Avoid Eating Low-Fat Ice Cream If You Have This Medical Condition

Ice cream can be a decadent treat for the tastebuds but a disaster for your waistline and heart. A ⅔ cup (128 grams) serving of Haagen-Dazs vanilla has 300 calories, 18 grams of added sugar, and 13 grams of saturated fat. Because added sugar can lead to obesity and chronic inflammation in your heart, the American Heart Association suggests cutting your added sugars to no more than 6% of your daily calories. If your daily calorie intake is 2,000 calories, your ice cream puts you at 60% of your added sugar for the day.

The American Heart Association also says diets high in saturated fat can lead to unhealthy cholesterol levels and sets a daily limit of 6% of your calories. That's about 13 grams of saturated fat, which means your favorite ice cream could put you at your daily limit for saturated fat. To cut back on your daily saturated fat, you could turn to low-fat ice cream. A similar serving of low-fat ice cream could save you 110 calories and more than 10 grams of saturated fat, but you'll double the amount of added sugar. Not such a healthy swap. Yet other types of low-fat ice cream replace fat and added sugar with artificial sweeteners and sugar alcohols, which could aggravate digestive issues, particularly irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).

Reduced-fat, no added sugar ice cream such as Kemp's is made from milk fat, nonfat milk, and whey protein concentrate to provide 4 grams of saturated fat in a ⅔ cup (88 grams) serving. Although you won't see added sugar in this ice cream, you'll find it sweetened by sorbitol, which is a sugar alcohol.

According to a 2017 systematic review in Advances in Nutrition, some people, including those with IBS, have problems digesting sugar alcohols. The problem can be worse if you have different types of sugar alcohols (such as mannitol, sorbitol, or maltitol) in your foods. People can experience gas, stomach issues, and laxative effects when consuming foods with sugar alcohols.

Sugar alcohols found in sugar-free foods make you poop because they draw water into your large intestine, according to a 2017 article in the International Journal of Advanced Academic Research. Sorbitol is naturally found in dried fruits, such as prunes, which are commonly known to relieve constipation. Because maltitol has been found to have laxative effects, the European Union and other countries label maltitol products with a warning about its laxative potential.

People with digestive issues such as IBS are often told to temporarily eliminate foods high in fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides, and polyols, or FODMAPs, to see which foods irritate your gut the most. Sugar alcohols used in reduced-fat, no-sugar-added ice cream are considered high-FODMAP foods.

Unfortunately, the lactose in ice cream might not be best when you have IBS. Lactose is a type of sugar that can be difficult to digest for some people. As a result, the undigested lactose moves to your colon and gets fermented by your gut bacteria. Johns Hopkins Medicine says that can make you gassy. People with IBS might not experience the same dairy issues when they eat yogurt, so you might think that frozen yogurt could be easier to digest. Even though some of yogurt's live cultures survive during the freezing process, the American Institute for Cancer Research says there's no guarantee how many probiotics you're getting in frozen yogurt. Besides, many frozen yogurt varieties are high in calories and added sugar.

People with IBS or other chronic digestive conditions could consider dairy-free frozen desserts. Breyers has a frozen oat milk dessert that has 4.5 grams of saturated fat in a 130-calorie serving. However, you'll also get 15 grams of added sugar. Other dairy-free options can be high in fat because they're made from avocados. Cado frozen dessert has 14 grams of added sugar and 13 grams of fat in a ⅔ cup serving, but you'll only get 2 grams of saturated fat. The rest of the fat comes from the heart-healthy unsaturated fat in avocados.