Posted on 08/11/2025 11:15:08 AM PDT by Red Badger
Unless you are in denial, you probably understand that ice cream isn’t a diet food. Although it is delicious and nothing beats a cool, sweet cone of the frozen dessert on a hot summer day, it isn’t going to help you shave inches off your waistline. However, that doesn’t mean all brands are equal regarding health. Some popular brands found at your local grocery store contain artificial ingredients, flavors, and preservatives. Here are 6 ice cream brands that are mostly air and additives.
1. Edy’s
Edy’s ice cream is delicious, but many artificial colors and additives are on the ingredient list. Tara Collingwood, MS, RDN, CSSD, LD/N, ACSM-CPT, a Board Certified Sports Dietitian and co-author of the Flat Belly Cookbook for Dummies, recently told us that the flavors are commonly made with polysorbate 80, carrageenan, and high-fructose corn syrup.
2. Kemps
Kemps is popular and tastes great, but the ingredient list isn’t the best and includes additives, artificial flavoring, and high fructose corn syrup. Guar gum, mono- and diglycerides, and carrageenan are a few of the worst culprits.
3. Great Value
Great Value ice cream at Walmart will definitely save you money, and shoppers maintain it is delicious. However, you might be compromising your health. Collingwood explains that Walmart can sell it for less than most of the competition because they keep costs down with “synthetic colorings, assorted emulsifiers, and titanium dioxide for extra whiteness.”
4. Blue Bunny
Blue Bunny is readily available at most stores across the country. However, the popular ice cream uses additives, artificial flavors, and high fructose corn syrup in its pints. Certain flavors are healthier and made with higher quality ingredients compared to others, so make sure to check the label of the flavor. Vanilla, for example, is made with just milk, cream, sugar, egg yolks, and vanilla.
5. Turkey Hill
Turkey Hill is another big national brand of ice cream that offers a lot of bang for the buck in terms of taste. However, it is made with ingredients similar to Kemps and Blue Bunny: artificial food coloring, cellulose gel, cellulose gum, soybean oil, and mono- and diglycerides, just a few of the names on the ingredients list, which also includes high fructose corn syrup.
6. Blue Ribbon Classics
If you have done any research on ice cream, you probably already know that many of kinds of frozen treats you consider ice cream, actually aren’t. Collingwood points out that Blue Ribbon Classics, a popular grocery store ice cream, is marketed as “frozen dairy desserts” and is “not true ice cream.” Ingredients include dairy milk solids, palm kernel oil, high-fructose corn syrup, artificial colors(Yellow 5, Blue 1), and artificial flavors.
Yes.
I rarely buy ice cream, but if I have to I buy Breyer’s Vanilla.
On a hot summer day, I prefer a frozen fruit bar, though they’re not good for you, either. ;)
Check out Blue Bell.
With or without the Listeria?
“You can tell cheap ice cream by how fast it melts”
Yes..........................
“I wish ice cream companies had to post the WEIGHT of their product instead of just the VOLUME.”
One can take the carton over to the produce section and use the scale.
Back in the last century in the small town(then) of Falls Church Virginia 2 Brothers ran a Frozen Custard stand that was the best iced treat I’ve ever had. They had 2 machines and made their custard where you could see it. If you bought more than a cone or a dish they would hand pack your carboard pint or quart tube as you watched. The people of that town still talk about that stand and how they miss it.
It was so good that people would wait in line in the snow to buy some.
We get Tillamook here in Southern California. The Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough seems to fly off the freezer shelf at Ralphs.
Yay - Blue Bell isn’t on the list. I don’t buy ice cream all that often, but when I do, it’s Blue Bell.
Blue Bell may make great ice cream, but their radio commercial here is annoying as hell.............
sounds racist to me :)
It doesn’t mention one that has whipped air into its product, yet the headline points it out. Remember when a bar of soap was actually soap and not air? Dial brand said they changed the shape to keep it from slipping out of the user’s hand. Conveniently, it also came after people complained about the smaller, lighter, bar. So, it pumped air into the bar to make it look bigger. Remember when a link of sausage weighed a pound, now it’s 12-13 oz and a 12 oz bottle of shampoo contained no water. 3 pounds of coffee is now 32 oz and the list goes on and on. Just another form of inflation.
I grew up in a high mountain resort area. You could always tell the cheap ice cream by the cartons bursting.
LOL, I rarely touch the stuff, thanks to Type 2. My usual dessert is a Granny Smith apple.
I looked up carageenan and discovered it's worse than I thought. All these years I recalled a professor sneering that people were afraid of carageenan, and it's just a product of seaweed. Well, the medical study on the product I read makes me avoid it in all foods, including the food I buy pets.
Seaweed full of mercury, industrial and human waste and carcinogens?
That kind of seaweed?.............
I believe all of Blue Bell’s ice creams have HFCS, including their “Homemade” Vanilla. I won’t eat their. A lot of ice creams are like that.
Homemade Chocolate Ice Cream / fast and easy
Ing 1 1/2 c whole milk 1/2 c best cocoa powder 1 c sugar 2 c h/cream 1 tsp vanilla
Steps Whisk/dissolve 1 1/2 c wh/milk, 1/2 c best unsweet cocoa powder, and c sugar. Fold in 2 c h/cream beaten w/ vanilla into stiff peaks. Refrigerate at least 30 min til completely cold; helps it freeze faster, improves texture, and allows the cocoa powder to become fully hydrated by milk and cream. Give one more gentle stir; freeze according to ice cream maker mfg—about 1 1/2 to 2 hours.
Store airtight at back of freezer to preserve flavor and texture. Straight from ice cream maker, it will have a soft-serve texture. Freezing an additional hour before serving will create a firmer texture.
Chef notes: Use any type of milk you have on hand; may not be as creamy, but recipe will still work. Get creative, try adding a teaspoon of instant coffee or espresso powder for a richer chocolate flavor. Add texture w/ caramel, marshmallows, chopped nuts, dried fruit, or broken-up pretzels—etc.
Don’t buy any of them.
I get mine from a local farm related ice cream store. A little pricey but worth it.
We still hold our noses and buy B&J “Baseball Nut” when it’s available. Yummy!
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