The Most Harmful Types Of Ice Cream You Should Avoid Eating

today I'm going to talk about ice cream and reveal the four types of ice cream that you should definitely avoid eating if you want to optimize your health sugar-free ice cream dairyfree ice cream and ice creams made with artificial coloring and artificial flavoring go ahead I dare you to find ice creams that don't fall into one of those categories and if you do find it well that's a starting point because everyone loves ice cream and it's been around a long time in fact what we call Ice Cream today had its fruits in Europe had its

fruits in France England Italy uh and the dates back to about 1600s when people figured out that you could add salt to ice in order to make frozen desserts now if you go even further back in history back to the Persians back to the Greeks yeah there were also Frozen ice creams frozen desserts back then as well not much less known about those but what we call Ice Cream today really is sort of something a product from the 1600s all right so we're talking about 3 to 400 years of experience it with this delicious frozen

dessert and everybody loves ice cream now I'm not going to give you permission to eat ice cream as a health food but I'm going going to tell you some scientific facts about ice cream that actually might surprise you and might allow you to treat yourself once in a while because well maybe you deserve it okay so here is the surprise in fact I always thought ice cream is not going to be a healthy uh dessert for you why well because it's made with dairy which has a lot of saturated fat it's got added sugar to

it it's got emulsifiers to it uh and you know when I was growing up I would go to uh these uh ice cream stores that had all these different kinds of flavors in the summertime and I'd be clamoring for a cone or a cup of the cold sweet stuff right well most of it was nuclear colored and you know really kind of a kaleidoscope of flavors of course every kid wants it but actually there's some data that surprised me that is beginning to show that perhaps ice cream could actually be beneficial beneficial for heart health

now where does this data come from well it comes from a clinical study that was done in 2018 as part of a students doctoral thesis where the student was looking at data from two massive studies the nurse's health study and the health professionals followup study now these involve tens and hundreds of thousands of people and the studies took place following nurses and doctors male doctors over about 20 years or so and what the researcher did was looked at people who were high risk for heart disease to begin with all right so he uh he looked

at people with diabetes specifically type two diabetes right type two be diabetes is a metabolic condition metabolic disease that occurs when you have excess body fat and you have poor insulin sensitivity um so your glucose levels are higher etc etc etc and so This research sort of just looked at a group of people who are who already had type 2 diabetes and we're at highest risk for heart disease because we know that diabetes which you at risk for heart disease but in this case the researchers started with people who at the beginning had no heart

disease they had diabetes they had no heart disease and Then followed their health over time okay remember this is a 20-year study to see how people uh were winding up did they get heart disease or not and what were they eating that correlated with their development of getting heart disease or not getting heart disease all right now so here is a surprise remarkably the results of this study this research showed that people who ate ice cream no more than twice a week all right no more than twice a week so this isn't like people are

eating ice cream twice a day or even once a day all right but those people who eat ice cream no more than twice a week had a 12% decrease in their risk of developing heart disease a 12% decrease in the risk of deving their heart disease now this was a big head scratcher when um the result came out and in fact nutritionists including experts from tus University the Freeman School of nutrition and Harvard School of Public Health have been looking at the data and scouring it trying to find out if if there was some problem

in the analysis and nope this actually looks like a pretty solid finding so head scratcher though and this is what happens in medical research sometimes we come up with a result that we really can't explain doesn't mean that just because we can't explain it it's wrong but it means that we need to actually study it further and we need to be as smart as possible to figure out how it could be now this mystery about how ice cream no more than twice a week could be beneficial for heart health meaning reducing the risk of developing

heart disease compared to people who ate ice cream more than twice a week or people um actually comes down to a bunch of different hypotheses I'll tell you what my hypo my thinking is if I had to explain it as a researcher as somebody who studies food as medicine is that ice cream is cold right so when you eat ice cream you're having some of this cold stuff going go down your stomach all right and the cold temperatures of the ice cream could activate receptors inside your stomach these are these are like these are like

temperature gauges all right like thermostats in your stomach and they sense temperature if you drink cold water you'll turn on these little sensors and you have ice cream well I figured that could also turn on these receptors and when these cold receptors are turned on the consequence is it tells your body ooh something really cold is happening deep inside our body we better turn on the turbo Jets to warm up the system warm up the body all right and so this process of of tur turboing to warm up the body is called thermogenesis Thermo heat

Genesis generating heat all right and all of a sudden your body generates heat and in order to generate heat the body has to burn down fuel you got need fuel to burn it down body fat to create heat to burn down body fat and so it would be like just if you were cooking and you had a gas range in your house if you wanted that you turn on the the the range top what do you do you you turn on the knob he goes click click click whoosh right and when that stove top goes

whoosh that would be like thermogenesis inside your body it's got to draw down a fuel might come from the gasline to a tank by the side of your house or from the town for example in your body uh in order to when when you feel something really cold in your stomach activates those temperature sensors all right it sends a signal time to click click click whoosh and the fuel it's got to draw from comes from harmful extra body fat all right so my hypothesis as a scientist and I'm just speaking uh candidly with you sort

of as an idea because a lot of others really smart people have been head scratching trying to figure out how could ice cream possibly benefit heart health my idea is that the cold temperature fires up your thermostat uh you have thermogenesis it's got a draw down Fuel and it burns down extra harmful body fat which then lowers inflammation and it actually can help be helpful for uh lowering the risk of cardiovascular disease much more research needs to be done but that's my hypothesis and I'm just telling you sharing with you how a scientist thinks about

it now a lot of caveats to this first if you're going to enjoy ice cream don't think about it as a something that's good for your heart and don't so for that reason don't be eating it all the time but here are the types of ice cream that you definitely want to avoid if you want to protect your health all right first don't eat sugarfree ice cream this is becoming increasingly popular people are looking for diet versions um of various types of favorite foods well sugar-free ice cream contains artificial sweeteners and we're beginning to realize

more and more that these artificial sweeteners actually damage or even kill our healthy gut bacteria our gut microbiome and your gut microbiome is one of the most precious defenses you have in fact I write about the gut microbiome is one of your body's five Health defense systems you got androgenesis you've got stem cells you've got microbiome you've got your DNA protection you've got your immunity and the gut microbiome is uh one of your health defenses so you don't want to mess that up all right sugar-free ice cream with artificial sweeteners messes up your gut microbiome

when you mess up your gut microbiome all right inflammation goes up in your body your lipid control uh starts to go Haywire so metabolic you're less healthy and because your gut is connected to your brain it can even affect your mood which you don't want to actually do all right so the first type of ice cream to avoid is the I kind of ice cream sugar-free ice cream second type of ice cream to avoid is dairy free ice cream now I know dairyfree fat-free a lot of people actually are going for this because it sounds

healthier right wrong and here's why dairyfree ice cream is packed with emulsifiers now an emulsifier is really a chemical added by a food manufacturer in order to be able to create the texture it's called mouth feel that makes it similar to the real deal the full fat ice cream full Dairy ice cream if you want to make it a low-fat dairyfree ice cream tastes like Dairy ice cream you got to add these thickeners to it that actually create that same familiar uh texture of ice cream in your mouth guess what emulsifiers kagenin polysorbate 80 other

types of emulsifiers are now also being discovered to harm your gut microbiome all right harm your gut microbiome inflammation goes up your immune system as goes down your lipid metabolism goes hay wire and that gut brain connection starts to be uh problematic and so might affect your mood all right so avoid sugar-free ice cream avoid dairyfree ice cream and then comes a couple of I consider them no-brainers but I'm going to say them anyway because it's actually pretty hard to avoid all right third Ice Cream to avoid don't eat ice creams with bright artificial colors

all right these are colors that don't naturally exist in nature if you see an ice cream you know you're you're peering over the counter and you're looking at what kind of ice cream you want and there's one that's bright blue blue pretty much guarantee you that's artificial coloring if you see what's bright orange probably artificial coloring if you see Rainbow all right probably artificial coloring you don't want to have artificial coloring those are synthetic chemicals that can actually affect your gut microbiome uh they uh can actually put a burden uh on your cause oxidative stress

in your body as well just stay away from artificial colors if it looks really attractive if it looks like it came out of one of these bright magic markers and it's ice cream as visually appealing as it might be and believe me when I was a kid I love that bright colored stuff stay away from it artificial not good for you all right check this out I've got a guide on the foods to naturally balance hormones for women I picked five foods that are packed with disease fighting bioactives that are specially impactful for women and

I want to share with you it's yours right now for free in the caption below all you have to do is click on the link below the video and the fourth kind of ice cream to stay away from are ice creams made with artificial flavors if you've ever had a natural ice cream made with real genuine fruit flavoring you'll realize first of all it tastes really amazing all right if they use really ripe fruit and make it the right way sometimes it's called artisanal ice cream it's super expensive most people don't want to afford to

buy that kind of a thing but that's going to be a little bit healthier than the one that actually tastes like Ultra watermelon Ultra pineapple you know these flavors that like make your mouth explode with delight because it tastes so much like the fruit grape you know look it takes a lot of in super intense grapes in order to be able to create that you know conquered grape grape jelly like Flavor that's going to be artificial all right fruity flavor as they call them but they actually taste too intense usually artificial fake fruit flavoring not

the real fruit itself um and that's not going to be um good for you because those artificial flavorings are synthetic chemicals that you don't want to be introduced in your body all right that is something you definitely want to avoid and by the way I don't think I need to tell you that there's no natural flavor called bubblegum or cotton candy all right and those that bright pink you might see or bright blue you might see with a bubble gum or cotton candy not natural coloring either all right so those are the four ice creams

you want to actually avoid avoid sugar-free ice cream avoid dairyfree ice cream avoid ice cream with artificial nuclear bright brilliant colors and R avoid ice creams that made with artificial flavoring these like super tasting flavors they do taste great all manufactured uh engineered to make you love the flavor not healthy for you okay so here's a few other tips for health if you want to enjoy ice cream first you might want to consider swapping the ice cream for sorbet sorbet is more often made with real fruit now both ice cream and sorbet have a lot

of sugar so you got to limit what you consume to just a small amount how small look if uh I were your health coach and I told and and I would give you permission to eat one I would say look if you want to be healthy want to cut it out but if you have to have one I'm one of those like coaches that says life is for the living so every now and then it's okay to treat yourself food you know food for health shouldn't be about deprivation 100% but if you're going to have

um ice cream or sorbet sorbet being a little bit healthier all right just eat one scoop one scoop rather than three scoops which I might be tempted to order right like we all walk into the ice cream store and we feel like we're kids again oh but we're adults we can afford it so I'll take those three scoops that you didn't get when you were a kid you shouldn't get it as an adult either all right so finally let me just remind you again ice cream is made with added sugar so it should stay a

treat a rare treat not a regular staple and don't order the ice cream sunday you know that dish that's got three scoops of ice cream and a banana and chocolate and all this other stuff piled on top of it just get one scoop of your favorite all right a cup or a cone is fine but skip the whipped cream skip the sprinkles or the jimmies that they call them or if you're in the United Kingdom they call them hundreds of thousands skip that and skip the caramel sauce as well all right less is better when

it comes to ice cream and natural is going to be the best and even that you want to cut down or cut out keep ice cream a treat you got it and just remember loaded with dairy fat added sugar and emulsifiers any kind of ice cream has some emulsifiers um and this can actually harm your gut microbiome but if you are going to eat ice cream do it only every now and then avoid dairy free sugar-free artificial flavoring artificial coloring I'm often asked a number of questions by viewers just like you in the comments below

so I thought I'd answer some of them here so here's the first one what are some of the healthier desserts people should opt to eat instead of ice cream for uh Better Health well my answer is that they should try to go Asian and eat some seasonal fruit now if you actually go to Asia China Japan Vietnam Thailand you'll actually be surprised that for dessert instead of serving pie or cake often times your gracious host or your friend friends or family members will serve you a fruit like oranges one of my favorites you know sliced

oranges just on a plate beautiful uh after a meal usually a a lovely plant-based meal uh where meat is actually uh the side or you have a little bit of it it's a kind of a condiment um but here's the thing about oranges the uh citric acid you know the tanginess of oranges actually cuts the grease uh or oil from any meal and it leaves your mouth with a nice fresh taste so this is actually one of the secret sauces of a kind of an Asian fruit dessert and you can do it anywhere right I

mean just find some seasonal fruit Citrus happens to be one of my favorites but you want to get fruit if you're going to serve it this way when it's actually seasonal and freshcious now when it comes to oranges here's what you get you get a hit of vitamin C C ascorbic acid which is uh anti-inflammatory so again instead of even you get the sweet sort of the Sweet Tooth uh satisfied you also get the uh nutrient dense benefits of a fruit and for oranges that also includes nenin it's a bioactive that improves your circulation also

anti-inflammatory and neogen and also helps to fight fight harmful body fat so it's good for your metabolism as well so instead of a piece of cake or a piece of or a slice of pie you wind up having oranges to a little sweet but it's got a lot of other anti-inflammatory uh blood vessel uh improving and Metabolism improving fat burning benefits as well now orange slices also have dietary fiber and dietary fiber is good for our gut microbiome gut microbiome the 39 trillion healthy bacteria that live in our gut you know we don't feel them

when they're doing really well and are healthy but they need to be fed so uh one of the things that we do is eat prebiotics and these are polyphenols in our foods and dietary fiber our gut bacteria loves to eat dietary fiber the more dietary fiber we eat the happier the gut bacteria are and they pay us back by producing these metabolites and these metabolites are we have their names we know they're short chain fatty acids proprionate acetate berate you don't have to remember all these details all you know is that when you actually have

an orange you get all these polyphenols you get dietary fiber uh and the dietary fiber it means good gut health now good gut health also means good brain health and so now you get another benefit uh for having oranges for example for dessert all right now another choice for a summer fruit could be watermelon in the summer uh you know slices of watermelon on a plate also commonly seen in some cultures uh you know I've been in I had watermelon as a dessert in places like Italy hot weather places or in Asia now what's good

about watermelon is that first of all it's not heavy it's light mostly liquid all right good for hydration uh the original watermelons by the way came from Africa and they weren't red they were white and they weren't sweet they were really used for hydration but over the years they were bred to be red and sweet and what the the redness and watermelons that we see today actually are is due to lopine lycopene is a bioactive it's a carotenoid and guess what lopine has antioxidant benefits lopine protects your DNA all right so that's good for preventing

mutations and lycopene is also good for metabolism because it helps to burn excess harmful body fat all right that's all the benefit of watermelon and it's also got a light sweet fresh taste all right it's a pallet cleanser after a meal not heavy it's very light it's a great sweet choice to have and not filling as all right after a meal you don't want to feel bloated and heavy sometimes you know the regular Desserts when you eat something Big And Chunky and heavy it's like takes you or tips you over the edge not fruit not

watermelon all right another summer Choice uh that I like um again it's all seasonal depends on where you live but a ripe juicy Peach love Peach uh peaches have chlorogenic acid that's the bioactive potent anti-inflammatory uh effects or a mango I love uh mangoes mangoes have dietary fiber it's kind of stringy uh good for the gut microbiome and it's got mangiferin which is a natural bioactive that protects your stem cells and your stem cells inside your body help you heal from the inside out so these are just some of the desserts that are not cake

not cookies not pie all right um and they still are sweet um natural sweets from fruits but they're very nutrient-dense in the sense they give you polyphenols and dietary fiber so you get not only your sweet tooth uh tickled but you also get all this other health benefit lights up your health defenses in many cases lights up your metabolism uh as well that's what I would actually uh recommend uh as an alternative to eating ice cream or some of the other desserts really you can have better choices all right another question is that is this

for people who enjoy dessert always after dinner time how bad is that for your health and how do you break this addiction um of wanting to have a treat after dinner all right let me clear up something because I actually like to kind of um take out Thor's hammer and Bash down myths first of all there's nothing wrong with having dessert very natural no big deal after a meal if the custom is to have something sweet that's not a problem I think sugar gets V vilified now now you too much sugar is actually bad for

you but it's okay you want to have a little hit of sweetness after dinner not a problem the key is deciding what kind of dessert uh you're going to actually have all right you want to get that hit of sweetness but you also want to have the least amount of harm uh to your health and ideally you know flip the script on its head and do something good for your health so obviously rule number one the less sugar the better so it is you know I I wouldn't I don't like to use the word like

addiction most people aren't addicted to dessert but most people enjoy something sweet they enjoy a dessert the less sugar you have the better it is again uh I sort of invite people to take a look at other cultures and that's what I do when I travel to do research and what I found is that in Japan and China the desserts even their cakes um and pastries are not that sweet you know compared to you know like a a chocolate cake or you know buttercream cake you know they're they're light and fluffy uh and not so

sweet they don't have anywhere near the amount of sugar you'd actually you find in an American or European Cake so um you know you can actually take a look at some of these uh Asian B baked desserts uh as an inspiration if you want to do some research online on that and look for recipes and give it a shot they are not sweet but they're absolutely delicious and the key to me is that they're actually very very light and you don't want to eat a lot of it anyway okay um uh otherwise that's calorie overload

now the other thing uh as I mentioned before is that you can actually have a sweet a fruit dessert fruits give you that hit of sweetness but they offer you a nutrient-dense polyphenol Rich dietary fiber rich alternative that actually adds to your health okay so even you get a little bit of sugar from the fruit you get so much more that's actually good for your health defenses good for androgenesis good for your stem cells regenerative system good for your gut microbiome good for your DNA protection through antioxidant activity and good for your immune system by

lowering inflammation and in some cases boosting your immunity all right so again fruits are a really really great choice now if you're going to get fruits um and you want to get the most out of the fruits get them seasonally get them ripe okay they're actually going to taste a lot better and the point isn't to you know be a robot and go after fruits but enjoy something that's really delicious at the peak of its ripeness where it's going to taste really really great by the way at the time that the fruits are rip that's

usually when they have the highest amount of polyphenols uh as well all right so just enjoy it enjoy the fruits and if you really want to Ace out on your bioactives try organic fruits because fruits that are grown in the most natural state organic State no artificial pesticides you know um they have to work a little harder to stay healthy because of all the natural bugs and uh little insects are nibbling on a Le leaves and stems and part of how that plant heals itself is by producing more of these bioactives so naturally grown plants

have more healthful bioactives and the final thing I'll say about dessert is you know what I recommend you stay away from try to stay away from pre-made ultr processed desserts or elements for the desserts because they're going to contain a lot of preservatives emulsifiers additives and probably artificial coloring artificial flavoring all right you know sprinkles or jimmies or hundreds of the thousands on ice cream you know that stuff is all candy uh and with a lot of food coloring in it and you also want to stay away from things like uh whipped cream and a

can all right that's probably not pure whipped cream not as good as regular whipped cream that you would make yourself but also it's an ultr processed food or another example would be artificially flavored and colored jells you think that uh uh you know the gelatin actually comes in nuclear green or nuclear red you know they look like a green light or a red light no way that's all artificial coloring you want to stay away from that you want to stay from package cookies all that kind of stuff shortening you know uh you know even even

you go to a bakery to go buy it a lot of times they actually use shortening uh uh to be able to make the cookies what I would say I I just kind of recommend trying some fruit all right and that's really kind of a good option oranges mangoes pineapple and you cut them up small if you want to give people some toothpicks to pick at that's a great way to actually have a dessert next question what's the best way to break a sugar craving and overcome that sweet addiction like I said uh like I

it's natural to like sugar and our brains are wired for it but our brains are also uh can also make us crave things to an unhealthy degree so you want to actually break unhealthy sugar Cravings all right so here's just a couple of tips that things to try that might be helpful for you number one if you want to chew some gum all right it's been shown that chewing gum actually distracts your brain and kind of veers your attention away from uh wanting to crave sweets but if you're going to chew gum make sure it's

not sugarfree gum I remember when sugar-free gum first came out it became very very popular the healthy gum right actually it's not that healthy and the reason is it's now been discovered that artificial sweeteners can damage your gut microb iome a healthy bacteria in your gut and you don't want to be damaging your health your gut microbiome your gut microbiome your Healthy gut bacteria helps you lower inflammation helps to boost your immune system signals your brain to put you in a good mood all kinds of and helps your metabolism helps uh control your blood lipid

so you don't want to be messing with your microbiome sugarfree gum will do that just get regular gum all right that's fine another way to actually uh get distracted from a sugar craving is to go out outside for a walk because it's been shown that when you change your environment you know if you're starting to crave something you change it suddenly your brain it kind of shakes your reboots your brain uh going outside going for a walk breaks that brain spell of addiction uh it's a distraction uh and this time it's like kind a healthy

one because it actually breaks you away from something you might otherwise reach for that you're probably better off not reaching for something that is uh extra sweet uh added sugar now another way that you can actually kind of break the chain of addiction uh or break your sugar craving is actually to eat something salty have a little bite of something salty by eating something salty you sort of re you trick your brain you rewire your brain to go oh all right well I guess we can't eat sugar let's eat some salt and that can actually

satisfy a different part of your desire uh and then might not it might derail the sugar craving all right so you you get your taste bud to experience something the opposite of sweet salty that's a little trick to derail reboot um what your mind is actually telling you you should actually your reach for um and then here's the last kind of bit of wisdom I like to offer you is that if you really really like sweets and again look we're all human totally fine to like sweets like sugar very natural don't deprive yourself don't feel

like oh I can't have it nothing I'm I'm in jail I'm in Sugar jail you know what event you're not going to be able to stand it you're going to do Jailbreak and you're going to go after the bag of candy or whatever all right so a more reasonable way to approach in natural inclination to eat something sweet is just give yourself a little taste all right moderate little microscopic taste small taste tiny taste um to satisfied get a little sweet hit then walk away back away go do something else you got your little taste

takes a little self-control a little bit discipline but you know you can do it I'm sure of it all right so these are my tips to actually help you combat that suar craving hope you learned something new thanks for watching I'll see you next video hi there if you enjoyed watching this video I know you'll love the next one stay here and check it out and I'll see you there