Fat-Free Ice Cream. Seriously?

Upon first sighting fat-free ice cream in the grocery store, I was a little excited. Ice cream, one of my favorite guilty treats, had now become fat-free. As I opened the door of the freezer section and began to reach for this new fat-free ice cream, common sense finally took over and made me wonder what the catch to this seemingly healthy ice cream was. My first instinct was to compare the nutritional labels between the original chocolate ice cream and this new fat-free chocolate ice cream. In comparison of calories, the fat free ice cream had 90 compared to the original 140, and the fat calories were reduced from 60 in the original to 0 in the fat-free. Next I compared grams of sugar because a lot of fat free foods jack up sugar content to compensate for taste after removing fat: 16 grams in the original and a surprising 13 grams in the fat-free. After a moment’s thought, I decided to compare the ingredients. Busted.

The original chocolate ice cream contained seven ingredients: milk, cream, sugar, cocoa (processed with alkali), whey, natural tara gum, and natural flavor. The fat-free alternative however contained 16 ingredients: skim milk, sugar, poly-dextrose, corn syrup, maltodextrin, cocoa (processed with Alkali), propylene glycol, monoesters, mono & diglycerides, cellulose gum, natural flavor, carob bean gum, guar gum, carrageenan, annatto (for color), vitamin A palmitate, and ice structuring protein; of which 4 of the top 5 were some variation of sugar. Not only that, but the fat-free version is made up of so many different types of gums and additives that it makes me wonder if this supposed fat-free ice cream is even ice cream at all, not to mention wondering what color ice cream makers were trying to cover up by adding the annatto.

I would definitely not recommend this product to anyone because the only resemblances it makes to ice cream are that it is in a container labeled ice cream, and it contains milk and sugar. Clearly the best alternative to this product would be to abstain from ice cream; however, when one’s sweet tooth becomes too much to handle, it’s simply better to stick to real ice cream and enjoy it in moderation.