Extreme ice cream.Fifty years ago, ice creams were all within striking distance of your basic Breyers vanilla or chocolate. Now the Ben & Jerry's, Haagen-Dazses. Godivas, and Doves of the world have crammed twice the calories and two to three times the saturated fat into each scoop. At the other extreme, the Breyers, Dreyer's, and Edy's have fine-tuned the skill of making truly light ice cream taste rich. In other words, today you can choose from ice creams with 1 gram of sat fat per serving or 1 gram of sat fat per bite. You can also swallow 100 calories in a serving or 300 calories in a serving. And that serving (1/2 cup) is the size of just half a tennis ball. The information for this article was compiled by Tamara Goldis. Unsaturated Sorbet Sorbet is always a saturated-fat bargain because it has none. unless it's coconut (Sherbet also has little or none.) That's why nearly all sorbets are either Best Bites or Honorable Mentions. But Whole Fruit No Sugar Added Sorbet is also a steal in the calorie department, with just 60 per half cup, roughly half the usual 110 to 150 calories. Whole Fruit replaces me sugar with safe sweeteners like polydextrose, sorbitol sorbitol /sor·bi·tol/ (sor´bi-tol) a six-carbon sugar alcohol from a variety of fruits, found in lens deposits in diabetes mellitus. A pharmaceutical preparation is used as a sweetening agent and osmotic laxative, and in drugs as a tablet excipient, humectant, and stabilizer., maltitol maltitol /mal·ti·tol/ (mawl´ti-tol) a hydrogenated, partially hydrolyzed starch used as a bulk sweetener., and sucralose sucralose: see sweetener, artificial. (Splenda). (Sorbitol and maltitol can have a laxative effect if you eat too much.) But your taste buds will register only fruitiness. Best Bite sorbets have fruit as the first or second ingredient. Fruit comes further down the list n Honorable Mentions (and can be absent if the sorbet is chocolate). [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Heart Stoppers First there were Ben & Jerry's and Haagen-Dazs. Now Godiva and Dove have joined the team. The goal: entice Americans to put away roughly 300 calories and half a day s saturated fat with every petite half-cup serving of ice cream. The tools: calorie-dense ingredients packed with bad fats. Godiva's Vanilla with Chocolate Caramel Hearts. for example, is full of milk cream, and "chocolate caramel filled hearts' (chocolate plus sugar, coconut oil cocoa, cream, butter, and palm kernel oil). From Godiva's heart to yours. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Good Choice The simplest way to arrive home with a Best Bite s to remember two words: Healthy Choice. The entire line of ten Premium Low Fat Ice Creams delivers about 110 calories and no more than 1 gram of bad fat in a half-cup serving. (The bad fat in ice cream is nearly all saturated. Only a few nave more than a half gram of trans fat.) You'll know it's not Ben & Jerry's, but with flavors like Rocky Road Praline & Caramel and Chocolate Chocolate Chunk you won't feel deprived. There's only one other Best Bite ice cream Breyers Double Churned 98% Fat Free is surprisingly rich but comes in only Vanilla and a Vanilla-Chocolate-Strawberry combo. The remaining contenders are No Sugar Added ice creams from Dreyer's, Edy's Healthy Choice. Turkey Hill, and Blue Bunny. But all lose a Best Bite because they contain the poorly tested artificial sweetener artificial sweetener: see sweetener, artificial. acesulfame potassium. To find more Best Bites head on down the case to the frozen yogurts, which are almost always fat-free or low-fat. (Ben & Jerry's Phish Food Frozen Yogurt hits 3 1/2 grams of saturated fat and 220 calories but it's unusual.) The trouble s mat fat-free frozen yogurts can De overly sweet and underly creamy. Haagen-Dazs Fat Free Strawberry s one of the exceptions. If you didn't look at me label you'd never guess that it's fat free [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Right Churn If fat-free or low-fat ice creams strike you as too sweet and not creamy enough, Edy's Slow Churned Light may (finally) tear you away from full-fat. (West of the Rockies, the brand is called Dreyer's.) Ditto for Breyers Double Churned Light. With either brand, your taste buds won't have a clue that you're getting roughly half the fat of full-fat and almost a third fewer calories. About half of the flavors met our Honorable Mention criteria (no more than 2 grams of saturated fat per half-cup serving), but others just missed (at 2 1/2 to 3 grams). Three grams isn't terrible ... if you stop at half a cup. Like other coffee ice creams, Edy's (or Dreyer's) fabulous Slow Churned Light Coffee has some caffeine that could figure into your midnight snack plans. A half-cup serving has 30 mg, the same as Starbucks and Haagen-Dazs. That's in the same ballpark as Turkey Hill (15 to 20 mg) and Ben & Jerry's (35 to 40 mg), but it's far less than a tall (12-ounce) coffee at Starbucks (300 mg). [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Not Light Enough Ben & Jerry's new Body & Soul ice creams are supposed to appeal to people with "a holistic approach to eating." Does that include middle-agers who need to undo the damage done by years of Chunky Monkey and Chubby Hubby? If so, Body & Soul (with "25% Less Fat, Sugar & Calories") doesn't go far enough. For example, Body & Soul Cherry Garcia (170 calories and 6 grams of saturated fat) isn't as heavy as regular Cherry Garcia (250 calories and 10 grams of sat fat). But why not go with Cherry Garcia Low Fat Frozen Yogurt (170 calories and 2 grams of sat fat)? Haagen-Dazs Lights run into the same trouble. When a half cup of your regular ice creams have 7 to 14 grams of sat fat (and 230 to 360 calories), trimming half still leaves you with too much. Body & Soul and Haagen-Dazs Light do less harm than their super-fatty cousins, but they still leave more of an impression on your arteries and hips than an old-fashioned Breyers. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Nondairy Dreams The Hain Celestial Group makes Rice Dream nondairy frozen desserts and Celestial Seasonings Teas, which probably made Celestial Seasonings Tea Dreams inevitable. Some Tea Dreams--the Vanilla Hazelnut Fudge and Cinnamon Apple Spice, for example--taste remarkably like ice cream, even though they're made by adding tea flavors to ingredients like brown rice syrup, chicory chicory (chĭk`ərē) or succory (sŭk`ərē), Mediterannean herb (Cichorium intybus syrup, and safflower safflower, Eurasian thistlelike herb (Carthamus tinctorius) of the family Asteraceae (aster family). Safflower, or false saffron, has long been cultivated in S Asia and Egypt for food and medicine and as a costly but inferior substitute for the true saffron dye. In the United States, where it is sometimes called American saffron, it is more important as the source of safflower oil, which has recently come into wide use as a cooking oil. oil. Most nondairy desserts are Best Bites or Honorable Mentions because their fat comes from largely unsaturated oils like soybean, sunflower, safflower, and canola. But a few exceed our 170-calorie limit. For example, Soy Delicious Purely Decadent, Tofutti Cheesecake Supreme, and Tofutti Premium hit the scales at about 200 calories per half cup. Dairy or no dairy, you still want to fit into that bathing suit this summer. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The Inside Scoop Best Bites have no more than 1 gram of bad fat (saturated plus trans) in a half-cup serving. Honorable Mentions have no more than 2 grams. Both have no more than 170 calories and are free of the poorly tested artificial sweetener acesulfame potassium. Sorbet Best Bites also have fruit, fruit puree, or fruit juice (other than grape, apple, or pear) as the first or second ingredient. Worst Bites have 6 grams or more of bad fat. Products are ranked from least to most bad fat, then calories, then sugar. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Saturated +
Total Fat Trans Fat
Ice Cream (1/2 cup) Calories (grams) (grams Sugar
Blue Bunny Fat Free
No Sugar Added (1) * 90 0 0 5
Turkey Hill Fat Free
No Sugar Added (1) * 90 0 0 5
Dreyer's or Edy's Fat
Free No Sugar Added
(1) * 100 0 0 4
[check] [check] Breyers
Double Churned 98% Fat
Free (1) 90 2 1 14
Healthy Choice
No Sugar Added (1) * 110 2 1 4
[check] [check] Healthy
Choice Premium
Low Fat (1) 110 2 1 15
Blue Bunny Premium Light
(flavors with 2 grams
sat fat or less) (1) * 100 3 1.5 10
[check] Starbucks Low
Fat Latte 170 3 1.5 23
Dreyer's or Edy's No
Sugar Added (1) * 100 4 2 3
Breyers CarbSmart
Light (1) * 100 5 2 4
[check] Breyers Double
Churned Light
(flavors with 2 grams
sat fat or less) (2) 100 4 2 14
[check] Dreyer's or
Edy's Slow Churned
Light (flavors with
2 grams sat fat
or less) (2) 110 4 2 12
[check] Turkey Hill
Light (flavors with
2 grams sat fat
or less) (2) 110 3 2 13
[check] Blue Bunny Hi
Lite, except Homemade
Vanillaor Mint
Chip (1) 120 3 2 15
[check] Good Humor
Soft & Creamy,
Strawberry Shortcake 140 5 2 17
Breyers Double Churned
No Sugar Added (1) * 100 4 2.5 4
Blue Bunny Premium
Light (flavors with
more than2 grams sat
fat) (2) * 120 5 2.5 11
Turkey Hill Light
(flavors with more
than 2 grams
sat fat) (2) 130 5 2.5 14
Blue Bunny Hi Lite,
Homemade Vanilla or
Mint Chip (2) 130 4 2.5 17
Dreyer's or Edy's Slow
Churned Light
(flavors withmore
than 2 grams
sat fat) (2) 120 5 3 13
Breyers A&W Root
Beer Float 130 5 3 16
Breyers Double Churned
Light (flavors with
more than 2 grams
sat fat) (2) 130 5 3 16
Good Humor Soft &
Creamy, except
Strawberry
Shortcake (1) 130 6 3.5 14
Breyers All Natural
Take Two! (1) 140 6 3.5 16
Breyers Brownie
Mud Pie 160 7 4 18
Haagen-Dazs Light (1) 230 7 4 24
Turkey Hill Premium,
except Party Cake (1) 150 8 4.5 14
Breyers Double
Churned (1) 150 7 4.5 15
Breyers All Natural (1) 150 7 4.5 16
Breyers Soft 'n Creamy
Cyclone (1) 150 7 4.5 16
Blue Bunny Original (1) 150 7 4.5 18
Breyers Tin Roof Sundae 160 8 4.5 16
Breyers CarbSmart,
Rocky Road * 140 10 5 4
Turkey Hill All Natural
Philadelphia
Style (1) 150 8 5 17
Dreyer's or Edy's
Grand (1) 160 8 5 15
Breyers All That &
Caramel 160 8 5 18
Blue Bunny Premium (1) 170 9 5 17
Breyers Heath, M&M's,
Oreo, Reese's,
Snickers, or
Twix (2) 170 9 5 17
Breyers Peanut Butter
Tracks 180 12 5 14
Ben & Jerry's Body &
Soul, Chocolate
Fudge Brownie or
Half Baked (2) 190 8 5 18
X Breyers CarbSmart,
except Rocky
Road (1) * 120 9 6 3
X Breyers Chocolate
Overload 170 9 6 18
X Ben & Jerry's Body &
Soul, Cherry Garcia
or Chocolate Chip
Cookie Dough (2) 180 9 6 17
X Starbucks No Sugar
Added, Coffee Fudge
Brownie * 190 11 6 4
X Dreyer's or Edy's
Carb Benefit (1) * 160 11 7 4
X Starbucks (1) 240 12 7 26
X Ciao Bella Gelato (1) 220 14 7.5 20
X Ben & Jerry's
Organic (1) 250 14 9.5 20
X Ben & Jerry's, except
Heath Bar Crunch (1) 280 17 10 24
X Haagen-Dazs (1) 290 18 11 24
X Godiva (1) 290 17 11 28
X Dove (1) 290 18 11.5 24
X Ben & Jerry's Heath
Bar Crunch, Coffee or
Vanilla (2) 290 18 12 27
([dagger])
Saturated +
Frozen Yogurt Total Fat Trans Fat
(1/2 cup) Calories (grams) (grams Sugar
[check] [check]
Dreyer's or
Edy's Fat Free (1) 90 0 0 14
[check] [check] Turkey
Hill Fat Free (1) or
Smoothie (1) 100 0 0 16
[check] [check] Blue
Bunny Fat Free (1) 100 0 0 17
[check] [check] Turkey
Hill Low Fat, Mint
Cookies 'n Cream 110 2 0 15
[check] [check] Haagen-
Dazs Fat Free,
Strawberry 140 0 0 20
[check] Turkey Hill Low
Fat, Vanilla Bean 90 2 1.5 13
[check] Haagen-Dazs
Lowfat Yogurt &
Sorbet 170 3 1.5 24
Ben & Jerry's Low Fat,
except Cherry
Garcia (1) 190 3 1.5 23
[check] Turkey Hill
Chocolate Chip
Cookie Dough 120 4 2 15
[check] Ben & Jerry's
Low Fat, Cherry
Garcia 170 3 2 22
Haagen-Dazs (1) 200 4 2 24
Ben & Jerry's Phish
Food 220 5 3.5 22
Nondairy (1/2 cup)
[check] [check] It's
Soy Delicious 120 2 0 10
[check] [check] Rice
Dream Cocoa Marble
Fudge, Mint Carob
Chip, Orange Vanilla
Swirl, Strawberry,
or Vanilla (2) 160 7 0 19
[check] [check] Tofutti
Super Soy Supreme (1) 170 9 0 14
[check] [check]
Celestial Seasonings
Tea Dreams (1) 140 6 0.5 5
[check] [check] So
Delicious Organic or
Tofutti Low Fat (2) 140 4 0.5 15
[check] [check] Soy
Delicious Purely
Decadent, Purely
Vanilla 170 8 0.5 18
[check] Soy Dream (1) 140 8 1.5 12
[check] Tofutti No
Sugar Added (1) 110 5 2 0
Tofutti Premium (1) 200 11 2 15
Soy Delicious Purely
Decadent, except
Purely Vanilla (1) 200 9 2 20
Rice Dream Vanilla
Swiss Almond 190 10 2.5 18
Tofutti Cheesecake
Supreme (1) 210 13 4 17
Sorbet & Sherbet (1/2 cup)
[check] Whole Fruit No
Sugar Added Sorbet,
Lemon 60 0 0 4
[check] [check] Whole
Fruit No Sugar Added
Sorbet, except
Lemon (1) 60 0 0 5
[check] Ben & Jerry's
Sorbet (1) 120 0 0 25
[check][check] Ciao
Bella Sorbet, except
Chocolate or
Coconut (1) 120 0 0 27
[check] [check]
Haagen-Dazs Sorbet,
except Chocolate,
Tropical,or
Zesty Lemon (1) 120 0 0 30
[check] Haagen-Dazs
Sorbet, Chocolate 130 1 0 20
[check] [check] Whole
Fruit Sorbet, except
Boysenberry or
Coconut (1) 130 0 0 23
[check] Haagen-Dazs
Sorbet, Tropical or
Zesty Lemon (2) 130 0 0 34
[check] Whole Fruit
Sorbet, Boysenberry 150 0 0 22
[check]Good Humor
Sherbet (1) 130 1 0.5 20
[check] Dreyer's or
Edy's Sherbet, except
Swiss Orange (1) 130 1 0.5 22
[check] Ciao Bella
Sorbet, Chocolate 160 1 0.5 31
[check] Breyers All
Natural PureFruit
Sherbet (1) 130 2 1 20
Whole Fruit Sorbet,
Coconut 150 3 2.5 20
Dreyer's or Edy's
Sherbet, Swiss
Orange 150 3 2.5 25
Ciao Bella Sorbet,
Coconut 180 5 4 35
[check] [check] Best Bite. [check] Honorable Mention. X Worst Bite.
(1) Average of all flavors. (2) Average of the flavors listed.
* Contains acesulfame potassium. ([dagger]) Contains more than 0.5
grams of trans fat.
Daily Limits (for a 2,000-calorie diet): Saturated + Trans Fat: 20
grams. Sugar: 40 grams (10 teaspoons).
Source: manufacturers.
The use of information from this article for commercial purposes is
strictly prohibited without written permission from CSPI.
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