Bite of the Best

What it is: A light ice cream with full taste How it comes: Pint Where it is: In the freezer of your supermarket Who it's for: Anyone looking for full flavor in an ice cream sans additive Suggested retail price: $3.69 Nutrition notes: Cup has 230 calories, 8 grams total fat (5 grams saturated), and 30 grams sugar Category: Fabulous Food: A healthy twist

Bonnie: Okay, I admit that it’s true. I’m middle-aged. With two sons in their 20s, and the evidence of gravity on my body parts, I can no longer hide that fact.

Years ago when I could jog miles a day, play tennis almost daily and easily bike ride twenty-five miles more than once a week, I could luxuriate in a bowlful of super premium ice cream without it ending up on my hips. I’m talking Haagen-Dazs chocolate chocolate chip ice cream. That’s rich-and-worth-every-mouthful ice cream.

I don’t eat ice cream often, but when I do, I want to relish each and every bite. Once my activity lessened due to arthritic joints, so did my ice cream consumption. It had to. Meaning my bowlful became a heaping teaspoon (yes, I meant to write teaspoon) at home, or a kiddie cone or mini-tasting spoonful when at an ice cream shop with someone buying a regular cone. Until Haagen-Dazs Light Mint Chip, that is. (Did I forget to mention that Mint Chip is my other favorite?)

To say I was happy at the introduction of Haagen-Dazs Light Mint Chip is a bit understated. Now I allow myself more, as a 1/2-cup serving contains about 70 fewer calories and 12 grams less fat than regular Haagen-Dazs, with almost all the enjoyment. That’s probably because it’s equivalent in calories and fat to most regular ice creams, but without the additives. Excuse me while I go to indulge in a heaping tablespoonful!

Bryan: I agree with my brother that true ice cream is rarely found on supermarket shelves and I’m truly skeptical of light ice cream; you might as well offer me reduced fat foie gras. Though I believe I will continue to stick with the regular product, this light version of mint chocolate chip was very well done. A hint of flavorful mint (not overpowering, which always turns me off) and the richness of the chips from Haagen-Dazs help to maintain the sumptuousness you’d expect from a premium product. For me, a generous helping of chocolate sauce/fudge helps this out, but chocolate was always my first love, mint a far finishing also-ran.

Eric: When I first read my brother’s opinion of this product, I laughed. The idea of a low-fat ice cream being compared to a reduced fat foie gras is believable, and when you grow up in an area like we did, where locally made ice cream was the highlight of the summer, and where store-bought ice cream was scoffed at when walking through the supermarket aisles, low-fat ice creams seem as tasty as sugarless cotton candy. The freezer in our basement always contained myriad flavors of ice cream that my mother was testing, and, being a mint fan, I was in direct competition with my mother. This ice cream is one of the few I can remember that my mother would hide, disguise or relocate in order to savor on her own.