Pint-sized Haagen Dazs pints

The Daily News reports today that as commodities prices rise, food companies are shrinking package sizes.  Not like the smaller cap on Poland Spring bottles that saves plastic, but actually quantitatively less food. Small children in America already grow up with our confusing non-metric, or customary, measurement system, and now to confuse them further, a gallon is 59 ounces, according to Tropicana, and a pint is 14 ounces, if you trust Haagen Dazs.  I never trusted them much to begin with.

Monaster News, via the Daily News

Pus in your ice cream, from John Robbins

John Robbins, the only son of Baskin-Robbins founder Irvine Robbins, had a piece in the Huffington Post this week about Monsanto's recombinant bovine growth hormones (rBGH) showing up in ice cream.  Ben and Jerry's has pledged not to use rBGH-tainted milk in their products, and Robbins calls on other companies to do the same:

Ben & Jerry's gets all their milk from dairies that have pledged not to inject their cows with genetically engineered bovine growth hormone (rBGH). Why, then, can't Haagen Dazs, Breyers and Baskin-Robbins do the same?
Starbucks now guarantees that all their milk, cream and other dairy products are rBGH-free. So do Yoplait and Dannon yogurts, Tillamook cheese, Chipotle restaurants, and many others. But ice cream giants Haagen Dazs, Breyers and Baskin-Robbins continue to use milk from cows injected with rBGH, a hormone that's been banned in Canada, New Zealand, Japan, Australia and all 27 nations of the European Union. As if to add insult to injury, Haagen Dazs and Breyers have the audacity to tell us, right on the label, that their ice cream is " All Natural."

Later he quotes a veterinarian who has some disturbing news about rBGH's effects on white blood cell count:

Does the increase in udder infections have an effect on the milk, and thus any ice cream, cheese or other product made from it? Most definitely, according to Dr. Richard Burroughs, a veterinarian deeply familiar with rBGH. "It results in an increase of white blood cells," he says, "which means there's pus in the milk!" The antibiotic use, he adds, "leaves residues in the milk. It's all very serious."

A sick cow

At the end of the article, he highlights a "Take Back Our Ice Cream" campaign from the Oregon chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility and urges readers to get engaged by contacting companies to demand they use hormone-free dairy products.

Israel v. P-stine, the three-scoop showdown

I was raised on Haagen Dazs ice cream.  My mom served it at dinner parties, and for years it was Haagen Dazs that set the benchmark for what coffee, strawberry, chocolate and vanilla ice cream flavors should taste like.  Throughout elementary school, I started every morning with a diabetes bomb breakfast of champions: a cup of Twinings Earl Grey tea with milk and sugar, topped with a big scoop of Haagen Dazs vanilla ice cream, after which I was sent off to the poor teachers at St. Luke's School who had to deal with a little sugar and caffeine-fueled Tasmanian devil.  No wonder I used to get in trouble for attacking other, more passive students. 

This is all to say that I was very sad to hear, when living in Beirut, that the ice cream company of my childhood funds settlements in the West Bank that are an obstacle to peace.  I wonder, and would be grateful to anyone who knows the answer to this, why Haagen Dazs is then able to operate several profitable franchises around Beirut, including one right in front of the Parliamentary building in Place d'Etoile?

However, there is another option, available in the West Bank city of Ramallah: Baladna ("Our Country") ice creams.  Since I was not legally allowed to travel to Israel or Palestine during my time living in Lebanon and Syria, I didn't actually get to go there, even though the woman in the picture looks a lot like me.  I cannot personally vouch for the fact that the texture was slightly gummy, some of the flavors a little too sweet, but the portions generous and the service charming.  They have my favorite policy - the "as many flavors as you want in a cone" policy.  Snickers flavor was delicious, as most peanut butter-flavored ice creams are.  And they were open at 9 am, so it was the perfect cap to a falafel and hummus breakfast.

The local operation

The Baladna selection.  Bubble Gum is not recommended.

Not me.

Starbucks, incidentally, has a similarly bad reputation for supporting Israeli causes, but luckily right across the street from Baladna is local alternative "Stars and Bucks."