Dr. Gourmet's Food Reviews

Eat

I like whipped cream -- especially on my sliced strawberries. Most people think that this is not part of a healthy diet but a couple of tablespoons of whipped cream is only about 15 calories. But who wants to whip only a couple of tablespoons? And how would you anyway? It's not like you can start with two teaspoons of heavy cream and expect to whip it up.

So I use whipped cream in a can. Yep. Simple, easy, no waste, on demand whipped cream. Because I am careful about choosing dairy products that don't have growth hormones in them (or antibiotics), I've been using a product that is organic, but a question about organic milk got me to thinking about alternatives. Since the amount of actual dairy vs. air that I get is so small, it didn't seem to make a lot of difference.

I checked out the old standby Fat Free ReddiWip and we tasted it head to head with Natural By Nature brand. The organic was a little creamier and the ReddiWip a little sweeter. Other than that, no difference except the ReddiWip is half the price. Dang! Eat this!

Don't Eat

To be fair, there's also Cool Whip Lite and I couldn't resist putting it up head to head with the aerosol whipped creams. Thick and dense with little fluffiness, this product just tastes wrong. The word "plastic" really does come to mind. No wonder - because the main ingredients are water and corn syrup, while the others are made from cream and non-fat milk. Interestingly, the real dairy product is lower in calories than the Cool Whip Lite (15 calories vs. 25 calories in two tablespoons).

I have a cat who loves people food. He will eat almost anything that humans do and he cleaned the bowls of the whipped creams but turned his nose up at the Cool Whip. If my cat won't eat Cool Whip, maybe we're all better off with real whipped cream.