FOOD SPECIAL...It’s a Scoop…. Frozen desserts

    Frozen desserts, which look and taste like ice cream but are made out of vegetable fat, have silently grabbed a 40% share in India’s  Rs.1,800-crore organised ice-cream market without most consumers realizing they are not ice cream.
Led by Hindustan Unilever’s Kwality Walls, Vadilal, Lazza Ice Creams and Cream Bell, frozen desserts— served in identical cups, cones and sticks as ice cream—have found a strong foothold in the country in less than two decades since Kwality Walls introduced them.
But food authority officials and original ice-cream makers such as Amul and Mother Dairy feel these companies are misleading consumers by masquerading frozen dessert as ice cream. While real ice cream is made with milk fat, frozen dessert is made with vegetable fat, which is almost 80% cheaper.
“The clandestine manner in which the labelling (of frozen desserts) is done and the way they are marketed in television commercials are a matter of concern,” says H G Koshiya, commissioner of Gujarat Food and Drug Control Administration.
He says the state authority plans to bring the issue to the notice of the Central Advisory Committee of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India. “Let consumers know what frozen dessert is all about and then if they consume it, it is a matter of choice,” Koshiya says.
ICE CRIME
Ice-cream makers such as Amul and Mother Dairy that use only dairy fat say frozen dessert makers have been misleading consumers by passing them on as ice cream.
“Consumers have been eating frozen desserts presuming them to be ice creams,” says Munish Soni, head (dairy product division) at Mother Dairy, a wholly owned subsidiary of the National Dairy Development Board.
Amul, the category leader in ice creams with 40% market share, says companies are misleading consumers by not mentioning upfront they are frozen desserts and pricing them as much as ice cream despite lower costs.
“Consumers are fooled into buying frozen desserts. It is a lookalike category. Most brands mention frozen desserts in small letters and push the category instead of advertising it as dessert,” says R S Sodhi, managing director of Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation, which owns Amul brand. He says dairy fat costs Rs.300/kg, while vegetable fat is Rs.50-60 a kilo. “Frozen desserts play with huge margins and cheat consumers.”
Consumer rights activist Pritee Shah says frozen dessert is masquerading itself as ice cream. “They must mention frozen dessert upfront in their advertisements and the products in lieu of which it amounts to cheating the consumer,” says Shah, who is the chief general manager at Ahmedabadbased consumer group Consumer Education and Research Centre.
NO HEALTH HAZARD
Nutritionists say there is nothing terribly wrong about vegetable fat. After all, edible oil is regularly used in Indian cooking and snacks. But it could be more harmful than milk fat. Mumbaibased consultant nutritionist Niti Desai says although vegetable fat contained in frozen desserts is generally unsaturated and hence, healthier, the catch is that the plant fat used will be generally hydrogenated or trans fat. “Trans fats can raise cholesterol levels as much or more than saturated fat, and increases the risk of developing heart disease and stroke. It’s also associated with a higher risk of developing diabetes,” he says. “In the West, it is mandatory to mention trans fats used in packaged foods,” Desai adds. While most manufacturers in India use palm oil, which is the cheapest, to make frozen desserts, some may use soybean oil or coconut oil.
UPBEAT PLAYERS
Frozen dessert makers are, meanwhile, upbeat about the prospects of this category.
Hindustan Unilever’s Kwality Walls, which makes only frozen desserts and does not use milk fat, says the category is growing on the strength of a series of exciting products.
Nitin Arora, CEO of Cream Bell, an ice cream and frozen dessert brand of RJ Corp’s Devyani Food Industries, says that frozen desserts account for 50% of its sales. The company entered the category in 2006. “There is no dearth of takers for frozen desserts in the Indian market now. For us, both categories are growing at 25-30%,” Arora says. “Indian mindsets have changed towards frozen desserts and the consumer is comfortable in consuming them,” he adds.
South Indian ice cream player Lazza Ice Creams, which introduced frozen desserts a decade ago, has seen the vegetable stuff overtaking ice cream in the last five years when it has been growing 50% year-on-year. Frozen desserts accounted for 55% of Lazza’s turnover of Rs.150 crore in 2010-11.

SHRAMANA GANGULY MEHTA AHMEDABAD ET120516