Healthy Takeaway Desserts – Cheesecake vs. Ice Cream

This week, it’s two sugary treats. Creamy cheesecake versus delicious Ice Cream.

Naughty – Cheesecake

A generous slice of cheesecake can set you back nearly a thousand calories (nearly half of an average man’s allowance, and around half of a woman’s), and an unhealthy slab of your fat and saturated fat allowance for the day. Some particularly decadent cheesecakes can contain your whole allowance!

I can’t think of many other naughtier desserts. The base is made from digestive biscuits (high in fat and sugar) bound together with butter, which is 81% fat. The cheesecake part is made from a ‘soft cheese’ such as mascarpone, or cream cheese which is between 30 and 50% fat, softened with some double cream (about 54% fat). (I like numbers. Humour me.)

If it’s a baked cheesecake, it will also contain eggs, which help it to set when the dessert is cooked. But sometimes (especially if it’s a mascarpone version) all those dairy ingredients are thick, rich and dense enough to make the cheesecake set.

Oh, and I’d almost forgotten about the sugar – it’ll also contain a generous helping of that.

But cheesecake is VERY rich, and although I adore it, personally I feel like a python that’s swallowed its meal for six months after eating a slice. So, if you want to indulge, why not find a willing friend to share it with? Your friend will be grateful – and so will your waistline and your arteries!

Nice – Ice cream

Ice cream? Surely that can’t be good for you! Well, I wouldn’t call it ‘health food’, but in the big scheme of things, and compared with most other desserts on a takeaway menu, it’s better than most. Plus, it’ll generally come in smaller portions (or you might be able to ask for just a little bit).

A single 100g scoop of ice cream will weigh in at 130 – 250 calories. Yes, that’s a huge range, but the variation is because it depending on how creamy it is – ‘high end’ ice cream tends to contain more high-fat cream, while less extravagant versions will have less, and also more air whipped in. So they won’t taste so luxurious, but it’ll be less fattening. But even if you have more than one scoop of a luxury ice cream, it’ll be a lot less than that cheesecake. Just try to resist having too much of the toppings – chocolate, toffee or strawberry sauce, whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles.

The virtue of ice cream in the ‘naughty and nice’ sense is that it’s the least of many evils. And it enables you to just have ‘a little dessert’.