Wondering Which Ice Cream is Good for Your Family?
When beads of sweat trickle down your neck, don’t you just want to dig your teeth right into an ice-cold stick of Ice Cream? I do. In this heat, who wouldn’t crave something icy! Then how can we turn away from these summer treats, just because some say it’s unhealthy? Who eats Ice Cream for health? Then again we can’t push our families and our kids to health problems by making them eat “Vanaspati” as they recently said in an Amul advertisement, which pushed us to buy “REAL ICE CREAM”.
What happens when we eat Vanaspati or Trans Fats?
Let me clarify, Vanaspati is hydrogenated oils or Trans fat (a well know manufacturer and Brand was commonly known as Dalda). Tran fats increase your bad cholesterol (LDL) and decrease your good cholesterol. They can lead to heart disease, increase the risk of diabetes and obesity. In food, they increase the shelf life of the product. But unlike what is claimed by Amul in its advertisement most Frozen Desserts DO NOT use Vanaspati in making their Ice Cream-like products.
What goes into making a Frozen Dessert? Is it bad for us?
It is mentioned on their packaging that they use vegetable oil. Oftentimes, the oil used in such products could be palm oil or coconut oil, both of which as saturated fats. According to recent research, coconut oil is a healthy fat and it even reduces the risk of heart disease and is good to reduce belly fat. Palm oil on the other hand is not proven to have any “magical” properties like coconut oil. It is worth noting that palm oil is a relatively cheaper oil than coconut oil.
Both Ice Cream and Frozen Desserts are high in fat; both products also contain added sugar. While Ice Cream has dairy fat and Frozen Dessert has plant-based fat, generally speaking, since both do not have Trans fats, neither of them is directly harming us. So the question is, what is the healthier option for us? Which of these should we buy for our family this summer?
Which Ice Cream should I buy for my Family?
Consumer Voice recently conducted tests to compare seven brands of Ice Cream and Frozen Desserts; to let us know which one we should buy. They compared the brands on price point, taste and flavors, sugar level, fat level, and protein percentage among other parameters. Baskin Robbins & Verka Ice Cream (from Punjab topped the overall performance in the Ice Cream category. Vadilal topped the overall performance in the Frozen Desserts category. Here’s a chart telling you about the performance of your favorite brands in each category.