You’d think I was a grocery shopping newbie!

This is the second time in the past few months I’ve bought ice cream without double-checking I was really getting ice cream. Seems weird that you’d actually have to check this, but you can buy something called frozen dessert which, believe me, is not ice cream!

We are never without ice cream in our home. Ice cream is a staple – one of those foods we don’t run out of, or if we do (heaven forbid!), it’s at the top of the list for the next trip to the grocery store.

I was on a mission to buy ice cream recently when I spotted Breyers ice cream on sale and grabbed a carton of vanilla.

A few days later we sat down to enjoy a piece of pie and a scoop of vanilla ice cream. With the first mouthful, I know something was very wrong. I’m not sure how to describe the flavour and the feel of the “ice cream” in my mouth. Artificial? Sticky? Just plain yucky? Certainly it wasn’t the sweet creamy vanilla taste I was expecting. An inspection of the carton provided an explanation. Instead of vanilla ice cream, we were eating vanilla “frozen dessert”. Say what??

Breyers Vanilla Frozen Dessert - not ice cream!

These ingredient lists show the difference between frozen dessert and ice cream:

Breyers Vanilla Frozen Dessert: Modified milk ingredients, water, sugar, modified palm oil, glucose, mono and diglycerides, natural and artificial flavour, cellulose gum, guar gum, polysorbate 80, carrageenan.

Breyers Naturals Vanilla Ice Cream: Evaporated whole milk, cream, sugar, egg yolks, natural vanilla flavour, pure ground vanilla beans.

When I eat ice cream, I want the real thing – made with ingredients like whole milk, cream, sugar, and eggs! (Read what Canada’s dairy farmers have to say about the difference between ice cream and ice cream substitutes.)

It did say on the Breyer carton to contact the company if you weren’t satisfied with their product, but sadly, I couldn’t be bothered. Instead I simply threw the rest of the frozen dessert away and replaced it with ice cream on my next trip to the grocery store.

The first time I went wrong in the frozen foods aisle I bought Chocolate Fudge Brownie frozen dessert in error. Surely I won’t have to go through all the flavours before learning to check the carton carefully to confirm I’m buying what I think I’m buying!