These Ice Cream Treats Are Only “Guilt-Free” if You Are Medea.

Have you ever noticed that the back leg of that bunny looks like the head of a rat? Well, you do now. You're welcome.

First, the good news:  Big Congratulations go to Anna from Very Small Anna for knowing that Cool Whip should never be considered an appropriate topping for anything.  Yay, Anna!  By the way, friends, Anna is off to culinary school at the French Culinary Institute this fall.  She’s gonna be a star–she has both skill and creativity to spare!  If you’ve never checked out her corner of the Hinternet, you are missing a Very Good Time.

And now it’s time for some Unpleasantness.  It saddens me to say this.  Truly it does.  But I never promised you a rose garden.  Along with the sunshine, there’s got to be a little rain, sometimes.

Friends, Hungry Girl has struck again.  ‘Member when I was all appalled about the Cap’n Crunch Debacle?  Well, this time, she would have us believe that we should be Happy to feed Blue Bunny Birthday Party Ice Cream Sandwiches to our children (or in my case, kittens) because they only contain 160 calories, 3.5 grams of fat, 27 grams of carbs and >1 gram of fiber.  Oh, Dear, sweet, well-meaning Hungry Girl, I beg to differ with thee.  What’s this Incredibly Long list of unpronounceable words?  Why, I do believe it’s an Ingredient List.  Let’s take a little look-see, shall we?

Light Ice Cream: Milk Fat and Nonfat Milk, Corn Syrup, Buttermilk, Whey, Sugar, Blue Frosting {Corn Syrup, Sugar, Water, Stabilizers (Food Starch-Modified, Cellulose Gum, Dextrose, Carrageenan, Gum Arabic, Potassium Sorbate as Preservative, Citric Acid, Tricalcium Phosphate, Silicon Dioxide), Titanium Dioxide for Color, Artificial Flavor, Blue 1}, Maltodextrin, Sequin Candy {Sugar, Corn Starch, Rice Flour, Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil (Soybean, Cottonseed), Gum Arabic, Xanthan Gum, Confectioner’s Glaze, Natural and Artificial Flavors, Mono & Diglycerides, Polysorbate 60, Titanium Dioxide for Color, Yellow 5, Yellow 6, Blue 1, Red 3, Blue 1 Lake}, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Contains less than ½% of Natural and Artificial Flavors, Propylene Glycol Monoesters, Mono & Diglycerides, Guar Gum, Carob Bean Gum, Cellulose Gel, Cellulose Gum, Carrageenan, Vitamin A Palmitate. Wafer: Bleached Wheat Flour, Sugar, Soybean and Palm Oil, Corn Syrup, Food Starch-Modified, Salt, Vanilla Flavor, Baking Soda. (straight from The Horse’s Mouth)

About those stabilizers in the Blue Frosting?  Do you see how many there are?  Look at all the ingredients in the Blue Frosting Bracket:  Corn Syrup, Sugar, Water, Stabilizers, Titanium Dioxide, Aftificial Flavor and Blue 1.  Without the stabilizers, you wouldn’t have icing.  You’d have some crazy kind of simple-esque opaque blue syrup.  The stabilizers are there to ensure an Icing-like Consistency.  Thanks, Team Stabilizer.

I highlighted the Sequin Candy component because all of the ingredients in the brackets are a bit disturbing.  Honestly, I think I’d rather eat real sequins.

Let’s just take a peek at the non-bracketed ingredients for the ice cream:

• Milk fat and non fat milk–apparently, these two ingredients cannot coexist in the Blue Bunny factory, even though they happily coexist in the carton of milk in my fridge.  I guess the Blue Bunny folks are just playing it safe.  Because they are Concerned for us.
• Corn Syrup
• Buttermilk
• Whey (also separated from its milky friends.  The Blue Bunny folks are being careful and Makin’ Sure)
• Sugar
• The aforementioned Blue Frosting
• Maltodextrin
• Sequins
• High Fructose Corn Syrup
• Natural and Artificial Flavors (but only less than 1/2 of 1%.  I thought that natural flavors and artificial flavors together comprised 100% of all possible flavors.  I guess the Blue Bunny folks found some Third Category of Flavor–maybe the mother ship beamed it down or something).
• Propylene Glycol Monsters (oh, okay, it’s really Monoesters.  Whatever).
• Mono & Diglycerides
• Team Stabilizer, comprised of The Gum Brothers (Guar, Carob Bean, and Cellulose), their cousin Cellulose Gel and the Bad Kid from the beach, Carageenan
• Vitamin A Palmitate

And that doesn’t even count the “wafer” ingredients.  Friends, I am at a Loss for Words.  I mean, are they serious?  They expect moms to feed this to their kids?  And the Brunette Cartoon Hungry Girl has bought into this for some reason.  I am going to believe that Hungry Girl doesn’t want us to slowly poison our children/kittens.  I’m just going to believe that she’s basing her assessment on the calorie/fat/sugar/fiber information.  Look deeper, Hungry Girl.  They put the ingredient list below the little box because the bottom of that black box is a cue to Stop Reading.  And if we take that cue, we will never really know what we are eating.

These ice cream sammiches are relatively low in calories because the Blue Bunny people have performed Industrial Food Sleight of Hand and replaced most of the fat (except for bad fats, like partially hydrogenated vegetable oil) with sugars and stabilizers.

Ask yourself, do you really want to give your kids this stuff?  Do I really want the kittens to eat this stuff?  Should anyone eat this stuff?  I’d rather have some full-fat premium ice cream in moderation than fool myself into believing that these guys are Guilt-Free!  In the words of Ricky Bobby, “Dear, sweet baby Jesus in the Manger.”  Deep breaths.  Deeeeeep brehhhhhths.

If you’re not feeling all Homemade, get some ice cream with a short ingredient list, let it soften, and then stick some between two cookies.  If you insist on letting Hungry Girl lead you down the Primrose Path of Doom, at least go with your eyes wide open, knowing that what you’re eating isn’t so much food as it is a Mass Produced Product.  Don’t go down that path secure in the knowledge that you are eating Healthy.  Cuz you’re just not.

Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid. She’s Trying to Kill You.

What keeps it crunchy, even in milk?  *Semi-permeable food varnish.  That’s what.

So, yesterday (I think it was yesterday) sometime in between the painting and the contemplating of The Vast Expanse of Yard, I wandered up to the computer to take a wee break.  The Yahoo people were featuring a recipe for a Cap’n Crunch Shake.  Suppressing a shudder, I went to investigate.  Apparently there is a woman out in the Hinternet that goes by the moniker “Hungry Girl.”  She is Very Powerful, and fat free snack manufacturing folks grovel at her feet in the hopes that she will Smile Upon their, let’s call it Food, so that they can sell A Bunch.

First, let me say that I’m sure that Hungry Girl is a lovely person.  She’s obviously doing something right, and I’m sure her mother loves her very much.  But, friends, I have some Things to Say.

Her most recent cookbook is about making food with fewer than 200 calories.  And that’s where the Cap’n Crunch Shake comes in.  I’m not going to write down the entire ingredient list here, because I’m afraid my keyboard wouldn’t recognize me.  Then, it might Cease to Work until I show it ID.  My wallet is downstairs–we have stairs now–and I’m so sore from painting and such that it might as well be in Guam.  So, if you’ d like to see what’s in this, this….ahem, Food, go on over to her site and check it out:  HG’s Cravin’ Cap’n Crunch Shake

What I want to look at is the ingredients for the ingredients.  I won’t go through all of them, because I’m still painting, but here you go (courtesy of our friends at Wikipedia):

Calcium Carbonate is found naturally in chalk.  Hooray.  And you know what else?  You could just grind up some sea shells and you’d be ready to go.

Polydextrose is made out of sugar and some other stuff, and it’s used as a sugar, fat and/or starch replacement.

Yellows #5 and 6.  This is in the Cap’n Crunch.  Yum.  Guess what else is in Cap’n Crunch?  BHT.  BHT is edible, supposedly, but it’s also used in embalming fluid, so you won’t need to be embalmed when you die if you eat enough Cap’n Crunch.  Eat up, y’all.

Sucralose This is Splenda.  You know, “Looks like sugar; tastes like sugar, but Psych!  It’s not sugar.” It’s all technical and stuff, but it’s chlorinated.  Weird, huh.  And not food, as far as I’m concerned.

Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate This is some highly processed stuff, and it’s used as an emulsifier

Partially Hydrogenated Soybean and/or Cottonseed Oil I shan’t comment on this one

Artificial Flavors Ditto

So, why am I so opposed to this whole Cap’n Crunch shake thing?  (And here, I’m having a flashback to Monty Python, and the Wizard Tim talking about the deadly bunny:  “Look at the bones, man!”)  Look at the ingredients, people.  And here’s the thing.  I can’t give you a fat free, sugar free alternative to a milk shake and still be able to sleep at night.  I mean, if you want a milk shake, make one at home with ice cream that contains ingredients that only have one or two syllables:  milk, cream, sugar, eggs, vanilla.  [Update:  Jamie rightly pointed out that vanilla is a three syllable word.  Thanks, Jamie.  I blame the stairs.] Add some milk.  Put it in a blender.  If you’re concerned about calories, only make a little bit, or share it.  Then go take a walk.  Don’t eat Cap’n Crunch.  Or just eat it infrequently, at least.  And, whatever you do, please don’t mix up a whole bunch of highly processed chemistry projects together in a blender and then drink it.  Shudder.

That’s really all I have to say about that.  Again, I’m sure HG means well, I just think the advice is misguided.  And maybe she isn’t really trying to kill you, but just be careful, because you Never Can Tell.  Besides, Joon is the one who puts Cap’n Crunch in a blender with milk and peanut butter and drinks it for breakfast and then goes outside wearing a snorkel mask so she can direct traffic with a ping pong paddle.  See,  Cap’n Crunch shakes are for schizophrenics, not for well-adjusted people like you.  (See 3:11 and then 5:56 for The Evidence)

*Maybe not.  I just like saying it, ’cause of Christmas Vacation.