Mrs. Smith’s Apple Pie Contains Less Butter Than Advertised, Class Action Alleges

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A proposed class action contends that Mrs. Smith’s frozen apple pie contains less real butter than consumers are led to expect based on the product’s packaging.

The 13-page lawsuit argues that because the front label of the Mrs. Smith’s apple pie states that the product contains a “flaky crust made with real butter,” and displays two pats of fresh butter, reasonable consumers expect butter to be the pie’s main shortening ingredient.

On the contrary, however, the product, according to the complaint, contains a minimal, or “negligible,” amount of butter compared to the amount of vegetable oils.

The lawsuit says that because many consumers prefer butter to vegetable oil, a less expensive shortening ingredient, they are willing to pay a premium price for products made with the former. Per the suit, Mrs. Smith’s maker Schwan’s Consumer Brands has been able to sell more of the apple pie, and at higher prices, than it otherwise would have absent the allegedly misleading “made with real butter” claim.

According to the lawsuit, butter has a significant impact on a pie crust’s flavor and texture, and is a crucial contributor to the crust’s flakiness. The suit relays that although consumers are led to expect that butter is the main shortening ingredient in Mrs. Smith’s apple pie, the product’s ingredients list states that the crust is made with a “shortening butter blend” consisting of palm oil and butter, among other components.

The lawsuit contests that this is misleading given that federal and state regulations require a food’s ingredients list to state the ingredients according to their common name and in descending order of predominance by weight. Per the suit, there is no “established common or usual name or standard of identity” for “shortening butter blend,” and since this component is made up of a combination of vegetable and animal fats, it cannot be listed as its own ingredient.

The case posits that if the components in the “shortening butter blend” were listed individually, butter would be listed much farther down on the ingredients list.

“In fact, the Product contains more soybean oil, water, and salt than butter, even though butter is ahead of these ingredients,” the complaint reads.

The replacement of butter with vegetable oils, including palm and soybean oil, results in the pie crust lacking the “nutritional, structural (i.e., flaky crust), organoleptic, and sensory attributes” consumers would expect from a product labeled as being “made with real butter,” the filing says.

The lawsuit looks to represent anyone in Illinois, Utah, Virginia, Wyoming, Arkansas, Ohio, Nevada, North Carolina and Alabama who purchased the Mrs. Smith’s frozen apple pie within the applicable statute of limitations period.

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