The Fat Scam of Industrial Ice Cream
Only the citizens of New Zealand consume more ice cream than Americans do. We each average 20 pounds or about four gallons per person annually—and that’s the average. Many folks consume a lot more—much, much more.
And no wonder. Since our bodies need the many types of fat molecules and vitamins that animal fat provides, especially those in butterfat, it’s not surprising that many crave fatty ice cream after a day of low-fat eating.
I call this the best-of-intentions diet. You start with a virtuous breakfast of black coffee, dry toast, and a piece of fruit. Lunch is a lean steak salad with no dressing, and dinner might be a piece of salmon with steamed vegetables—all according to government recommendations. But when bedtime rolls around, you are once again hungry—and the freezer beckons—so hungry that you eat a pint of ice cream in standing in front of the freezer door, or maybe a quart or even a half gallon. This is your body forcing you to get the fat you need one way or another.
But if it’s fat your body wants, you’re better off getting it through conscious eating. Ice cream isn’t just a poor nutritional choice, it’s an extremely expensive way to get healthy fat. If you buy butter at $4 per pound, you are paying about $5 per pound for the butterfat (since butter is 80 percent fat). If you buy ice cream at $5 per pound, you are paying $50 per pound for the same amount of butterfat, since ice cream, by law, must contain 10 percent butterfat.
Of course, not all the ingredients in ice cream are butterfat, but butterfat is the most expensive ingredient, while everything else is cheap. Let’s assume that half of the cost of the ingredients is the butterfat—that means you are paying $25 per pound to satisfy your need for this healthy fat. That’s five times more than you would pay to nourish yourself with butter.
This is a pretty common quality of processed foods. They may appear cheap, but they are largely made with cheap ingredients devoid of nutrition. And that translates into big profits for the industry.
One pint of ice cream provides the amount of butterfat that about 3 tablespoons of butter provide. So if you have an ice cream habit, try eating a tablespoon of butter at each meal and see whether that reduces your cravings.
Not only are you paying much more to get the fats your body needs, but you are also getting many ingredients that are best avoided. Here are the ingredients in one popular brand of vanilla ice cream:
- Milk-fat and non-fat milk
- Sugar
- Corn syrup
- Whey
- Less than 2 percent: buttermilk, butter, natural flavors, salt, caramelized sugar, guar gum, mono- and diglycerides, xanthan gum, polysorbate 80, cellulose gum, carrageenan, annatto.
Notice that the first ingredient is “milk-fat and non-fat milk.” If they listed milk-fat alone, it would probably be way down the list—after nonfat milk, sugar, corn syrup, and whey. This is likely only a little labeling trick to make you think you are getting a product composed mainly of cream.
Next, we have two refined sweeteners: sugar and corn syrup. Two labeling tricks are at play here. One is that “corn syrup” is probably high fructose corn syrup, thanks to a recent U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ruling. High fructose corn syrup (HFCF) has gotten a bad rap lately—and rightly so. It is particularly detrimental to growing children. So, why not have a single sweetener? If there were just one sweetener in the product, it might be the first ingredient by weight—however—listed in the two sweetener way—the amount of sweetener appears to be less than the milkfat component.
Now let’s look at the “less than 2 percent” additives; not a large percentage, but these add up if you eat a lot of ice cream daily.
Guar gum and its cousins, xantham gum, cellulose gum, and carrageenan, are complex carbohydrates that serve as emulsifiers and have been associated with the alteration of gut flora and dysfunction of the gut wall. So if your child gets a stomach ache after eating commercial ice cream, this is a likely reason.
Monoglycerides and diglycerides are emulsifiers that can contain (unlabeled) trans fats and toxins like nickel. They may not make up a large percentage of the final product, but the FDA has declared that trans fats are unsafe and must not make up more than 0.5 percent of a serving of food.
Finally, we have polysorbate 80, an additive that can mess with your gut flora.
These are the labeled ingredients. One ingredient that is not labeled is propylene glycol, a “food-grade” antifreeze, which keeps ice cream soft and spoonable. Since the addition of propylene glycol is an “industry standard”—that is, it’s pretty much added to all ice cream products—the FDA does not require it on the label.
The code of federal regulations of exemptions to food labeling requirements includes: “Substances that have no technical or functional effect but are present in a food by reason of having been incorporated into the food as an ingredient of another food, in which the substance did have a functional or technical effect.” The additive is generally considered harmless in small amounts but poses a danger for people with kidney and liver disease.
And that’s just the plain vanilla. Other flavors of ice cream may contain food dyes and questionable artificial flavorings.
The solution for ice cream lovers? Make your own! With modern ice cream makers, satisfying your love for ice cream using the finest ingredients is easy. Store your ice cream in shallow containers so that you only need five or ten minutes to soften after removing the ice cream from the freezer. And don’t omit the pinch of salt—it really helps bring out the flavors.
Vanilla Ice Cream Recipe
3 egg yolks
1/3 to 1/2 cup maple or coconut sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
Generous pinch of sea salt
1 quart heavy cream (pasteurized or raw, not ultra-pasteurized)
Whisk ingredients together and prepare in an ice cream maker.
Strawberry Ice Cream Recipe
2 egg yolks
1/3 to 1/2 cup maple or coconut sugar
About 2 cups strawberry puree
Generous pinch of sea salt
3 cups heavy cream (pasteurized or raw, not ultra-pasteurized)
The secret to this ice cream is in the strawberries. Use very ripe, organic strawberries that are red right through. Remove stems and blend in a food processor to obtain about 2 cups of puree. Whisk ingredients together and prepare in an ice cream maker.
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