Breyers churns out light treats

Breyers Double Churned Light Ice Cream Bars. Vanilla & Almond, Rocky Road, Creamy Fudge and Creamy Vanilla. $3.99 per 18-ounce box containing six bars.

Bonnie: For having light ice cream, these new Breyers bars taste OK, but perhaps that's because they contain more fat and calories than expected. One bar contains about 170 calories and 9 grams of fat, or more than a scoop of regular vanilla Breyers Ice Cream. The vanilla ice cream inside the chocolate coating is smooth and creamy but lacks the richness and satisfaction of regular Breyers.

Like most fudge bars, the Creamy Fudge bar contains fewer calories and less fat (only 90 calories and 2.5 grams of fat) than the chocolate-coated ice cream bars. It also has fewer unpronounceable ingredients and therefore is the one Double Churned novelty I can recommend.

Carolyn: Imagine an indulgent Dove or Haagen-Dazs bar with calories somewhere between light and regular yogurt, or a third of a Dove Bar. Only in a dieter's dreams? Actually, Breyers Double Churned Light Ice Cream Bars are sold in supermarkets now, praise the Lord. These bars immediately render obsolete the icy and anemic Skinny Cow Fudgsicle and fruit bars that dieters used to have to eat.

That's because of new "churned" technology that makes light ice cream taste almost as good as regular. Edy's may have been first to "churn," but Breyers had the smarts to use it in mock superpremium novelties. Breyers copies Dove right down to the oval shape and thick chocolate coating. In fact, there's almost too much chocolate coating for the ice cream in the Rocky Road (and this is a chocolate candy fan speaking), a problem the chocolate-coated Creamy Vanilla bar does not share. Fans of Hershey's Chocolate Bar With Almonds will love the Vanilla & Almond bar, an ice cream re-creation of it.

Even the least indulgent of the four, the noncoated Creamy Fudge chocolate ice cream on a stick, is exponentially better than the Fudgsicle it resembles.

In brief, marketers of the Dove and Haagen-Dazs ice cream bars should be very, very worried.

Kraft To Go! Cheese & Crackers. Natural Cheddar and Mini Ritz, and Natural Colby & Monterey Jack and Mini Triscuit. $1.99 per two 1.5-ounce single-serve packs.

Bonnie: I was excited to hear that Kraft was offering real cheese snacks in addition to its yucky, single-serve processed cheese and crackers (a k a cheese mixed with lots of additives to make it spreadable).