Posted on: Saturday, August 23, 2003

Consume these facts with your ice cream

By Bob Condor
Chicago Tribune

Here are a few "mix-in" facts to discuss with friends on your next ice-cream outing:

• Federal statistics estimate the typical American eats 22 quarts of ice cream per year—about the same amount consumed per person in 1960. One-third of the ice cream is low-fat or non-fat, but there has been a concurrent rise in the consumption of premium or high-butterfat ice cream.

• The most frequent customers at the highly popular Cold Stone Creamery stores are females between 24 and 34 years old.

• Sensible ice cream eating means you are ordering sorbet, sherbet, low-fat ice cream or low-fat frozen yogurt (not all frozen yogurts are low in fat). These choices range between 150 to 200 calories with minimal fat.

• The ice cream cone was created by accident at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis. When a fellow ice cream vendor ran out of dishes, Syrian merchant Ernest Hamwi rolled some of his waffles into a cone shape to help his neighbor keep serving ice cream.

Ice cream or ribs?

If you're going to indulge, indulge with understanding. When you consider that the body can metabolize only 800 calories at a given time, some of the more popular ice cream dishes have meallike proportions.

• Two scoops of Baskin-Robbins vanilla ice cream (500 calories) equals two bowls of New England clam chowder.

• Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey in a chocolate-dipped waffle cone (820 calories) equals full slab of ribs.

• Cold Stone Creamery Mud Pie Mojo (1,180 calories) equals two personal pan pizzas at Pizza Hut.

• TCBY Toffee Coffee Cappuccino Chiller (1,200 calories) equals T-bone steak, Caesar salad and baked potato with sour cream.