactions in some individuals, as we discussed in our Dunkin Donuts healthiest drinks article.
Natural flavor is a broad, categorical description which may refer to to solvents and preservatives (source).
We consider Babybel Plant-Based Cheese to be considerably less healthy than Babybel Original.
How is Babybel Cheese Made?
A YouTube video from the "Inside the Factory" channel shows how Babybel cheese is made:
