Something?s Fishy About that Low-Fat Ice Cream

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Processed food

It has nowhere to hide. Food labeling lets it all hang out. We are educated consumers? sodium, trans fats, corn syrup, preservatives, artificial flavorings and colorings? nothing escapes our purview.

Or so it seems.

Food Secrets: maybe we don’t want to know.

We used to know it was low fat ice cream the moment the spoon reached our mouths. Low fat ice cream was thin and grainy, a little icy with none of the voluptuous mouth-feel of its full fat relatives. Now we have Breyer’s and Edy’s Double-Churned products (soon to be renamed Smooth & Dreamy) that are as rich and creamy as butter yet as virtuous as broccoli.

Newsflash? a little extra churning doesn’t get you there.

The fat in ice cream provides the smooth textural structure to ice cream. Without it, large ice crystals form and you end up with a thinner, coarser-grained product. Lots of fat and you get the lush denseness of the so-called super premiums like Häagen-Dazs or Ben & Jerry’s; skimp on the fat and you’re talking mass market and store brand ice cream.

This was the challenge facing the ice cream makers? to reduce fat without altering consistency. As industry scientists pondered this, it led them to wonder why fish, with their lean body mass, don’t freeze in even the coldest of waters. A little tinkering in their laboratories and they had cracked the code.

That’s the story of how we ended up with fish anti-freeze in our rocky road.

Breyer’s Double-Churned products contain a protein cloned from the blood the ocean pout, an eel-like Arctic Ocean fish. Transparency in U.S. product labeling does not compel the company to divulge this on their list of ingredients, although it appears on containers in European markets.

Are you a vegan? Trying to avoid genetically-modified foods? Disgusted by the very thought of this? I’m guessing this covers most of us.

I think I’ll pass on that scoop of double-churned vaneela!