Most everyone loves ice cream, but we all know that ice cream is not good for us. There is nothing healthful about it on any level. It is full of toxic levels of sugar, high in inflammatory saturated fats, full of A1 casein that releases morphine receptor stimulators, and a basket load of interesting chemicals. That is all besides the fact that each serving magically puts on 1 to 3 pounds of excess weight. Somehow this all tastes delicious.
Recently a number of companies have been trying to improve the health profile of our favorite cold and creamy dessert. This is not to say that anyone has actually found a way to make ice cream healthy, just less unhealthy.
The first thing most people look at is the calories. A simple pint of a premium ice cream can easily exceed 1000 calories. The labels try to convince you that ½ cup is a normal serving so you really are only getting maybe 250 to 300 calories per serving – yeah right! Clearly those little pint containers are single servings! Dieting is when you share your pint with someone you love. Be careful with this as diving after the candy pieces can become a blood sport.
The new breed of “healthy” ice creams proudly displays their total calories for the entire pint on the front. Compared to the premium ice cream 1000+ calories, the 250 to 320 calories look pretty good. One brand – Arctic Zero says they only have 140 calories for an entire pint.
How do they achieve these impressive numbers? Usually several tactics are involved. Replace the sugar with a zero calorie sugar replacement. Initially this meant nasty things like artificial sweeteners, which cause you to gain just as much weight as regular sugar. Newer products are wising up to the Internet savvy wisdom of the modern consumer and using better sweeteners like stevia and erythritol. Stevia is just plain groovy, and erythritol is the best of the sugar alcohols as it is absorbed in the gut and passed out through the kidneys, so it does not cause bowel distress like other sugar alcohols. Fibers are used to mimic some of the mouth-feel of the high fat, eliminating some of the fat calories. And the actual product has a lot more air whipped into it, which has no calories. A pint of some of these modern ice creams will weigh literally a third less than regular ice creams. So yes, they have done a good job at reducing the calories in ice cream.
So what are the downsides? Lets start with the sweetness. While most manufacturers are using stevia or monk fruit plus erythritol (all good), they are still adding sugar into the mix, generally 20+ grams per pint. That means 10+ grams of fructose, which the liver turns into liver storage fat, or uric acid (bad stuff).
Most brands are using typical milk in their ice cream, which has loads of issues that is beyond the scope of this article. This is why my favorite brand of ice cream is made with coconut milk and erythritol/stevia. The Arctic Zero I mentioned earlier may be ok as they are using whey instead of milk. There are also ice creams made from goat milk and various other nut milks. These are not typically low calorie however.
Most of the new breed ice creams are being good about staying away from artificial colors and flavors, so cheers about that. Most, however, are adding in extra protein, usually milk protein, which we do not really need. They need it in Africa and other impoverished countries, but not here in America. It can’t be stored, so our body just turns it into sugar and then fat.
So how do they taste? To do a proper comparison I bought a pint of Ben & Jerry’s and quite frankly none of the new ice creams came close. The light airy texture of Halo Top and the “hard as a rock” texture of Enlightened and Breyers just don’t stand up to the creamy texture of real premium ice cream. As you would expect with fiber replacing some of the butterfat, the intensity of flavor is also missing in the low calorie offerings. This was the most noticeable in the lowest calorie option the Arctic Zero. The best flavor of the one’s I tasted was the salted caramel flavor Enlightened ice cream.
This is a purely personal and biased review. To be fair, I must mentioned that Halo Top is now the number one selling ice cream in the US – beating out Hagen Das and Ben & Jerry’s. So obviously other people have a different opinion than I.
For myself, because of the health profile of coconut milk over cow’s milk, I will stick to my sugar free So Delicious coconut milk ice cream. It is hard to find, but actually the healthiest choice for me. If I ever find a sugar free goat’s milk ice cream, this might also be a good choice for me. I really liked the coconut milk soft serve ice cream at Dr. Bob’s doughnuts, but unfortunately they seem to have gone out of business. As Johnny Cash says – I don’t like it but I guess things happen that way.