Food Fight: Ice Cream Sandwiches

In honor of National Ice Cream Month, this round of Food Fight has ice cream sandwiches putting on their boxing gloves. In one corner we have the Skinny Cow brand (by Dreyer’s) and in the other, Weight Watchers (by Blue Bunny).

Fighter Notes
Skinny Cow is endorsed by Bob Greene’s Best Life Diet.
Weight Watchers is, of course, a product from the weight loss giant.
Both advertise on their packaging that they have low-fat ice cream, and both are produced by national brand ice cream dairies.

Round 1: Nutrition Facts

Serving size, printed on the packages, is one sandwich (71g for SC and 75g for WW).

Calories: SC = 140, WW = 140
Fat: SC = 1.5g, WW = 2g
Sat Fat: SC = 1g, WW = .5g
Cholesterol: SC = 1mg, WW = >5mg
Sodium: SC = 100mg, WW = 140mg
Carbs: SC = 30g, WW = 32g
Dietary Fiber: SC = 3g, WW = 4g
Sugar: SC = 15g, WW = 12g
Protein: SC = 4g, WW = 3g
WW Points: SC = 2, WW = 2 (both have the Weight Watchers Points printed on the package)

While both brands are noticeably low in calories, fat and only have 2 Weight Watchers Points, Skinny Cow leads the first round for having more attractive nutrition values than its competitor.

Round 2: Taste and Ingredients

Each of these ice cream sandwiches stand an inch tall, are packed with a soft-serve style ice cream between two chocolate wafers/cookies.

Skinny Cow has a subtly sweet flavor. The wafers are the good kind of chewy, moist and cake-like. The ice cream is sturdy, meaning it doesn’t melt too quickly and it’s pretty thick. The Weight Watchers sandwich was surprisingly bland- I couldn’t really taste anything. The wafers are dry and kind of crumble as you chew. The ice cream was too soft.

I was only able to find a package of Skinny Cow in the Chocolate/Vanilla 6-pack combo; they do offer five other flavors like Cookies ‘N Cream and Mint. I was able to find the Weight Watchers 6-pack of vanilla; they offer chocolate and vanilla only, in separate packages.

As for the ingredients- both were fairly similar. Skinny Cow used skim milk while Weight Watchers used milk fat and non-fat milk. Skinny Cow has high fructose corn syrup and Weight Watchers has partially hydrogenated oils; not a good play on either part- but at least one of them doesn’t have both of these ingredients.

Round two goes to Skinny Cow.

Round Three: Cost and Accessibility
Neither of these brands are available for purchase online. They are available nationwide in most national chain grocery stores. Skinny allows you to search by ZIP code, while Weight Watchers only shows an incomplete list of grocers (determined by mine, a major chain, not being listed). My grocer had Skinny Cow for $3.99 for the six pack, Weight Watchers for $4.69 for a six pack. This round goes to Skinny Cow.

Post-Match Commentary
It’s a TKO that left the Weight Watchers ice cream sandwich out in the cold. While in all three rounds it was neck-to-neck, Skinny Cow stands out because of the superior flavor, offering broader selection, better nutritional values and for being slightly more affordable.