Ice cream has always been a place of steep nutritional compromise—you either go whole-hog and eat the real, butter-fat-laden deal, or you settle for some suspicious, chemical-based foam and get a stomachache. For those who love cold, creamy deliciousness but don’t want to wind up in a food coma, the situation has been truly unjust.
Until lately, that is. If you’re a committed ice cream adherent, you may have already heard of Halo Top, the wonder dessert with as many calories per pint (240 to 280; $5.99) as a single half-cup serving of most ice creams. It also has just 5 grams of sugar, as much protein as a 3-ounce serving of beef (24g), and only 8g of fat. Compared with a pint of Chunky Monkey (1,200 calories, 112g sugar, 16g protein, 72g fat), or even Breyer’s fat-free (360 calories, 52g sugar, 8g protein), Halo Top looks like a flat-out miracle. Its convincingly ice cream-like taste and texture have inspired a cult following—one Reddit user threatened to name a child after the brand.
Like many great inventions, Halo Top was the result of trial and error. Justin Woolverton, 37, was an attorney who’d long suffered from hypoglycemic episodes. Even the allegedly healthy frozen treats out there, he found, were filled with sugar—a holdover from the days when fat was America’s biggest dietary bugbear and snack food companies loaded up low-fat treats with sugar to make up for lost flavor.
“There was a lot of fun involved in figuring out how to hack this,” Woolverton says. In traditional ice cream, not only does sugar provide flavor, but it also lowers the melting point so the frozen product doesn’t get rock hard. Fat, meanwhile, helps create a scoopable consistency. Remove both of those components, and you’re left with what amounts to flavored ice. Woolverton bought an ice cream maker on Amazon.com in 2011 and began fiddling with recipes. Eventually, he landed on a no-calorie sugar alcohol called erythritol (not the kind of alcohol that would get you drunk) along with the all-natural, zero-calorie sweetener Stevia for sweetness, milk protein to make up for the lost fat, plant fiber to help with meltability, and extra egg white for overall consistency.
Woolverton researched local factories that could help him manufacture at scale. The first nine said no. By 2014, however, Halo Top was in Kroger, Whole Foods Market, and other stores nationwide. Still, the company was “hanging on by a string,” Woolverton says. He and his business partner, Doug Bouton, received some consumer feedback saying Halo Top had the tendency to develop a chalky texture, the result of too much freezing and melting during distribution. They consolidated some steps in their shipping processes and brought in a food scientist to help engineer the product for shelf stability. (Whatever changes they made are a trade secret, Woolverton says.) They also revamped the packaging toward the end of last year, replacing dull colors with a brighter, bubblier aesthetic.
What they wound up with was a frozen delight that appeals to two seemingly opposed groups: those seeking low-calorie ice cream alternatives, and others seduced by a dessert that can help them bulk up. (“I hit my best bench-press set ever that day,” wrote one GQ writer, describing a week during which he consumed only Halo Top.) The company says it’s on track for an 1,800 percent rise in sales from last year.
Halo Top’s success has enabled it to experiment in an unexpected way: with higher-calorie versions. In October the company introduced 10 flavors, including red velvet and peanut butter cup. “Every now and again, even I want the Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey,” Woolverton admits. “Now maybe you’d rather just have the Halo Top chocolate chip cookie dough.” At 360 calories a pint, it’s still a sweet deal.
To contact the author of this story: Carrie Battan in at carriebattan@gmail.com.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jillian Goodman at jgoodman74@bloomberg.net.
©2016 Bloomberg L.P.
