Cool Whip Free is free of everything except high-fructose corn syrup and lies! July 8, 2007

We all remember Cool Whip as a summertime treat riding high on pile of strawberries and pound cake. These days, you’d be lucky to find a strawberry shortcake that wasn’t made in China! Well, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but you (and Lou Dobbs) get my point. It seems like we all knew Cool Whip couldn’t actually be good for us, which was why our moms only served it every few weeks or so. These days, in our anything-goes dietary culture, Kraft Foods has launched a new type of Cool Whip that is supposedly a lot healthier. They call it Cool Whip Free.

I saw it at the supermarket not too long ago and after having a quick look at the nutritional information, I realized that this Cool Whip wasn’t really free of anything-especially sugar! Am I the only one who finds it aggravating that companies can promote something as healthy or imply a health-benefit with a name when the product isn’t actually healthy?

Although the blogosphere has been pretty quiet about this one I found a post about a very similar experience that somebody over at FitSugar had with Cool Whip Free. “Cool Whip Free may be low in carbs and low in calories, but it is not free of a few things I try to avoid. The top four ingredients are: water, corn syrup, hydrogenated vegetable (coconut and palm kernel oils), and high fructose corn syrup.”

The author of that post actually bought the Cool Whip before they took it home and realized that it wasn’t some form of dessert miracle. Her level of disgust rose quickly, it seems.

My favorite touch, however, is the asterisks Kraft added to the right of the ingredient “partially hydrogenated oil.” The asterisk leads me to a little informational gem of a footnote that reads, “Adds a negligible amount of fat.” Thanks, Kraft I feel so much better about the fact that you can use partially hydrogenated oil, keep the amount per serving to below 0.5 gram, and still claim your product is trans fat free.

And besides, have you ever noticed how there’s two ways to say Cool Whip. Some people, us northerners mostly, plainly say Cool-Whip as two separate words. But I’ve noticed that southerners and people from back east have a tendency to kind of link the two words together. I’d never thought anybody else had ever noticed that until I was watching some cartoon show with my irresponsible grandson. Suddenly, I see a baby and a talking dog conversing on something that had been bothering me for the better part of 20 years.

What an age we live in.

 

The Dog Days of Summer mean different dietary choices for Seniors July 7, 2007

With the dog days of summer in full swing, it can be pretty tempting to reward yourself after a long walk in hot weather by picking up some ice cream. Well, according to an article I read this morning in Canada’s Globe & Mail, that ice cream might be doing a lot more harm than good.

It’s always important to make sure that your active lifestyle isn’t undone by your dietary choices. This is especially confusing when of half the ice cream you see in your grocer’s freezer is labeled “Low-fat,” “Non-Fat,” or “Heart-Healthy.” Here’s some of the logistics on ice cream. “Ice cream is made with cream, milk, sugar, flavorings, stabilizers and emulsifiers and ranges in fat content from 10 to 18 per cent.” Unfortunately that just covers the basic run of the mill ice cream that we all remember from our heyday. Today’s ice cream is jam-packed with more chocolate whizz-bangs and candy-coated doo-dads that caloric intake can rise faster than a sugar-rushed six-year old.

This paragraph pretty much sums up the problem.

A half-cup of standard full-fat ice cream like Breyers Classic or Nestlé Parlour contains roughly 140 calories, six grams of fat and 16g (four teaspoons) of sugar. Add-ins such as chocolate chips, fudge, cookie pieces and candy boost the numbers. For example, a half-cup of President’s Choice Pecan Butter Tart has 180 calories, 8 g of fat (6 of them saturated) and 21 g of sugar. The same serving of premium brands such as Haagen-Dazs and Ben & Jerry’s often hits 300 calories, not to mention as many as 25 g of fat (at least half of them saturated) and 28 g (seven teaspoons) of sugar.

Reading that article in the Globe & Mail really got me thinking about how summer brings about a whole new range of nutrition choices you don’t seem to have to make during the rest of the year (for those of us not living in southern-American retirement communities, anyway). Summer means barbecues, boat rides and a lot of time spent in the heat.

To help you keep your dietary wits about you this summer, I found a great article in the FitSugar Blog that you should print out and take a long look at.