Ice Cream Test: Harmful Ingredients in Ice Cream Sticks

ice test
Laboratory finds questionable ingredients in popsicles – Magnum is particularly bad

Word should have gotten around by now that ice cream is not celery – but sugar, fat and the like are apparently not the only ones Ingredients that turn the cold temptation into a rather unhealthy snack. For the NDR program “Markt”, scientists examined different ice cream products from the supermarket, including ice lollies from Aldi, Lidl, Rewe and Edeka’s own brands and the star of the Magnum ice cream stick.

The result can be summarized as follows: If you are about to bite into a crunchy chocolate shell to celebrate the day and are already looking forward to the creamy vanilla ice cream underneath, you don’t have to throw the wooden stick and the treat out the window in panic. On the other hand, if you are thinking about eating the second family pack today or saving it until tomorrow, you better think about your own consumption for a moment.

E 476: Excessive consumption threatens liver and kidney damage

The products tested were the classic, chocolate-covered vanilla ice cream, from the following brands:

All products contain the emulsifier polyglycerol polyricinoleate (E 476), which ensures that the chocolate is not too viscous to spread evenly around the ice cream during the manufacturing process. Although this substance is approved and therefore obviously not highly toxic, it is not without controversy and should be treated with caution: As animal experiments have shown, it can damage the kidneys and liver in high doses. Anyone who eats the aforementioned popsicle and later eats a bar of chocolate to warm it up can certainly exceed the recommended daily maximum amount of polyglycerol polyricinoleate.

After all, the emulsifier must appear on the list of ingredients: consumers can therefore ensure that they consume products in moderation that have the code E 476 somewhere on the packaging.

Carrageenan in Magnum

In contrast to the other products tested, the ice pop star Magnum also contains another substance that is somewhat questionable from a nutritional point of view: the thickening agent carrageenan, which is made from algae and is allowed to have the popular attributes vegan and gluten-free. In a small dose, carrageenan cannot harm us, since we usually do not absorb it at all, but excrete it undigested. On the other hand, if we consume large amounts of carrageenan, this can result in intestinal inflammation.

Luckily, neither of the two substances of concern are known to cause loss of control or to be particularly addictive, so we may well be able to slow down before enlarged kidneys and intestinal infections hit us. If only it weren’t for the delicious sugar, fats and co. …

Sources used: ndr.de, tz.de

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Bridget