'Big Daddy' has more fat than label claims

MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- DeConna Ice Cream Company says it will relabel its Big Daddy Reduced Fat Ice Cream products to indicate it is not as reduced in fat as weight-conscious customers had been led to believe.

The action follows a report in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel that said the ice cream has triple the calories and more than double the carbohydrates indicated on the label.

"It was mislabeled and we're correcting it as fast as we can," said Vince DeConna, president of Orange Lake-based DeConna Ice Cream.

He said shipment of Big Daddy Reduced Fat Ice Cream has stopped until new cartons are available, which should be "any day now." The company's Web site said, "Correct nutritional information should be reflected on all packaging within a two-week period."

Mitch Lipka, consumer writer for the Sun-Sentinel, found it suspicious that the ice cream claimed to be so much lower in calories than other low-fat brands.

"It was usually popular among people in Weight Watchers where you're basically getting a certain number of points of food that you can eat during the course of the day," Lipka told CNN Monday. He said Big Daddy ice cream rated a 2 on the Weight Watchers' scale -- about equal to an apple.

The correct figure is 7, he said, more like a chocolate-frosted donut.

DeConna said the label's mistake was in the number of servings per container.

"It's still low in calories or low in fat," he said. "It was just mislabeled. It was an honest error. It was just incorrect."

The product was first produced in 1995, but it was not until recent months that its popularity began to spread, primarily through word-of-mouth advertising among diet conscious people, Lipka said.

"We never knew it was labeled incorrectly," DeConna said. "We couldn't change it until we found out."

"I suspect whatever meteoric sales increase that they've had over the past few months is going to stop," Lipka told CNN.