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Ice Cream or Gelato, Sorbet or Sherbet? What’s the Difference?

May 31, 2017 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

The cold deliciousness of ice cream, gelato, sherbet, and sorbet is hard to beat. There are an astounding number of flavors with varying degrees of fat, calorie, sugar, and dairy content. The sad truth is that no matter how innovative food scientists and savvy marketers have become, a three-scoop sundae or a chocolate dipped waffle cone still isn’t going to rank at the top of the health-o-meter.

The Difference Between Ice Cream And Gelato

In the US, the government regulates what can be called ice cream, but in some other countries ice cream can mean all frozen desserts.

Ice cream and gelato are usually dairy-based but differ in texture, fat and air content, and ingredients. Because gelato is made and stored at a higher temperature than ice cream, it’s softer, smoother, and quicker to melt.

Both are usually made from sugar, milk, eggs, and flavorings — although gelato is often made from fresh fruit. Gelato has less butterfat than ice cream, usually about 4 to 8% compared to ice cream’s 10 to 20%.

Gelato has a higher sugar content than ice cream, and the sugar/water combination acts like anti-freeze, preventing the gelato from freezing solid. Most US commercial ice creams are frozen in an assembly line freezing process while gelato is frozen very quickly in small batches.

Both ice cream and gelato are churned during the freezing process, which incorporates air. Most commercial ice cream contains about 50% air while gelato contains much less, generally 20-35%, producing a denser product with more intense flavor.

Ice cream is sold by weight, not by size, so a pint of cheaper ice cream which is fluffed up with more air than premium or artisanal ice creams will feel lighter than better brands which are pumped up with just enough air to make the ice cream nice and smooth. Compare pints of different levels of quality when they’re fresh out of the freezer. Which one is heavier in your hand? Not surprisingly, the premium brands will also be higher in calories, probably have more intense flavor, and be higher in price.

Ice cream, with its higher fat content, can be stored frozen for months. High-quality artisan gelato, when stored carefully at consistent, low temperatures, only keeps its peak flavor and smooth texture for several days.

What’s In The Frozen Desserts?

According to US federal standards, a frozen dessert must have a minimum of 10% milk fat to be called ice cream. Economy brands usually have the least amount of fat and super premium brands have more. Milk fat content of less than 10% makes the product ice milk or light ice cream.

Premium ice cream has between 11% and 15% butterfat, which makes it richer, denser, higher in calories.
Regular ice cream – what you usually find in the larger containers in the market — is somewhat less dense and contains 10% to 11% butterfat (perfect for milkshakes).
Economy ice cream, by law, has 10% butterfat

Light ice cream has either 50% less fat or 33% fewer calories than the producer’s regular ice cream. Here’s the hitch: because of the higher starting point for fat content especially in premium brands, light versions of premium ice cream can have more fat and calories than the regular version of other brands.
Reduced fat ice cream must, by law, have 25% less fat than the regular ice cream produced by the same vendor.
Soft serve ice cream is the same as regular ice cream but is served at a higher temperature.
French Style Ice Cream also called glace, has a custard base that includes eggs, which makes it silky and rich.
Gelato (plural, gelati) has more milk than cream (if any) so its fat content is significantly lower. It doesn’t saturate your taste buds as much as ice cream so the flavor seems more intense. It’s often flavored with fresh fruit, nuts, chocolate, and other natural flavors. Gelato is served at a higher temperature than ice cream making it look more like frozen yogurt or whipped cream than ice cream.
Sorbet, which means water ice, is made from fruit, wine, or liqueur, but not milk and is sometimes flavored with herbs and spices and then whipped to lighten its texture. It’s sometimes used as a palate cleanser.
Sherbet, like sorbet, is traditionally fruit flavored but with milk added for creaminess. By law it contains between 1 and 2% butterfat – which makes it lighter in flavor and texture.
Granita is similar to sorbet but not whipped. Ice crystals give it a granular appearance and a crunchy texture.

How Many Calories?

There’s a huge variation in nutrition so it’s best to check labels if you’re counting calories, fats, and/or carbs. These are the general caloric ranges for “naked” ice cream and gelato (without sauce, toppings, nuts, and whipped cream):

5 ounces of milk-based gelato has between 120 and 160 calories, 4g to 8g of fat, and 30 g to 45g of carbs; milk and soy-based gelato has between 3g and 5g of protein
5 ounces of American ice cream (not churned, light, or reduced fat) averages 240 calories, 15 grams of fat, and 24g carbs
5 ounces of light ice cream can vary between 100 to close to 200 calories depending upon whether it is just light or if it is slow churned light. The flavor and the add-ins can significantly raise the calorie count.

Tip: Order a small serving of ice cream or gelato instead of a medium or large. You’ll probably be just as satisfied. Even if you indulge in your favorite full-fat flavor, you’ll save as many as 550 calories with a 5-ounce size of ice cream instead of a 12-ounce size.

Don’t be led astray by frozen yogurt which has a wide range of calories depending on fat content and flavorings. Frozen yogurt can be as caloric, if not more caloric, than other frozen desserts.

PEEPS: Do You Love Them Or Hate Them?

April 14, 2017 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

Lots of people have a thing for those fluorescent marshmallow bunnies and chicks that were hatched over 50 years ago. They got their name – PEEPS — because the original candy was the yellow chick. Now they’re produced for many holidays – in seasonal colors and different shapes.

They continue to be the subject of lots of design contests (you’d be amazed what you can make out of peeps) and scientific experiments (some claim them to be indestructible). Just Born, the parent company of PEEPS, claims to produce enough PEEPS in one year to circle the Earth twice. Their website boasts a fan club and a section for recipes.

PEEPS have been the number one non-chocolate Easter candy in the US for more than a decade. Although yellow is America’s favorite color for PEEPS chicks and bunnies, they also come in pink, lavender, blue, orange and green.

What’s In Them?

Send a PEEP for lab analysis and you’ll find sugar, corn syrup, gelatin, less than 0.5% of potassium sorbate, natural flavors, dye, and carnauba wax. They’re gluten and nut free. (No wonder some claim that they’re indestructible!) You can even get sugar free PEEPS that are made with Splenda.

Five little chicks (42g, one serving size): 140 calories; 0g fat; 1g protein; and 36g carbs.

PEEPS Preferences

People have definite PEEPS preferences. Some like them nice and soft, others leave them out in the air to age to perfection so they get a little crunchy on the outside.

They’ve been microwaved (careful, they expand and can really make a mess in your microwave), frozen, roasted, used to top hot chocolate, and added to recipes. They don’t toast well on sticks like regular marshmallows because their outer sugar coating tends to burn.

Newspapers have been known to run contests for best PEEP recipes and best PEEP pictures, and, in a world of contrasts I’ve seen a blackboard outside of a bar in NYC advertising a PEEP contest and a kids’ store using boxes and boxes of PEEPs for window decoration.

I have a few members of my family who love their PEEPS and I freely admit that I am not one of them — although I do think they make great table decorations.

If PEEPS are part of your Easter ritual, even though they’re filled with sugar and all kinds of dyes and chemicals, for a seasonal treat, you could do worse.

What’s your PEEPS preference?

What Do You Know About Jellybeans?

April 6, 2017 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

Do you think a bag of jellybeans should come with a warning label: “STOP NOW or you’ll keep eating until they’re gone?”

Seriously – it’s pretty darn hard not to love those little nuggets of sweetness that come in multitudes of colors and flavors and get stuck in your teeth!

Of the 16 billion jellybeans that Americans eat at Easter, many of them are hidden in Easter baskets and plastic eggs. If all the Easter jellybeans were lined up end to end there would be enough of them to circle the earth nearly three times.

Where Did Jellybeans Come From?

The gummy insides of jellybeans are thought to originate from the centuries old treat, Turkish Delight. Jellybean outsides are just like the colored hard candy coating, developed in the late 17^th century, for the Jordan almond.

The modern jellybean became popular during the American Civil War when Boston’s William Schraft encouraged citizens to send candy to Union soldiers. Jellybeans were the first bulk candy and they became one of the staples of the penny candy that was sold by weight in the early 1900s. Because of their egg shape, which can be taken as representing fertility and birth, they became popular as Easter candy around 1930.

Standard jellybeans come in fruit flavors but there are now a huge number of flavors — some goofy, some sophisticated — like spiced, mint, gourmet, tropical, popcorn, bubble gum, pepper, and cola. They also come in a sugar free version (seems weird, but true – don’t you wonder how many chemicals are in those?).

Do You Eat Them By The Handful Or Pick and Choose?

Do you eat your jellybeans one at a time, or do you gobble them up by the handful? What about colors and flavors – do you pick out your favorites or just eat them altogether?

70% of kids aged 6–11 say they prefer to eat Easter jellybeans one at a time
23% say they eat several at once
Boys (29%) are more likely to eat a handful than girls (18%)
Kids say their favorite Easter jellybean flavors are cherry (20%), strawberry (12%), grape (10%), lime (7%), and blueberry (6%)

What’s In The Hard Shelled Nugget Of Sweetness?

Jellybeans are primarily made of sugar and also usually contain gelatin (Jelly Bellys don’t), corn syrup, modified food starch, and less than 0.5% of citric acid, sodium citrate, artificial flavors, confectioners glaze, pectin, carnauba wax, white mineral oil, magnesium hydroxide, and artificial colors (takes some of the fun out of them, doesn’t it?).

Originally, there was just the traditional jellybean, which has flavor only in the shell. In 1976, the Jelly Belly (Goelitz) Candy Company introduced gourmet jellybeans. Unlike traditional jellybeans, Jelly Bellies are smaller and softer than the traditional kind and are flavored both inside and outside. Jelly Belly makes about 50 different flavors of gourmet jellybeans.

Calories in jellybeans:

Even though they may give you Technicolor insides, jellybeans are fat free. On average:

10 small jellybeans (11g) have 41 calories, no fat, no cholesterol, no protein, and 10.3 grams of carbs
10 large jellybeans (1 ounce or 28g) have 105 calories, no fat, no cholesterol, no protein, and 26.2g carbs
10 Jelly Bellys have 40 calories (4 calories a piece), or about 100 calories in a single serving (25 beans)

Some Jelly Belly Jellybean Trivia

Jelly Bellys were invented in 1976. They were the first jellybeans to be sold in single flavors and to come with a menu of flavor choices.
It takes 7 to 21 days to make a single Jelly Belly jellybean.
Very Cherry was the most popular Jelly Belly flavor for two decades until 1998, when Buttered Popcorn took over. Very Cherry moved back into the top spot by only 8 million beans in 2003.
Jelly Bellys were the first jellybeans in outer space – they were sent on the 1983 flight of the space shuttle Challenger by President Reagan.
Jelly Bellys don’t contain gelatin and are suitable for vegetarians, but some strict vegans may have issues with the beeswax and shellac used to give them their final buff and polish.
Jelly Belly jellybeans do not contain any wheat, rye, barley, or oats in the basic recipe. The modified food starch used to manufacture them is cornstarch and all ingredients are free of dairy.

Kosher Jellybeans

Teenee Beanee jellybeans and Just Born jellybeans are Pareve & O/U; Jelly Bellies are certified OU Kosher.

Soda Bread, Farl, Or Spotted Dog?

March 15, 2017 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

It’s not too hard to find green bagels, beer, and even green milkshakes on St. Patrick’s Day in the US. Of course there’s also corned beef and cabbage – and “Irish soda bread” — with a cruciform slashed on top. Have you ever wondered why the shape of the cross is slashed on the tope of the bread – and why it’s known as soda bread – or farl – or Spotted Dog?

Soda Bread and Native Americans

The earliest reference to the chemical reaction that makes soda bread rise is actually credited to native Americans. Centuries before soda bread became popular in Ireland, they added pearl-ash (potash), the natural soda in wood ashes, along with an acidic ingredient, to make their breads rise.

Soda bread became popular in Ireland when bicarbonate of soda, also known as bread soda, became available to use as a leavening agent. Bread soda made it possible to work with the “soft” wheat grown in Ireland’s climate. “Hard” wheat flour, the main kind used in the US today, needs yeast to rise properly. “Soft” wheat flour doesn’t work well with yeast but is great for “quick breads” like soda bread.

According to The Society for the Preservation of Irish Soda Bread, the earliest published recipe or soda bread was in a London magazine in 1836 – also later repeated in several US papers – that refers to a “receipt for making soda bread” from a newspaper in Northern Ireland.

In 19th century Ireland, making bread was part of daily life and most families lived in farmhouses where kitchens had open hearths, not ovens. Bread soda meant that anyone who didn’t have an oven (most people in Ireland in the 1800’s didn’t) could make soda bread.

The bread soda wasn’t perishable, was relatively inexpensive, and buttermilk, and the soft wheat for flour, both necessary components of soda bread, were commonly available. The bread was cooked on a griddle or in a bastible, a big cast-iron pot with a lid that could be put right into coals or a turf fire.

Brown Or White; Cake Or Farl

“Plain” soda bread often comes with breakfast or with a main meal to soak up gravy. It comes both brown and white, and in two main types, cake and farl.

Traditional brown Irish soda bread is basic table bread made from whole meal flour, baking soda (bread soda), salt, and buttermilk. White soda bread, made with white flour, is considered slightly more refined than brown soda bead and is sometimes thought of as a more special occasion bread.

Cake tends to be found more in the south of Ireland while people in Northern Ireland seem to prefer farl — although both can be found in the North and South, sometimes with different names.

Cake is soda bread that is kneaded, shaped into a flattish round, then deeply cut with a cross on the top. Now it’s normally baked in an oven.

For farl the dough is rolled into a rough circle and cut all the way through — like a cross — into four pieces or farls (“farl” is a generic term for a triangular piece of baking). It’s usually baked in a heavy frying pan, on a griddle or on top of the range or stove. It’s flatter and moister than cake. Each farl is split in half “the wide way” before it’s eaten and is best when hot. It’s also allowed to cool and then grilled or fried as part of other dishes — especially the Ulster Fry, a local breakfast where golden and crispy soda bread and potato farls have been fried in reserved bacon fat and are served with Irish bacon, sausage, black pudding, tomato and egg.

What’s Spotted Dog?

There are regional variations of the basic soda bread recipe – even though some purists would say there should be no additions to the dough.

In Donegal, caraway seeds were traditionally put in the bread. In earlier and leaner times when raisins or dried fruit were luxuries, a fistful of them or maybe even a little sugar or an egg — if either could be spared — would have been put into the white flour version of the bread during the harvest as a treat for the working men.

The non-traditional varieties of soda breads that are made with raisins, caraway, orange zest, and other add-ins are often called Spotted Dog.

What About The Cross On Top?

Before baking, a cross is traditionally cut on the top of the soda bread loaf with a knife – often said to ward off the devil and to protect the household.

Legend and symbolism aside, there’s a practical reason for the cruciform shape to be cut into the top of the dough. Slashing the dough lets heat penetrate into the thickest part of the bread and allows the bread to stretch and expand as it rises.

Slashing a round loaf with a cruciform shape ends up dividing the bread into quadrants that can be easily broken apart (the breaking of the bread). But, since Ireland is a Catholic country, the symbolism of the cross can also be interpreted as blessing (crossing) the bread and giving thanks.

One serving (74 g) of Irish Soda Bread with raisins and caraway seeds has 214 calories, 3.67g fat, 41.51g carbs, 4.86g protein.

Movies, Popcorn, and the Oscars

February 24, 2017 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

When you think movie, do you also think popcorn? A good percentage of movie viewing people do.

And what’s the biggest movie night of the year? The Academy Awards, of course.

Oscar has been around for a long time – the first Academy Awards ceremony was in 1929 – but the main snack food that’s associated with movies has been around a lot longer.

The Evolution of Popcorn

The puffy goodness we know as popcorn is a strain of corn (from maize) cultivated in Central America about 8,000 years ago and probably brought to New England from Chile in the early 19th century by North American whalers. People discovered that popping popcorn was fun and its appeal spread rapidly across the country.

By the mid 1800’s popcorn was widely available, especially at places like circuses and fairs. The invention of the steam-powered popcorn maker in 1885 meant popcorn could be made anywhere. Amazingly, the only place where it wasn’t usually available was in theaters, which typically had carpeted floors and theater owners didn’t want popcorn “dirtying” up the place.

Popcorn and Movies

Because of popcorn’s popularity, theater owners began to allow vendors to sell popcorn outside their theaters. During the Great Depression people looked for cheap diversions and movies were it and popcorn — at 5 to 10 cents a bag — was an affordable luxury.

Eventually theater owners began to lease their lobbies to popcorn vendors, but then figured out they could make more money by selling it themselves. Selling popcorn, candy, and soda from their own concession stands meant higher profits. Sugar shortages during World War II made sweet treats hard to come by so popcorn became the main snack. By 1945 over half of the popcorn eaten in the US was consumed in movie theaters.

Popcorn is still king. Americans eat, on average, about 13 gallons of popcorn a year. It’s cheap to make and allows for a huge price mark-up. You might pay $5 for a bag of popcorn, but it costs the theater about 50 cents. Plain popcorn doesn’t have all that much flavor, so yellow oil (it isn’t butter) and salt are added to make it tasty and make you thirsty. So, you buy a soda. No wonder movie theaters make an estimated 85 percent profit from concession sales, with those sales accounting for 46 percent of their overall profits.

Popcorn Recipes

On Oscar night – or any movie night — as you prop your feet up to watch the glamorous stars grab their golden statues, make sure you have a good supply of popcorn on hand. You don’t have to settle for the plain variety – unless you want to. There are some fantastic popcorn recipes with names like Bacon Bourbon Caramel Popcorn, Cinnamon Candy Popcorn (which is red, like the red carpet), Pizza Popcorn, Peanut Butter Popcorn, and Endless Caramel Corn.

For even more popcorn recipes to accompany your cheers, boos, oohs, and ahs on Oscar night, check out: