Haagen Dazs: Five Ingredients, One Pure and Perfect Flavor

The other night, I was indulging in some Haagen Dazs Vanilla Ice Cream at my friend’s apartment, and it struck me: Haagen Dazs is so tasty. This is by no means a new assessment, but for some reason at that moment I was completely blown away at how pure the flavors were. I looked at the ingredients on the back, and I realized why. Did you know that Haagen Dazs Vanilla Ice Cream is made with only five ingredients? I would assume that it is the purest form of ice cream on the market, seeing as it’s made with only the ingredients you would use if you were making it yourself: skim milk, cream, sugar, egg yolks, and pure vanilla extract. I then did a little research and saw that Haagen Dazs has recently introduced an entire product line of ice creams that are made with only five ingredients (pictured above and below). I’ve yet to try them, but can’t wait to get my hands on brown sugar, ginger, and mint!

As a comparison, I looked up what is in other ice creams. I used Turkey Hill as my first reference, because despite the fact that you don’t hear about the brand very often, they make the best chocolate peanut butter ripple ice cream, which is one of my favorite flavors. The ingredients are: MILK, CREAM, SUGAR, CORN SYRUP, WHEY, NONFAT MILK, MONO & DIGLYCERIDES, VANILLA, GUAR GUM, VANILLA BEAN, CARRAGEENAN. I guess the list starts out alright, seeing as you can’t really make ice cream without milk, cream, or sugar, but it really just goes downhill from there. Corn Syrup? Really? As if sugar wasn’t … sweet enough? I had no idea what this last ingredient was so I looked it up on Wikipedia. This was my finding: Carrageenans or carrageenins are a family of linear sulphated polysaccharides extracted from red seaweeds. The name is derived from a type of seaweed that is abundant along the Irish coastline. Gelatinous extracts of the Chondrus crispus seaweed have been used as food additives for hundreds of years, though analysis of carrageenan safety as an additive continues. So yeah, it’s an additive, I guess it could be a worse one, but if you don’t need it why use it? Even Breyers, who prides itself on being “all natural … real ingredients, real simple,” has a surprising ingredients list: MILK, CREAM, SUGAR, NATURAL FLAVOR, NATURAL TARA GUM. “Natural flavor?” Is there a reason they can’t use “vanilla bean?” I learned tara gum is used to increase the viscosity, and has been a huge point of debate regarding Breyers, pissing off a lot of people who aren’t entirely convinced that this is an all-natural ingredient. All in all, ice creams are just like every other food product out there: full of stuff we can’t pronounce, don’t understand, and probably shouldn’t be ingesting in large amounts. That is, unless we’re talking about Haagen Dazs…

Also: Check out Haagen Dazs’ “single-servings!” (pictured above). Cute little mini-containers, with a teeny plastic spoon inside. The perfect amount when you need a little indulgence. They serve them on Amtrak, and are also in most grocery stores and some convenience stores. Perfect for eating ice-cream on the go without the mess.