Chilling tale lurks behind every bite of frozen yogurt
by Beth Teitell

Tuesday, May 15, 2001

It's true what they say. You can't go back.

Not to the farm after you've seen Paris, not home again . . . and not, in my case, to fat-free frozen yogurt.

This is a family newspaper, so I'll gloss over some of the details, but let's just say this weekend was a lost one. I was at a party, people were eating Oreo ice cream birthday cake, I experimented with a small bite, and the next thing I remember, I was pouring half-and-half into my coffee and helping myself to a generous wedge of triple-creme Brie.

When I awoke on Sunday there was an empty bag of Doritos by my side and a half-eaten bagel with a thick schmear. A stick of butter that appeared to have been mauled was melting nearby.

``What happened?'' I yelled, panicky, as I tried on a pair of jeans to see if they still fit.

I know I need to accept blame before I can move on, but I really think it was the frozen yogurt's fault. It's a gateway food.

Oh, sure. You think it's harmless. ``Everyone eats it,'' you tell yourself, eating as much as you want - after, of course, grilling anyone unlucky enough to be working in the Herrell's or Baskin Robbins that you frequent.

Are you sure it's fat free? How can it be if it's peanut butter or Milky Way? Can I see the carton?

The fat-free stuff is good, but after a while it stops doing it for you, but by now you need a daily cone fix, so you say, How could a little fat hurt? After all, you see skinny people ordering larges, and they seem fine. They're holding down jobs, keeping their families together.

So you move up to low-fat, and some time later you stop asking questions. If the sign reads ``yogurt'' that's good enough for you.

Then one day you're at an ice cream stand and they don't have yogurt, but they do have frozen custard, and you've heard that that's lower fat than the hard stuff, so you go for it, whispering the deadly magic words to yourself: ``This stuff tastes much better than the fat-free.''

But still, you draw the line somewhere, and it's at gourmet ice cream. ``Wouldn't touch it,'' you say sanctimoniously; you know it's got more butterfat than the generic stuff. ``That stuff will kill you.''

You manage to restrain yourself for a while. You've seen what happens to people who don't. But one day you're at a party, and a pusher slices you some Oreo ice cream cake from J.P. Licks.

You demur at first, but then you hear yourself saying, ``OK, but just a small piece,'' and you carefully remove all the whipped icing before taking a bite.

You think you're in control. ``I can stop anytime,'' you tell yourself as you accept seconds, this time tasting a teeny bit of the frosting. Next, you're sneaking into the kitchen, frantically searching for the big cake box, grabbing a knife to scrape the remaining ice cream off the round piece of cardboard.

In the distance you hear someone trying to talk to you - you're at a party after all - but you don't have time for banter. There's a buffet table to hit.

Then, you wake up the next day, and you think you've come to your senses, that you're back to your old low-fat self, until someone mentions that she just tried low-fat cake and it tastes just as good as the regular stuff, and you say, ``Believe me, it doesn't!'' You pour yourself a glass of whole milk and wonder how you can ramp yourself back down again, and then decide that you don't want to.

Yummm!