We Tried Trader Joe's New Light Ice Creams—Here's Our Review
Trader Joe's recently added two flavors of ice cream to its beloved line of affordable, delicious products. These aren't your typical, calorie-loaded pints—the latest addition to the freezer section happens to be light ice cream. Phrases like "low-in-calories" and "high-in-protein" caught our attention so naturally, we wanted to sample the product ourselves.
Before we delve into our review though, here is some more information about Trader Jow's new light ice cream.
The nutrition lowdown on Trader Joe's Light Ice Cream
Trader Joe's debuted two new light ice cream flavors: Chocolate Peanut Butter and Joe-Joe's Cookies & Cream.
TJ's new light ice creams are comparable to Halo Top's ice creams, which also clock in at under 400 calories for the entire pint. Halo Top Peanut Butter Cup ice cream offers 20 grams of protein with 320 calories per pint, whereas Trader Joe's ice cream offers 23 grams for 370 calories.
What we appreciate about this ice cream is that it only contains 6 grams of added sugar. For comparison, Halo Top substitutes sugar for erythritol, a sugar alcohol that's produced through fermentation of glucose (sugar). It's much sweeter than normal sugar and for some, it can cause bloating and gas if consumed regularly. Since it's the third ingredient listed in the Halo Top ice cream, we'll opt for TJ's chocolate peanut butter light ice cream to avoid the potential gastrointestinal distress.
Joe-Joe's Cookies & Cream ice cream was definitely our favorite out of the two. Despite being low in fat, it still had a relatively creamy texture. We recommend letting this ice cream sit out for about 10-15 minutes before attempting to scoop any out—it's a bit icy otherwise.
As to be expected with low-fat and low-carb ice cream, there is a notable difference in texture, when compared with the innate creaminess of normal, full-fat ice cream. High-protein, low-fat ice cream also tends to resemble the taste of protein powder, but that didn't stop us from plowing through both pints of TJ's light ice creams.
Final verdict
Overall, we enjoyed the flavors of Trader Joe's new light ice creams, and we would dunk our spoons into these pints again! They'll satisfy that ice cream craving without demolishing weight-loss goals.
You can find both flavors of light ice cream at your local Trader Joe's, so grab a spoon and get scooping!
