Some people are naturally healthy eaters who crave fruits and vegetables as comfort food. I’m not one of them. If I’m jonesing for a particular dish, it’s probably cassoulet, Peking duck or bread pudding. As a food writer, nourishment is my vocation, but it’s also my vice. On rare occasions, though, I can trick my reptile brain that craves less-healthy choices into enjoying something that isn’t as bad for me as it thinks. For example, one of my favorite snacks involves showering apple slices with a little cinnamon to convince myself that I’m having a dessert more like a pie than, well, plain apples. A small dip of almond butter adds enough fat to really make it feel like an indulgence.
But last summer, I added another fruit-based dessert that’s even more satisfying to my arsenal. I love lazily perusing the frozen food section when I do my grocery shopping at Walmart. There’s almost always something new, but Walmart takes just as it gives. Many of my favorites have disappeared. In this case, I’ve had to follow my new favorite dessert to Target.
Why am I so devoted to it? Because Wyman’s Just Fruit & Banana Bites with Chocolate are so much like Dippin’ Dots that I feel like I’m at a baseball game when I eat them. You know, those liquid-nitrogen-frozen balls of ice cream that make everyone’s favorite sweet even more fun with their unusual texture and mix of individual flavors that blend into a whole? I’ve always compared my favorite Banana Split Dippin’ Dots to a Georges Seurat painting with its pointillistic bites of banana, chocolate and strawberry. Guess what? That’s precisely what’s in the Wyman’s cups. But instead of ice cream, it’s the real thing: frozen dots of banana, strawberries and tiny chocolate chips for an equally small bit of debauchery. After all, even with the inclusion of the chocolate, each cup is only 80 calories.
In the past year, my husband has gotten into the habit of buying frozen cream pies for dessert. My waistline couldn’t possibly take the strain of ending every meal with coconut cream or chocolate silk. So while he cuts himself an oversize piece and adds whipped cream, I crack open a single serving of my low-cal banana split. The truth is, the ersatz ice cream is so satisfying that I often eat only half a cup and return the rest to the freezer for the next day. Using this method, I lost 8 pounds last year, while my husband gained. We’re usually aligned on pretty much everything, but I’m proud that I was able to take off exactly the amount that I gained the previous year, and I’m still losing, even while he continues his love affair with pies.
For an eater like me, who’s trained by my years of eating desserts for work to end a meal with something sweet, the biggest challenge can be finding something that doesn’t put me off my path but that still satisfies me. At $4.99 for four cups, the Wyman’s Just Fruit has been a real coup for my calorie count and my wallet. I was worried that the cups would be less appealing in the winter, when I don’t usually find myself craving ice cream, but I just let them thaw for 20 minutes before scooping into the mix of lightly chilled banana and strawberry, punctuated with chocolate. It brings the suggestion of ice cream without the seasonally inappropriate frigidity. But when summer returns, I’ll plan to be refreshed by the fully frozen version once again.
Eating healthfully at every meal doesn’t come naturally to me. But the more I do it, the easier it becomes. Since I’m in my 40s, I know that I’m setting myself up well for my golden years. But no matter how old you are, the call of dessert never really disappears. In fact, my maternal great-grandmother ate nothing but ice cream for her last decade of life. I’m not planning those types of shenanigans, but when it comes to my sweet tooth, I feel all right about indulging it with Wyman’s Just Fruit. Hopefully the product will exist well into my dotage.
