About 10 months ago, I decided to do the unthinkable and subsist for 5 days off a diet comprised solely of Halo Top Ice Cream. In case you've been living under a rock, Halo Top is the crazy popular, low-calorie ice cream that's recently taken the social media world by storm (yeah, you're welcome). Before conducting this eccentric experiment, I did a bit of research to find out what I would be consuming for the duration. Could Halo Top be too good to be true?
Since my experiment, Halo Top has released 10 new flavors (shoutout to peanut butter, the GOAT), but the main ingredients haven't changed. A common misconception is that Halo Top is a dairy-free alternative ice cream like Arctic Zero or So Delicious. Spoiler alert: it's not.
Halo Top is pretty healthy though, even if it's not dairy free. Each pint contains between 240-360 calories, depending on the flavor. In order to understand the nutrition of Halo Top a bit better, I'll break it down into the three macronutrient groups, known as "macros." Every day, your diet should contain about 50% carbohydrates, 30% protein, and 20% fat. So why is Halo Top so healthy? Read ahead.
Carbohydrates
Each pint has about 60 grams of carbohydrates, which is approximately 20% of your daily value. This might seem high, but each pint has about 20 grams of dietary fiber (which aids in digestion and is 80% of your DV). Another 20 grams come from the sugar alcohol erythritol, which is used with stevia to make Halo Top healthier than other ice creams. Regular ice cream has about 100 grams of sugar (a.k.a. 400 calories). Comparatively, Halo Top is a low carb ice cream, but you might not want to eat the entire pint, as it's 1/5 of your carbs for the day.
Fats
The first ingredients listed are milk, cream, and eggs. Surprisingly, the ice cream is pretty low in fat, which comes from the cream, and other mix-ins (such as cookie dough or brownie dough). Each pint contains between 8 and 12 grams of fat, which in total amounts to about 20% of your DV for fats.
However, a whole pint of Halo Top contains about 170 mg of cholesterol from the eggs in the ice cream. Cholesterol is a naturally occurring sterol (a.k.a. fat molecule), and having high blood cholesterol levels can cause increased risk for heart disease. Although eating cholesterol doesn't immediately raise your cholesterol levels, you should only be eat a max of 300 mg per day. Just make sure to watch what else you eat throughout the day if you're eating the entire pint of Halo Top.
Protein
Halo Top has the same amount of protein as an average protein bar, with about 24 grams per pint. That's 40% of your recommended daily percentage of protein, which is pretty crazy. This protein comes from the milk, eggs, and milk protein concentrate that are used in Halo Top. I wouldn't suggest eating the pint as an alternative to meat or plant proteins, but it definitely doesn't hurt!
All in all, Halo Top puts other ice creams to shame in the nutritional department. The biggest reason that it's so healthy is because of its lower sugar content. That said, eating a whole pint every day is probably not a great idea. How about eating 5 pints a day? Don't even think about it.