We all strive to eat healthily, but it can be challenging when it feels like you're sacrificing the foods you love. Ice cream, a beloved dessert, often faces the chopping block when dieting. But what if you could enjoy ice cream without the guilt? The market offers a plethora of low-calorie, high-protein, and diet-friendly ice cream options. This article dives into the best diet ice cream, considering taste, texture, and nutritional value.
The Rise of Healthy Ice Cream
Creating a healthier version of ice cream is a complex task. Traditional ice cream relies on heavy cream, whole-fat milk, and sugar for its rich flavor and creamy texture. Swapping these ingredients for lower-fat dairy or reducing sugar can drastically alter the final product. However, advancements in food science have led to innovative solutions that maintain a desirable taste and consistency while minimizing calories and unhealthy additives.
What to Look For in a Diet Ice Cream
When selecting a diet ice cream, several factors come into play:
- Calorie Count: Aim for options with fewer than 200 calories per ⅔ cup serving.
- Protein Content: High-protein ice creams can help you feel fuller and more satisfied.
- Sugar Content: Look for ice creams that use natural sweeteners and have lower sugar content.
- Ingredients: Opt for products with recognizable and pronounceable ingredients.
- Taste and Texture: The ice cream should be creamy, smooth, and flavorful, without any strange aftertastes.
Top Picks for Healthy Vanilla Ice Cream
To find the best low-calorie ice cream, we rounded up nine of the top brands available, and to make testing fair, we chose vanilla flavors from each.
- Halo Top Vanilla Bean: This ice cream has gained immense popularity for its ability to mimic the taste and texture of regular vanilla ice cream. Testers praised its sweet taste and creamy consistency, making it a top choice for those seeking a healthy alternative. Halo Top contains less calories, fat and sodium while using a trio of sweeteners to bring down the overall sugar content. From personal experience and research on other consumer reviews, Halo Top has been known to cause bloating, digestive discomfort and headaches.
- Breyers Delights: As a low-fat ice cream with a similar nutritional profile to Halo Top, Breyers Delights offers a creamy texture and visible flecks of vanilla bean in each scoop. Each pint of this ice cream boasts 260 calories and 20 grams of protein. In our testing, we found Breyers Delights to be creamy with a similar mouthfeel to regular ice cream. Many of our taste testers also liked that there were visible flecks of vanilla bean in each scoop.
- Arctic Zero Vanilla Bean: With just 280 calories per pint, Arctic Zero is a low-calorie option. Each pint of this healthy ice cream has just 280 calories, but there are only 8 grams of protein per pint and the sugar content is higher than most at 36 grams per container.
High-Protein Ice Cream Showdown: Chocolate Flavors
Protein-mania has taken over the snack aisle, and now it’s moving on to the freezer section. Ice cream shelves in grocery stores everywhere are crowded with pints advertising the “grams of protein per serving,” and let me just say, the count can be surprisingly high.
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To determine which high-protein ice creams offer the best flavor, texture, and overall experience, a blind taste test was conducted with five chocolate-based options. Here are the results:
- Protein Pints: If maximizing protein intake is your goal, Protein Pints is the top choice. This ice cream boasts 10 grams of protein in a 90-gram serving, which was the most we’d tried by far, while somehow managing to maintain a super smooth (non-chalky!) texture.
- Nick’s: For chocolate lovers, Nick's delivers a rich and satisfying chocolate flavor with an excellent texture. This ice cream might not be mightiest in the protein department (at only 4 grams per 90-gram serving, it barely qualified for the taste test!), but it was the biggest in flavor.
- Enlightened: Balancing flavor, texture, and a significant protein boost, Enlightened stands out as an overall winner. While technically sold as a bar, this ice cream tasted just like ice cream out of the pint: it was smooth and creamy and had a big cocoa flavor. At 7 grams of protein in a 66-gram bar, it definitely delivered on the high-protein promise.
Low Calorie Ice Cream: Other Brands
- Aldi's Sea Salt Caramel Ice Cream: This sea salt caramel ice cream could probably use a little more salt (just so it lives up to its name), but it’s tasty all the same. The ice cream base tastes nice and caramelly, and then there’s a caramel swirl to amp things up even more.
- Aldi's Peaches and Cream Ice Cream: This low calorie ice cream is shockingly delicious. Yes, it contains various gums and syrups, but the flavor is pure peach. And I love the chunks of peach!
- Market Pantry Light Vanilla Ice Cream: This light vanilla ice cream rules. I am very used to eating light vanilla ice cream; my local grocery store carries one that I couldn’t find for this taste test-but it’s not this good. That stuff is icy. This stuff is creamy, probably because it contains corn syrup.
- Halo Top Peanut Butter Cup: There’s a peanut butter swirl in this pint. It’s that frozen peanut butter effect that you get when you eat an Uncrustables that didn’t properly defrost.
- Halo Top Strawberry: It’s creamy and fluffy, and even though it’s sweetened with sugar alcohol, it doesn’t have too, too much of that fake sugar flavor-it’s detectable but tolerable. This one is all about the texture-it’s so fluffy. It’s practically like soft serve.
- Yasso Bars: Unlike the other brands on this list, Yasso’s products are made with Greek yogurt. They’re also free of artificial sweeteners.
- Nick’s: Nick’s offers a selection of Swedish-style, keto-friendly ice cream options that are free of added sugar. That means the products are instead sweetened with sugar alcohols like allulose, erythritol, and stevia.
- Enlightened: The Enlightened brand boasts a range of low-calorie, low-sugar, and high-protein ice cream options, including bars and pints. Like Nick’s, the company uses sweeteners like allulose, stevia, and monk fruit.
- Breyers CarbSmart: Breyers’ CarbSmart line features frozen desserts that are lower in carbs.
- Dreyer’s Slow Churned: The Slow Churned line includes flavors with one-third of the calories and half the fat of traditional ice cream.
- So Delicious: The So Delicious product portfolio includes a plethora of vegan, non-GMO frozen desserts that feature almond, coconut, soy, or oat milk.
- Rebel: Rebel is a keto-friendly brand with an assortment of full-fat, low-carb ice cream flavors that contain little or no added sugar. These ice creams have a base of cream and are sweetened with erythritol and monk fruit.
- Simple Truth Low Cow Chocolate: Wowed testers with its smooth, rich texture without the artificial aftertaste common in low-calorie ice creams and authentic chocolate flavor that rivals full-fat options.
Keto Ice Cream Options
For those following a ketogenic diet, several brands offer keto-friendly ice cream options:
- Enlightened Keto Collection: Known for its creamy texture and lack of aftertaste, Enlightened is a top choice.
- Rebel Ice Cream: A close second, Rebel offers full-fat, low-carb options with minimal added sugar.
Creative Ways to Enjoy Diet Ice Cream
When you’re looking for a treat, don’t hesitate to use healthy ice creams to lighten up the calorie load in desserts like milkshakes or ice cream cookie sandwiches. The sky is really the limit here!
The Importance of Moderation
Yes, some of these brands are great healthy swaps, but that does not mean you should neglect portion sizes completely. They’re desserts for a reason and meant for eating on occasion. In my opinion, if you have the mindset to eat a whole pint of ice cream, try having a small bowl of the real thing instead!
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