Food ‘Police’ Give the Full Scoop on Ice Cream

The healthy-food watchdog that tried to take all the fun out of Chinese take-out 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 Wednesday.

“But the staggering calorie and saturated fat content of most of the treats served up at chains like Baskin-Robbins, Ben & Jerry’s, Cold Stone Creamery, Friendly’s, Haagen-Dazs and TCBY is bound to surprise most consumers.”

In the past CSPI has put out reports publicizing the health-threatening qualities of other popular foods, including high-sodium Chinese take-out meals, fat-laden burgers and butter-saturated popcorn.

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.

“This is something eaten by people strolling around a mall,” she added. “They have no idea they have just eaten 820 calories and 1 1/2 days’ worth of saturated fat.”

Haagen-Dazs’ 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 are more than the day’s allowance as calculated by the U.S. government.

The CSPI called on restaurants and ice cream parlors to list the fat and calorie content of food on menus.

Ben & Jerry’s spokeswoman Chrystie Heimert said calorie and nutritional information is available online or in notebooks kept in stores, but it is hard to calculate how much each customer gets from a cone with various toppings.

“It would be tough to provide that information since it’s a kind of scooper’s choice,” she said in a telephone interview.

When she was asked if she knew that a chocolate-dip waffle cone contained 320 calories, she responded: “Well, yes, but I may not be the right person to ask because I work for an ice cream company.”