A scoop may not be sinful for ice cream buffs

By Yogita Tahil Ramani

JAKARTA (JP): Vanilla, strawberry, cookies n' cream, rocky road, pistachio, even durian -- almost all of us have a preference when it comes to the sweet taste of delicious ice cream.

The dish has tickled the taste buds of leaders throughout history.

The ill-fated King Charles I, the 17th century English ruler who was ultimately dethroned and beheaded, once offered a cook a job for life if he made him ice cream and kept the recipe secret.

George Washington fancied ice cream so much that he once ran up a US$200 bill for his obsession.

These are the lengths to which men and women in power have gone for a taste of the creamy stuff, according to Dreyer's, one of America's leading ice cream companies.

What these powerful people considered a culinary treat is often scorned as unhealthy in contemporary society.

The public is perplexed when the term "healthy intake" is attributed to ice cream, yet this was the message of the recent Jakarta seminar "Ice Cream And A Good Life".

But can milk, cream and sugar -- the nutritious but high- calorie bases of the dish -- be healthy choices, even if flavored with vanilla, fruits, chocolate and, sin of sins, crushed cookies?

Nutritionists and dietitians at the seminar, jointly sponsored by Wall's Ice Cream and the Indonesian Association of Nutritionists, gave a broad-based understanding of how ice cream was not a complete dietary bugaboo.

Tuti Soenardi, a founder and chairperson of the Indonesian Culinary Foundation, centered her speech around the Indonesian health slogan Empat Sehat Lima Sempurna (Four spells health, and five spells perfection), defining the basic food groups of vegetables, meat, fruit, legumes and milk.

Milk in ice cream supplies calcium and other nutrients for tissue and bone renewal, she added.

Tuti said there was no harm in feeding ice cream in measured portions, equivalent to 250 ml of milk, to children unwilling or unable to drink milk.

A single serving of ice cream generally contains 300 calories, equal to drinking two to three glasses, she said.

She showcased Wall's ice cream recipes, an assortment of foods and fruits from dates, raisins and strawberries, to baked oranges, pineapples, durians and waffles.

Soebagio Soemodihardjo, director of the Nutrition Academy at the Ministry of Health, explained different approaches in the use and consumption of milk by different people in Indonesia.

He concluded it was unfounded for a culture to recommend milk only to those who were sick or recuperating from illness.

Muhilal of the Center for Nutritional Research and Development in Bogor underscored that people were often ignorant of ice cream's actual nutritional value.

Since nutritional labeling on food -- excluding protein, carbohydrates, fat and calories -- is not mandatory, most people are unaware of the additional micronutrients that ice creams have to offer, such as calcium, phosphorus and vitamins A, B1, B2 and C, he said.

Paulus M. Verschuren, representative of the food and cosmetic giant PT Unilever Indonesia, explored the relationship between diet and health issues as they applied to his company.

Basis for developments in Unilever's new food products is provided by results of epidemiological studies. An improved fatty acid balance in the diet, for example, could "reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease", he said.