What is better on a hot summer day than a nice bowl of Grandma’s homemade ice cream, but I can’t get that all the time. After all Grandma is not living in the backroom churning out the stuff. So, what about the stuff I buy at my local market, “It’s not all that bad is it?”
Well first, the frozen dairy industry is not required by the FDA to list all the ingredients in their products. I don’t know about you but that just makes me feel uncomfortable. Grandma’s ice cream was made from whole milk, cream, eggs, sugar and some flavoring. I usually felt very comfortable after having a big bowl of that.
Lets look at some of the ingredients that they do own up to being listed. I can’t attest to all the brands out there so lets just look at some of the ingredients I saw when reading the labels. Caroxymethyl cellulose, butyraldehyde, and amylacetate are chemical additives that I saw in some brands. Not sounding very natural to me.
Diethyl glycol is a inexpensive chemical which can be used as a egg substitute, but it is also used in anti-freeze and paint removers. Have to keep the ice cream smooth and easy to scoop.
What about the flavoring for cherry ice cream, Aldehyde C-17 which is used in dyes, plastics, and rubber. Another one that is interesting is Piperonal a vanilla substitute, which is a chemical lice killer.
Ethyl acetate used to flavor pineapple ice cream is a cleaner for leather and textiles. It’s vapor has been known to cause chronic lung, liver, and heart damage.
It is not looking too good for commercial ice cream, let’s cover just a couple more ingredients. Nut flavored ice creams use Butyraldehyde as the flavoring, which is one of the ingredients of rubber cement.
Amylacetate gives a banana flavor and it is used as a oil paint solvent. I think we have looked enough.
Remember because there is no accountability of labeling required many of these ingredients were found through analysis. Don’t even get me started on the coating sprayed inside the ice cream containers. It makes your head spin.
This gives you something to think about the next time you want to treat the family to a ice cream sundae. Actually you could be giving them a bowl of antifreeze, lice killer, paint remover, etc… makes one look at the old ‘ice cream on Sunday tradition’ a little differently.
Don’t deprive the family of that delicious cold treat though…
Here are some ice cream recipes where we left out the chemicals:
Creamy Vanilla Bean Ice Cream
Chocolate Ice Cream
Lemon Sherbet
Strawberry-Cheesecake Ice Cream
Source: Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats
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