Halo Top Creamery, an ice cream brand that prides itself as “healthy” and low-calorie, maintains the No. 1 spot for the best-selling pint of ice cream on the market. Pints of Halo Top’s 60-calorie ice cream have flown off the shelves of many supermarkets and quickly surpassed beloved brands, like Ben and Jerry’s and Häagen-Dazs, in sales. So, what’s the secret? Halo Top targeted a self-indulgent habit and made it “healthy.”
Sugar, sugar, sugar.
“Stop when you get to the bottom,” the lids say, encouraging consumers to eat the entire pint, rather than the half-cup serving. The container shouts the ice cream’s nutrition facts, so consumers see what they are purchasing without even reading the label. For example, one pint of vanilla bean Halo Top ice cream has 60 calories, 5 grams of protein, 2 grams of fat and 5 grams of carbs. What the label doesn’t reveal is its ingredients, which includes three main forms of sugar: erythritol, Stevia and organic cane sugar.
Erythritol is a plant-derived sugar alcohol with about 70 percent the sweetness of regular sugar. It is recognized as generally safe by the FDA, but is not as sweet on its own and is usually combined with other sweeteners. The FDA states erythritol may cause a laxative effect in certain individuals, but it does not cause a spike in blood sugar or cause tooth decay.
A single pint of Halo Top’s vanilla bean has only 5 grams of sugar and 5 grams of sugar alcohol, compared to 20 grams in a pint of Ben and Jerry’s vanilla.
The comparison and choice are obvious for consumers looking for a “healthy” alternative to ice cream.
Health food?
The sugar content is not what worries health professionals about Halo Top. The “binge” aspect and serving size issue are what can impact the consumer’s health. In an interview with Time, Keri Gans, a dietician, said, “No one should eat a whole pint of ice cream. We should be sitting down to the recommended serving, which is half a cup. If you want to double it, fine, but you shouldn’t sit down to a pint.”
Anything can be marketed as “healthy,” and Halo Top plays into the consumer’s wants and needs in an ice cream -- something that is low in everything. No, the ice cream does not include various fruits and vegetables, but it does include 5 grams of protein. Despite the craze to eat more protein, Americans already consume nearly twice the daily recommended amount of protein, which is around 45 grams. It is nearly impossible to label something as “healthy” today since “healthy” holds a different meaning to each person.