Summer Treat: Ice Cream 'Isn't Health Food' -Study

The healthy food watchdog that took all the fun out of Chinese takeout and movie popcorn has done it again, this time with summer's favored treat -- ice cream.

“Everyone knows that ice cream isn't a health food,” the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an independent, nonprofit group, said in a study released on Wednesday. “But the staggering calorie and saturated fat content of most of the treats served up at chains like Baskin- Robbins, Ben and Jerry's, Cold Stone Creamery, Friendly's, Haagen- Dazs and TCBY is bound to surprise most consumers.”

The CSPI said an empty Ben & Jerry's chocolate-dipped waffle cone, designed to hold at least two scoops of ice cream, itself packs 320 calories and 10 grams or half a day's worth of saturated fat. “If you put a regular scoop of Chunky Monkey ice cream in that cone, it is going to be worse for you than (a) one-pound rack of baby back ribs, with 820 calories and 30 grams of saturated fat,” CSPI nutritionist Jayne Hurley told a news conference to publicize the study. “This is something eaten by people strolling around a mall,” she added. “They have no idea they have just eaten 820 calories and one and a half days worth of saturated fat.”

Haagen-Dazs's Mint Chip Dazzler, a sundae in a cup, has three scoops of ice cream, fudge, cookies, sprinkles and cream – and 1,270 calories, the group said. Its 38 grams of fat is more more than the day's allowance as calculated by the U.S. government, which says the average American should eat between 2,000 and 2,500 calories a day. The CSPI called on restaurants and ice cream parlors to list the fat and calorie content of food on menus (...) In the past CSPI has put out reports publicizing the health-threatening qualities of other popular foods, including Chinese take-out meals, burgers and popcorn.

(Reuters, 23 July 2003)