Review: Halo Top Ice Cream
I am very lucky that as a blogger, companies want to send me products to review. But the downside of that is that at least once a week, I get someone pitching a “sugar free” or “safe for diabetics” food that makes all sorts of outrageous claims about their carb counts, net carbs, and why they’re finally the “solution” to all my diabetes problems. I usually reply to those emails with an overly-detailed recap of carb counting and hope that I bore the sender enough that they just ignore me. So when I received an email from Halo Top Ice Cream claiming they were a good option for diabetics, I thought here we go again.
But then I went over their website and read about their founder and the fact that quote: “Halo Top was created by a guy named Justin who, like everyone else, loved ice cream but hated the fact that eating it made you feel bad. Bemused at the recommendation to eat a bite or two and put it away, Justin wondered: what about in the real world where nobody does that?”
Yup, that reeled me in. Because Justin, you and I have a thing or two in common my friend about having tasty foods in moderation. Mainly that moderation sucks sometimes! This fellow Justin perused the available options for low-calorie ice creams and was disappointed to find out that most of them used a lot of chemicals and fake ingredients and they tasted like it too. He set out to create an all-natural ice cream that he could eat the entire pint of in one sitting and not feel awful about himself. I like this guy and I like that mission. If ever there was a worthy cause, I’m on board with this one. Why can’t I have an entire pint of ice cream and not feel like I negated the entire half marathon I just ran? First world problems, I know.
So, he created Halo Top. Halo Top ice cream has only 70 calories per serving, 12-13 grams of carbs and 7 grams of protein per serving (they advertise only 4 grams of net carbs but us folks with the ‘betes need to know the whole value and make our own decisions about net or not). So if you wanted to sit down and have an entire pint of Halo Top, it will only set you back 280 calories. I’ve had so-called “healthy” snack bars with more calories than that. I was intrigued, but this would all fall apart if it also tasted low-cal. I grabbed one of each of their four flavors and a spoon and dug in. Here are my thoughts:
I started with chocolate because that’s usually my go-to ice cream flavor. It was tasty, but to me, not delicious. It still tasted a little too “diet” for me. I enjoyed it to a certain extent but I didn’t fall in love. I pressed on with my mission though (hard as it was), and was soon redeemed. Lemon Cake, Vanilla Bean, and the Strawberry flavors were all spoon-lickin’, carton-scraping, gimme-another-bite-of-that good. All three of those blew me out of the water with their flavor and texture. The icing on the proverbial ice-cream cake though is the fact that each serving was only 70 calories and 12 grams of CHO. This is something I can bolus for and not go off the rails. This was 12 grams of carb totally worth bolusing for, and wasn’t going to break the bank. I have to bolus more than that for a banana, and this is dessert! And don’t take my word for it on the chocolate flavor - that could be personal preference and it was still a tasty flavor, just not my favorite of the bunch.
Overall, I’m super-impressed with the ice cream, the flavors available, and the fact that they made this with no artificial ingredients. And most of all, I like that the mission behind this ice cream was really about understanding that sometimes, we all want to indulge and we should be able to without totally falling off the wagon. Here’s to a few more days of hot weather, a freezer full of Halo Top ice cream, and still keeping that A1c down. Winning!
Thank you so much to Halo Top for the samples! Find out where to buy Halo Top near you by visiting their website here.
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Where were you able to buy these?? I want to try them, but they’re not available in Seattle, it seems