Decoding zero sugar ice-cream brand - Go Zero.
A curious foodie who can't stop flipping ingredients labels and assessing wait, whats that? OG Scoop decodes the science behind every food in plain, snackable English with OG Twist.
After a hearty dinner yesterday, I found myself craving something sweet. I opened Blinkit, browsed through the ice cream section, and guess what caught my eye—zero sugar ice creams!
If there was one product we could never imagine without sugar, it was ice cream, but voila, now we have it!
In this blog, let's explore these sugar-free ice creams and examine one of the brand labels to see if not sugar, then what's inside? As always, in simple and plain English, but with an OG twist.
Deep dive on Go Zero Ice-cream brand
Only 97 calories in an ice cream is unheard of. For reference, a regular ice cream of a similar serving would be about 230 Kcal. So, Go Zero has approximately 60% fewer calories, and two things contribute to this.
1. No added sugar (Primary driver)
2. Less cream/Milk fat
If they are removing added sugar, then a natural question pops up: What replaced sugar?
Well, the brand claims an "all-natural proprietary sweetener blend." Let's check the ingredients label to see if it's truly "natural" or just another over-engineered lab experiment.
Answer to the question: "What replaced sugar?" is "Maltitol + Stevia".
Let us understand at ingredients first:
1. Milk and Milk Solids:
Standard Ingredient in Ice-creams
2. Maltitol:
This is the main sugar replacement which has fewer calories per gram than sugar, with 90% of the sweetness of sugar.
Spikes the blood glucose (definitely less than sugar, but not zero spike), it is not counted on sugar labels but its still a sweet carbohydrate that contributes to total carbs and calories.
3. Oligofructose:
A natural prebiotic fiber derived from chicory roots.
4. Stevia:
Stevia provides extra sweetness without calories, this combination with maltitol reduces total calories.
5. Emulsifiers and Stabilizers:
Generally marked safe and are common in regular ice-creams too. Helps fat and water mix, is ultra-processed, and are present in very small quantities.
Looking at the ingredients list and especially Maltitol, does it look like "All natural sweetness" - not really!
More ingredients compared to regular ice-creams?
Compared to regular ice-creams, like amul, which generally has 6-7 main ingredients, "Zero added sugar ice-creams" have 9-10 ingredients.
Why?
Because sugar does more than just add sweetness. It helps with sweetness, freezing control, texture/body, and creaminess. Without sugar, brands need to add 5-6 functional ingredients to compensate for sugar's role.
Imagine making a sugar-free ice cream with only milk, cream, cocoa, and stevia—it would freeze like a brick, and the texture would be icy, grainy, and watery.
Simple way to think about Maltitol: Maltitol is Sugar's cousin who behaves like it but at half the calories.
The OG Recommendation
At the front of the pack, the brand mentioned "Zero added sugar," which is technically correct but doesn't mean there's no sugar at all. So, don't just look for the "No added sugar" tag, turn the pack around and see what is replacing the sugar. In this case, it's replaced by maltitol, stevia which is fine for occasional consumption if you are trying to reduce sugar consumption.
No added sugar is a great marketing hook but real story is always on the back of the pack!
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