Saturday, December 8, 2007

Fatty bananas?

Now that there is a Trader Joe's on College, I stop in spontaneously just because I can.

Found myself staring at the non-dairy frozen desserts wondering if they were any good. I once had a colleague who, no matter what I complained of, said, "Eat a banana." It's a great place to start. So, rather than picking a soysicle, I was considering the chocolate-covered bananas on a stick. A woman pushed past me to grab a box, so I stopped her to ask if they really were good or just weird. She said she loved them.

And they are really good. You feel healthy because you're eating a banana -- and they use ripe bananas, so they have flavor -- plus you have the treat of a little bit of chocolate.

Yum. How bad for you could this be? Can I have another? Two bananas are better than one, right?

Then the shock of reading the nutrition information. One hundred sixty calories and 3.5 grams of saturated fat -- 18% of the %DV. What's in that chocolate? As I slowly work my way through the box (I can't throw them out, right?), I wonder if I can just find some good chocolate and make them myself.

Hah! Not with chocolate! A bar of Scharffenberger 70% has 7g of saturated fat.

Or am I being unreasonable here? It's not like I look at other food labels -- maybe this is the healthiest thing I eat?

2 comments:

Alisa said...

Yep, chocolate is chocolate, but really in such small amounts, you are probably okay. I think most of us tend to obsess about the nutrition labels on desserts but not other things.

Really, the non-dairy desserts are excellent. My favorite is Whole Soy & co. but this can be hard to find. As for the "novelties" I haven't had a bad one yet. Anything from Turtle Mountain is worthy (soy delicious, purely decadent, etc.)

dairy-free cheese can be scary, but dairy-free "ice cream" is pretty yummy

Lisa F. said...

Thanks, Alisa! I think I'll take the plunge on some non-dairy ice cream.