6 Ice Cream Brands With the Lowest-Quality Fillers
What ingredients are needed to make ice cream? If it’s good stuff, very few. For example, Jeni’s Honey Vanilla Bean contains just milk, cream, cane sugar, nonfat milk, tapioca syrup, honey, vanilla extract, sea salt, and vanilla bean specks for a very flavorful, delicious treat. McConnell’s Golden State Vanilla contains just cream, nonfat milk, cane sugar, egg yolks, vanilla extract, and annatto extract. Most home-made ice cream recipes call for similar ingredients, but many big-name brands contain cheaper ingredients to bulk up the ice cream and keep prices low for customers. Here are six ice cream brands that use low quality fillers in their products.
Great Value
Great Value Peanut Butter Cup Ice Cream ($3.27) contains lower-quality fillers such as Corn syrup, Polysorbate 80, Mono and diglycerides, and multiple gums and stabilizers (guar, carrageenan, etc). For that low price point, you definitely get what you pay for.
Breyer’s
Breyer’s Homemade Vanilla is sweetened with corn syrup and also contains gums and stabilizers. Customers say the vanilla taste isn’t pronounced enough for their liking, although they liked the creaminess of the texture. “Too gummy and too sweet,” one said.
Blue Bunny
Blue Bunny‘s Soft Cookies & Cream isn’t even technically an ice cream, but a frozen dessert with ingredients like high fructose corn syrup, gums, dextrose, corn syrup, industrial emulsifiers and more. One benefit of it not having the same ingredients as quality ice cream is that it doesn’t get as hard. “Right when you take it out of the freezer it’s good to scoop. No waiting for it to soften up,” one fan said.
Turkey Hill
Turkey Hill Black Cherry is packed with dubious ingredients like artificial food colorings, corn syrup, polydextrose, and more. “Product has been classified as an unhealthy ultra-processed food,” says the EWG. “Contains 2 of EWG’s top food additives of concern: RED 40 and BLUE 1.”
Friendly’s
Friendly’s Black Cherry Chocolate Chunk Ice Cream contains a laundry list of additives and artificial ingredients, including Red 40 and Blue 1. “This product contains the following ingredient(s) that may be genetically engineered or derived from GE crops: High Fructose Corn Syrup, Corn Syrup, Sugars, Xanthan Gum, Mono And Diglycerides Of Fatty Acids, Lecithin (Soy), and Citric Acid,” says the EWG.
N!ck’s
N!ck’s Strawberry Swirl contains ingredients such as soluble corn fiber, allulose, xylitol, sorbitol, erythritol (all artificial sweeteners and sugar substitutes). It also contains EPG (Modified plant-based oil), and other stabilizers and additives. “This is not healthy in any way shape or form. Keto does not mean having all kinds of loaded artificial flavors or natural flavors in the ingredients list,” one shopper wrote in the reviews. “I’m all for low sugar or no sugar added desserts, but this group of Nick’s products is very misleading and a lot of marketing hype.”
