| Ice
cream not so splendid with Splenda
By Kathryn Kemp
November 14, 2006 | A few years
ago my roommates and I had a very special tradition
that I loved (little did I know then that many girls
had the same one). It's very simple: Every time you
kiss someone new, you buy ice cream for everyone.
It's the perfect tradition. Not only
is it a delicious way to celebrate a first kiss, it's
a great way to keep the freezer stocked with at least
one carton of ice cream. If there's somewhere between
four and six girls in an apartment and each kisses two
people, give or take, in a school year, they could have
a lot of ice cream.
That seems like a pretty good deal
-- unless you're checking the nutrition facts. Not only
is six girls with two kisses each a lot of ice cream,
it can also be a lot of calories and fat. Luckily, a
lot of other people eat ice cream as well, and they're
concerned about the nutrition facts too. So there are
options now: regular, slow-churned, low-fat, fat-free,
and recently gaining popularity is the sugar-free variety.
But do these new styles stack up to the original? That's
what I decided to find out.
I purchased three different kinds
of Dreyer's vanilla ice cream: Dreyer's Grand, which
is the original; slow churned, which has one-third the
calories and half the fat; and finally slow churned
with no sugar added, which is even less fat and calories.
The sugar-free ice cream uses Splenda as a sugar substitute.
All three were the same price.
I chose Dreyer's because they had
all three of these choices, while most other brands
did not. The vanilla flavor was chosen because it is
simple. Other flavors, for example, Tin Roof Sundae,
would have been too difficult to judge because there
are multiple flavors in one type of ice cream. Vanilla
is a recognizable flavor that is easy to compare.
One serving of ice cream is a half
cup. The nutrition information in that serving is as
follows:
--Dreyer's Grand: 160 calories, 100 calories
from fat, 11 grams total fat, 35 mg of cholesterol and
11 grams of sugars.
-- Slow Churned: 100 calories, 30 calories from
fat, 3.5 grams total fat, 20 mg of cholesterol and 11
grams of sugars.
--Slow Churned No Sugar added:
90 calories, 25 calories from fat, 3 grams total fat,
10 mg cholesterol and 4 grams of sugars (these are natural
sugars only).
It is pretty clear which one is healthiest,
but the flavor is equally important to ice cream lovers.
So I judged each of these on their taste, and how soft
or hard it is. Here is how they compared.
Dreyer's Grand: This has a
very rich, sweet flavor. It was very soft and scooped
out of the carton just perfectly. Sometimes hard ice
cream has to be chewed a little bit, but this melted
down perfectly once it reached the mouth.
Slow Churned: The flavor of
this one was not as rich and sweet as the regular one.
It was not as thick either. It had a fluffier, lighter
look and taste. It was even softer and easier to scoop
than the Grand. It could have been scooped from the
carton with the flimsiest plastic spoon without even
a grunt from the scooper.
Slow Churned No Sugar Added:Sucralose,
the sugar substitute sold as Splenda, is supposed to
be 600 times sweeter than refined sugar, so I was surprised
to find that this ice cream was also not as rich or
sweet as the Grand ice cream. This one was also thicker
and stiffer than the other two. It was still soft enough
to scoop easily, but I wouldn't use the flimsiest plastic
spoon in here. It seemed a little grainier, like the
Splenda hadn't dissolved into the ice cream all the
way or something. The worst part of this one, however,
was the aftertaste. When the ice cream is gone, it isn't
vanilla that lingers on your tongue; it's the flavor
of the Splenda. And the taste of Splenda alone is not
good. It reminded me of when I was a young kid, and
I used to pile sugar on top of the healthy cereals like
Kix or Rice Chex. The sugar of course turned to sludge
at the bottom of the bowl and, when the cereal was gone,
I had to drink the milk that was left. The taste of
all that sugar with that little bit of milk, is the
aftertaste of the sugar-free ice cream.
And it doesn't go away. I ate crackers,
drank water and hot chocolate, chewed gum, and the taste
was still there. It didn't go away until I brushed my
teeth before bed. It wasn't good. However, my roommate
didn't even notice the aftertaste, so maybe you'd only
notice it if you know what Splenda tastes like. And
the initial flavor itself wasn't bad at all.
My conclusions: None of the
ice creams were terrible in my book. They all tasted
like vanilla, despite one being sweeter than the others.
So really it's a matter of personal preference. Overall,
my pick is slow churned ice cream. Not only is it half
the fat and one third the calories, it still tastes
great, without being too much. If you don't care about
the fat calories, I still recommend the slow churned,
because the Grand is a little overpowering in its flavor.
Unless super-rich, super-sweet is what you like, slow
churned is the one that is just right.
The moral of the story: Like
all foods that have been adjusted somehow in order to
provide a healthier lifestyle, nothing tastes like the
original. But unlike these other foods and treats, a
person can be satisfied with no matter what kind of
ice cream they buy. In fact, unless you're purposely
comparing them, like me, you probably won't even notice
the difference.
Thanks to the creativity of ice cream
makers, we can still eat good ice cream without guilt
(or at least not as much). So go ahead and reward yourself
and the roommates for that kiss; or for anything else
you can think of. After all, delicious ice cream is
its own reward.
NW
JP
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