LITE IT UP
When comparing Halo Top, CoolWay to regular ice cream, you’ll be surprised
We compare low-cal ice cream with a few of the premium brands,
Low-calorie ice cream can taste as good, if not better, than the regular stuff.
Such was the conclusion of a Star tasting panel in which two new “guilt-free” product lines were put to the spoon against Canadian favourites.
Halo Top from the United States and Canada’s CoolWay have just launched low-calorie ice creams in GTA supermarkets. They claim to have the same taste as regular ice cream but with less sugar and more protein.
Both companies use stevia and erythritol as sweeteners; CoolWay uses potato starch as a thickener.
Halo Top from California promotes itself as healthy ice cream; the packaging not-so-subtly encourages you to “eat the whole pint.”
Montreal’s CoolWay positions itself similarly. It began as a post-workout protein supplement on season 10 of
Dragon’s Denas Cool Wheybefore being reformulated and renamed.
We convened a five-member panel to compare Halo Top and CoolWay against three premium brands: Kawartha Dairy, Chapman’s and Haagen Dazs, all of which use Canadian milk.
Mint chocolate chip was the most common flavour, followed by salted caramel.
In a blind tasting, the Star panel unanimously ranked skim milk-based Halo Top at the bottom.
“Weirdly salty,” said one tester of the mint chip. “The texture is off,” said another. “Bad all around,” confirmed a third. This was also the case with Halo Top’s salted caramel, which many said tasted “like spoiled milk.”
Mint chip winner Kawartha Dairy “just hits your happiness button,” said one tester. In second place was CoolWay which, while “kinda watery,” was found to have a more defined minty flavour and pleasing chocolate chips.
When it came to salted caramel, CoolWay beat out Chapman’s Caramel Saucy Spots, three to two. Those testers who ranked it first appreciated the subtle caramel flavour in the ice cream itself versus Chapman’s abundance of injected caramel. (The salt element was hard to detect in either.)
Would any tester take up Halo Top’s invitation to eat the whole pint? “Nope.” “Not happening.” Amy Pataki’s restaurant reviews are pub- lished Fridays online and Wednesdays in print. Read more at thestar.com. Reach her at apataki@thestar.ca or on Twitter @amypataki.