What it is
Cream's impersonator — typically corn syrup solids, hydrogenated oil and sodium caseinate with emulsifiers, flavor and color, engineered to look like dairy in your cup. Flavored versions pile on sugar.
Why your biology objects
A built product, not a food: glucose syrup plus industrially hardened oil standing in for what cream does for free, often with trans-fat-prone hydrogenated fat at its base. "Non-dairy" but it still hides milk-derived caseinate. Plain cream or half-and-half is the actual thing.