Taste
The ice creams that are lower in our ratings tend to be a bit more gummy or have flavor that’s generic or less pronounced.
For nondairy frozen desserts, none really taste exactly like dairy ice cream. Still, they can be tasty on their own merit. The products that score lower for taste are overly sweet, have a less pronounced flavor, or have a hard, icy, or crumbly texture.
Nutrition
Our nutrition score is based on calories, saturated fat, sugars, and other nutrients. But no one would claim that ice cream is great for your health. Regular dairy ice cream, in general, has 150 to 200 calories per 2⁄3 cup, and premium ice cream can have about 250 to 300 or more.
Think nondairy and vegan frozen desserts save you calories? Not so much. The ones CR tested range from 90 to 580 calories per 2⁄3-cup serving.
The calorie count depends on several factors. One is the base, such as whole or skim milk in ice cream, and coconut milk or olive oil in vegan desserts.
How much air gets churned into the product matters, too. Premium ice creams and premium frozen desserts tend to have less air and thus more calories.
Another consideration: added sugars. Both ice cream and nondairy frozen desserts can have a lot, and some nondairy versions can have more than regular ice cream, unless they use no- or low-calorie sugar substitutes, such as erythritol or stevia.
Sugar lowers the freezing point and keeps the desserts from getting too hard. “Real ice cream gets some of that sugar naturally from the lactose in dairy,” says Robert F. Roberts, PhD, head of the food science department at Penn State University. but nondairy versions have no lactose and may have to add more sugar to get the same results.”
Additives
You can make ice cream at home with just a few ingredients: milk, cream, sugar, and something for flavor, like vanilla or cocoa. A few dairy ice creams sold in grocery stores have a similar ingredients list. But many dairy ice creams and nondairy frozen desserts contain additives, such as gums (guar, locust bean), starches and fibers (corn, chicory root), sugar substitutes (allulose, erythritol), and proteins (fava bean, pea).
In dairy ice cream, some of those ingredients, particularly the gums, are added to increase shelf life or to keep sugar crystals from freezing, Roberts says. “But nondairy desserts may need these and other additives to help the product behave more like ice cream,” he says.
For example, casein, a protein found naturally in milk, helps make dairy ice cream thick and creamy. In plant-based ice creams, gums, starches, soy lecithin, and mono- and diglycerides often play that role.
In other nondairy products, plant proteins and fiber may also enter the mix to improve the product’s overall texture. But don’t think that these necessarily provide the same health benefit as getting those nutrients from whole foods.
