Your ice cream may not be ice cream at all

I don’t eat a lot of sweets, but I love a good ice cream. Thanks to my parents, I’ve grown fond of Trader Joe’s Coffee Bean Blast flavor.

During these warm summer days, ice cream becomes a staple for many, but before you reach for that container, beware. It’s possible that it's not ice cream that you’re buying at all.

Did you know that for a manufacturer to call its product ice cream, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) requires that it contain at least 10% milk fat? That’s one of the primary ingredients that makes it taste so good and creamy.

It turns out that adding that much milk fat to millions of containers of ice cream annually isn’t cheap, and the primary mission of corporations, beholden to their shareholders, is to cut costs and maximize profits.

To do this, some companies have replaced or significantly reduced milk fat with multiple sweeteners, like molasses and corn syrup, and synthetic emulsifiers, including mono and diglycerides; yummy. These ingredients are used liberally to recover the taste that fat provides and to hold the products’ structure together.

When they fall below the 10% minimum, companies must label the product as a “frozen dairy dessert.”

Popular brands pretending to be ice cream include Dreyer's, Klondike, Baskin-Robbins, Breyers, and Halo Top. The sugar alcohol, Erythritol, contained in Halo Top, has been linked to blood clots, heart attack, and stroke when eaten in large quantities.

In this highly informative video from Consumer Exposed, 17 brands of fake ice cream containing inferior ingredients like xanthan gum, guar gum, and locust bean gum are highlighted. We also learn about dairy desserts that were contaminated with industrial plastic and listeria.

But good news—5 brands of honest-to-goodness ice cream are ranked, including Häagen-Dazs, Salt and Straw, and Tillamook.