Vanilla ice cream once meant simplicity. Today's consumers, however, now face dozens of vanilla choices ranging from ice creams to frozen yogurts -- all varying significantly in fat and nutrients. "Consumer demand, product innovation and new nutritional labeling requirements are all responsible for this explosion in frozen dairy desserts," explains Christine Bruhn, director of the Center for Consumer Research at UC Davis. Bruhn and her husband, dairy food researcher John Bruhn, compared 54 brands of vanilla-flavored ice creams and 15 vanilla-flavored frozen yogurts available in California. They looked at calories, fat, cholesterol, sodium, sugar, protein, calcium and vitamin A content. The researchers found that half-cup servings of ice creams contained from 0 to 18 grams of fat and from 70 to 270 calories, while frozen yogurts contained from 0 to 3.5 grams of fat and from 70 to 160 calories per serving. The survey showed that Dreyer's fat-free, Ralph's fat- and cholesterol-free and Thrifty's nonfat ice creams had the least number of calories. Haagen Dazs and Ben & Jerry's ice creams were tops in both calories and fat, but they also were the only two ice creams that were good sources of vitamin A. The survey results appear in the March-April issue of California Agriculture, a research publication of the University of California.