The Unhealthiest Diet Ice Cream Is Also One Of The Most Popular

It's a downright tragedy that ice cream is so tasty and yet so inappropriate to devour by the tub. This frozen treat is best eaten in moderation: The FDA says that one serving of ice cream is ⅔ of one cup. Who can restrain themselves to just that amount, however? If you're an ice cream fanatic looking to get more bang for your buck, you may have considered diet ice cream. Billed as having fewer calories and less sugar than its competitors in the freezer case, diet ice cream's real siren song is the notion that you can down an entire pint at once. That's the conceit behind Halo Top, the undisputed top dog of diet frozen desserts. But are the health claims of this diet ice cream too good to be true? In a word: yes.

Halo Top brags that its desserts are bursting with protein and contain only 280 to 380 calories per pint. What it doesn't say is that it achieves this trim calorie count and flavor by packing pints with a lengthy list of ingredients, artificial sugars, and sodium — qualities that seriously stretch the definition of "healthy."

The unhealthiest Halo Top flavors share several unsavory aspects in common, like high saturated fat and a ton of sodium and cholesterol. Nobody is naïve enough to think that ice cream is healthy eating — it's not a zucchini fresh from the garden, after all. But a lot of folks don't understand that diet ice creams in particular are incredibly processed.

Halo Top contains close to twice the sodium of regular ice cream, along with almost 50% more cholesterol. Other ingredients in Halo Top include guar and carob gums, corn fiber, cellulose gel, and artificial colors. That's a lot of filler when normal ice cream is just cream, eggs, and sugar. And speaking of sugar, Halo Top uses stevia as a sweetener. Stevia may be lower in calories than real sugar, but it's associated with nausea and bloating, meaning that pint of Halo Top may eventually exact its intestinal revenge.

What's an ice cream lover to do if the so-called "diet" ice cream isn't all it's cracked up to be? Remember that it's always okay to enjoy treats like ice cream in moderation. The full-fat ice creams on our ultimate brand ranking may be higher in calories, but many of them, like Häagen-Dazs and Jeni's, contain simple, whole ingredients. Maybe just ration yourself to one serving two or three times a week, rather than consuming a lot of diet ice cream on a more regular basis.