Friday November 27th, 2009
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Fat Free Half and Half: Does it Add Up?
Posted by Kerry Trueman on June 9, 2006 - 2:02pm.
One New Year's resolution we could all benefit from, women especially, is to consume more calcium. Dairy products are one way to get your daily dose of this crucial bone-building mineral. What you don't need are the fat and cholesterol that full fat dairy products also contain.
I buy low fat and fat free dairy products as much as possible. Nonfat yogurt tastes fine to me. Fat free buttermilk? Wouldn't bake without it. And I couldn't make my famous cream-free ice cream without fat free sweetened condensed milk.
But fat free half and half sounds oxymoronic to me. What is half and half, if not fat? A fellow foodie told me it wasn't half bad. Give it a chance, she said.
But none of the stores I shop at even stocked it. Finally I found Land O' Lakes fat free half and half at a conventional supermarket. But I couldn't bring myself to buy it. First, it only came in a half gallon carton. What in the world would you do with that much ersatz half and half?
What bothered me more was the second ingredient, after milk: corn syrup. It's not as bad as high fructose corn syrup, but corn syrup's still not a natural food; the corn industry concocted it in the seventies as a cheap alternative to sugar.
So which is the lesser of two evils: high fat, cholesterol-laden natural cream, or agribusiness's manufactured sweetener? There's no consensus on fat free half and half in the foodie blogosphere: some people swear it makes a great creamed soup; others share my skepticism.
Has anyone tasted this stuff? If you've tried any brand of fat free half and half on the market, I'm curious to know what you thought of it. Especially those who've bought it by the half gallon. Do you bathe in it, drink it by the glass, or what?
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i buy this all the time. it tastes just like half and half to me. just less fat. i am trying to decrease the fat in my diet. and when i use if for my coffee, it is the best. doesn’t taste bad at all!! i use it instead of milk alot and to thicken just about anything.
I do not like half and half but I will use the fat free half and half when I make home made mash potatoes.
I swear by an enhanced skim milk called Skim Plus, I don’t know if it’s available where you are but I use it in everything from mashed potatoes to mac’n’cheese. We even put it in our coffee and on our cereal. It’s got a rich creamy taste which comes from (I think) added nonfat milk solids. No corn syrup! It’s not organic, though. Ah, the tradeoffs we have to make…
my roommate used to use this all the time when she was trying to get her weight down and couldnt stomach skim milk in her coffee, but i also worry about the corn syrup aspect. I am all for reduced fat and fat free items but not at the sake of overall health. Its the same as many of the traditional ‘diet’ foods that are less fat but end up having no nutritional benefits whatsoever.
It scares me to death to try, and then I was hooked. Because of the second ingredient, it is really great for all coffee, black tea, hot coco concontions. I even used it in scrambled eggs…tasted good. However, as a 2006 goal of less sugar its gotta go. —-But so did Coffee.