Manna from heaven for dieters! (Skinny Cow Chocolate Fudge Ice Cream)

Member Name: the_oracle123

Product:	Skinny Cow Chocolate Fudge Ice Cream
Date:	30/08/05 (2952 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fairly authentic taste/texture, less than 1% fat, 73 calories per stick

Disadvantages: Not as delicious as real dairy ice cream

In general, I'm always very suspicious of "diet" products. It's probably because I honestly can't see how something with the fat and sugar replaced with all sorts of artificial nasties can taste half as good as something made with real ingredients. With real ingredients, though, comes the rather nasty other side of not being all that good for you...

Ice cream is a particularly annoying food. It's just so delicious and perfect, yet if you're trying to slim and want to eat more than about half a teaspoonful, it is going to wreck your diet! (Believe me, I know from bitter experience. It really is not possible to just eat 20g of Ben & Jerries.)

Anyway, that's where Skinny Cow products come in. Until I started dieting, I'd never heard of Skinny Cow, but was told about the brand at my Slimming World class. For this committed ice cream lover who was facing a terrible lack of it, Skinny Cow ice cream sounded just ideal. It says on the boxes that the brand has been making low-fat ice cream treats since 1992, and although I'd never before seen/heard of them, you can actually buy them in most major supermarkets! (Maybe, as my mother would say, I've just been looking with my eyes closed?)

The principle behind Skinny Cow ice cream is that they're low FAT. The sugar is kept at the same level as other products, so they do taste just as sweet as ordinary ice cream, but the fat has been replaced with an ingredient called "inulin". Inulin is basically a fibre, derived from chicory, and like other fibres inulin can't be absorbed by the body. This means the texture is the same as ordinary ice cream but the fat levels are minimal.

Skinny Cow products are aimed very much at women. The packaging is very feminine, with lots of pinks and yellows, the name itself is fairly self-explanatory, and the website has such features as "Excuses, Excuses, Excuses". Basically, the company are trying to target women's endless search for the perfect body!

The ice creams are very popular in America and look to do as well here. The UK company manufacture three different types of ice cream - tubs, sticks and cones. The tubs come in three flavours (mint, chocolate and vanilla), the sticks are cookies 'n' cream, chocolate fudge or berry flavour, while the cones are strawberry or caramel flavour. Here I'll review my favourite, the chocolate fudge sticks.

Just looking at them, the sticks are satisfyingly chunky - about the size and shape of a Magnum, though without the chocolate covering. They're 110ml each, so one of these sticks is enough that you don't feel cheated (so many ice creams are "low fat" because they're miniscule and have more air holes than ice cream...) They're a mid-brown colour, fairly smooth and without any bits, and even though you know they're low fat, they do still look nice, creamy and chocolatey.

I can't bite into ice creams. I've never been able to, as my front teeth are so sensitive that anything cold makes me wince in agony for about half an hour, so I'm afraid I can't tell you what the first bite is like! I tend just to suck the top of ice creams, and from the first experimental lick I can tell you that these melt on the tongue with an authentically creamy texture just like ordinary ice cream. They aren't watery and the flavour is nicely pronounced, though I can't taste them being particularly chocolate-fudgey, more like just chocolate on its own.

If you're like me, and don't devour the whole thing in a few bites, they last a good long time and so they're enough to have for a guilt-free dessert. If you're counting calories, they come up at less than 1% fat and 73 calories per stick which is amazing considering they're full size and taste authentic. On the Slimming World programme, each one is 3.5 Syns (you're allowed 10-15 Syns per day), making them a very low Syn treat. I quite like the fact that they're each a measured amount, so you know how many calories you're putting in and you don't end up scoffing a whole tub of ice cream in one go.

They aren't as good as real dairy ice cream. I wasn't expecting them to be, though, as nobody could argue that a low-fat ice cream will taste as good as one with double cream and sugar. I speak as a foodie who adores anything rich, creamy and genuinely chocolatey - they definitely are a step down in the taste stakes. However, needs must, and I think that if you're watching your weight then it's better to have one of these and know you're eating a full size ice lolly than to have a tiny portion of full-fat ice cream and feel resentful and cheated. In this way, they are encouraging for slimmers and do help you to feel as if you're eating just as well as everybody else.

The website states that Skinny Cow ice creams are free from artificial colours and none of the Skinny Cow products contain nuts, but they are made in a nut-handling environment. All the ice creams contain dairy products, but Choc Fudge sticks are gluten-free.

In terms of buying them, I know they're definitely available from Tesco, Sainsbury's, Waitrose, Co-op and Asda - they come in boxes of 4 and cost about £1.98 per box, though the price does vary from place to place.

Summary: Although not quite the real thing, for 73 calories per stick you can't complain!