Who doesn’t want a cold, sweet treat on a hot summer day?! Ice cream is a favorite American pastime and 97% of us LOVE ice cream. So much so we eat on average 20 pounds a year. The love is so great that 73% of us consume ice cream at least once a week.
I too love ice cream and have loved it since I was a child. My best memory is that my grandmother always had a ½ gallon of vanilla ice cream in the freezer just waiting for me. But now that I’m a dietitian there’s a couple of things that to me are bothersome about ice cream, or I should really clarify and say commercial ice cream, and it’s not the mixture of deliciousness that contains sugar, milk, and cream. We all know ice cream is a treat and that eating too much of it gives us way too many calories, sugar and fat in our diet but, is that all we are getting?
The first is how ice cream is marketed to us. Most of us don’t think twice about the marketing of our food as we are just trying to get it all done! I am here to tell you the makers of ice cream are counting on that. They aren’t concerned about your health, that’s your responsibility, they are concerned about profit. It really is on us to make sure we know what we are eating. So instead of reading the front of the label we should turn it around and look at the back. Things like the serving size, servings/container and the ingredient list tells us all we need to know.
- Ice cream now, for the most part comes in one-pint containers (about 3-4 servings) instead of the half gallon containers. It just becomes way too easy to sit down with a pint container and a spoon and dig in. We end up eating way more than we really wanted to even if it is supposed to be “healthy”, “low calorie”, “keto” or “sugar free”. Eating more than a serving kind of defeats the purpose of the “healthy” option doesn’t it?
- There is now an entire grocery store aisle dedicated to ice cream and frozen sweet treats. Trust me, they don’t want you to go down that aisle without buying something! There is an ice cream for every one! And every one of them promises to be “healthy”! We have ice cream for the “keto” diet, sugar free and dairy free ice cream, light ice cream, not sure what that one is, low calorie or low-fat ice cream! These are not “healthier” for us they just may fit into the “diet” we are on or are “less harmful” than some others. So instead of reading the marketing and believing that we can actually eat ice cream on a diet we should really be turning it over to the back and reading the ingredient list.
- When I see the use of the term “healthy” and ice cream in the same article or on a food package, as a dietitian I just cringe. Saying that ice cream can be made healthy is just not honest. The term healthy means “indicative of, conducive to or promoting good health”. Ice cream contains sugar, cream, whole milk and chemicals. These ingredients don’t promote good health but they can be harmful to our health. And before we say, “but the milk!”, trust me on this one, there is not enough of it in there to promote good health and the fat and sugar content far out-weighs any benefit.
Then there is that thing that is really bothering me. The amount and types of chemicals in our commercial ice cream. We know that ultra processed foods are drivers of chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer. They are made with ingredients we don’t find in our kitchen and there is a reason for that. Homemade ice cream doesn’t keep well, and melts quickly. You can’t mass produce it and ship it all over the world. So, food scientists came up with a solution and it is genius! However, their genius is to do one thing and that is to turn a profit. Their ruling principal is not to promote good health. Proceed with caution.
These ultra processed ice creams contain:
- Emulsifiers – these are essential for mass production, NOT for our bodies. They help the ice cream maintain structure and prevent it from forming ice crystals. But in our body it breaks down or erodes the mucous membrane that protects our gut cells creating leaky gut, GI symptoms, chronic inflammation and disease.
- Stabilizers – they are also essential for helping ice cream to maintain structure and prevent ice crystals. This allows for a longer shelf life and ability to transport ice cream over long distances. They can cause disruption in the GI tract creating gas, bloating and diarrhea.
- Food dyes – food coloring gives food great eye appeal, drawing us in so we will buy it. However, they have been controversial for a long time and are linked to behavioral problems in kids, cancer, allergic reactions, and disruption of our digestive processes.
- Artificial flavors – food flavoring is put in food to make it taste the same every time and to taste delicious. The more delicious a food is the more we will want to eat of it. When our taste receptors get activated through artificial food flavoring, the reward center of the brain is activated and hormones like dopamine are released. When this happens, our own physiology gets confused, and we start craving those same foods over and over!
- Artificial sweeteners – were initially designed to replace sugar in foods and beverages so that people with diabetes could have access to some foods that are sweet. Also, artificial sweeteners seemed to be a perfect solution for those of us who love sweets but don’t want the calories. Well, we have now found out that artificial sweeteners aren’t the perfect solution we thought they were. They have been associated with cardiovascular problems, insulin sensitivity and glucose metabolism leading to diabetes, allergic reactions, and gut dysbiosis, an imbalance of our good and bad bacteria leading to gas, bloating and GI distress.
So, you may be asking can we enjoy ice cream and summer or not!? I say, of course you can! Life is to be lived and food is a central part of how we enjoy life.
But let’s put it in perspective. Here is what I recommend:
- We can’t “treat” ourselves every day, or eat a whole container of ice cream once a week and maintain our health over time. That is unrealistic. When it comes to processed foods the rule should be, it is not what you do on one day, it’s what you do every day that erodes your health.
- Practice portion control and understand what a serving of your favorite ice cream really is. The effects can be “dose” dependent and when we eat too much, too often it has a negative effect on your health.
- Practice buyer beware. I recommend using an app, like the YUKA to learn what is really in the ice cream you are eating. There are ice creams on the shelf that are made with fewer ingredients, choose those.
- Find ice cream without stabilizers, emulsifiers, food dyes, artificial flavors and artificial sweeteners. Remember these chemicals “erode” your health over time. What that means is it comes on slowly at first giving us a feeling of just being tired all time. These chemicals are disrupting cell function that produces energy in our bodies. Eventually this erosion shows up as diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
- Invest in an ice cream maker and make your own. When you make your own ice cream you know exactly what is in it and there will be no chemicals. When you make your own ice cream you can add nuts, fruit, or peanut butter and create your own masterpieces.
The food of today is not the food of yesteryear. We are living in a whole new world where 75% of the grocery store is ultra processed foods. The food industry is interested in our wallet not our health but does that mean we can’t enjoy our food? No it doesn’t, but what it does mean is if good health and longevity are on the list of your life goals it would be wise to become an informed consumer.
A Registered Dietitian Nutritionist (RDN) has the experience and education to help address unhealthy relationships with food and put a nutrition and lifestyle plan together that is healthy for your mind and your body. Working with an RDN to improve your health through nutrition is typically a covered benefit on your health insurance plan.
Written by: Stephanie Espinoza, MA, RDN, LDN
Registered Dietitian Nutritionist
Soal Wellness | www.soalwellness.com
Phone: 602-400-5419