Ice Cream (Vanilla)
Food · Dairy · Food, Typed Supps
Mostly air, sugar and cream — with more calcium than you would guess.
Stage by stage
- Cold masking (Taste receptors): Cold suppresses sweet perception, so the sugar is higher than it tastes.
- Fat effect (Gastric emptying): Milk fat slows emptying, flattening the glucose curve versus a liquid sugar load.
- Calcium (Skeletal supply): The dairy base supplies around 93 mg calcium per 100 g, plus vitamin A.
- Overrun (Product structure): Up to half the volume is air, so a scoop is less food than it appears.
Timing
No timing relevance. Portion size, and the fact that overrun makes volume misleading, are what matter.
Time to effect
- <1 hr: Glycaemic response, attenuated by fat.
- —: No cumulative benefit or harm beyond overall diet.
Allergens
Contains: Milk. May contain: Eggs, Tree nuts. Derived from what this food is, not from a product label.
Eating patterns
Fits: Vegetarian, Pescatarian, Halal, Kosher, Gluten-free.
Satiety
96 on the satiety index, where white bread is 100 — low. Measured by Holt et al. (1995).
Environmental footprint
3.2 kg CO2e and 628 litres of freshwater per kg, matched to "Milk" in Poore & Nemecek (2018), Science 360.
Cost band
Mid — roughly £8 per kg, as a band midpoint rather than a price.
Key nutrients
Nutrition per 100g
- Calories: 193
- Protein: 3.7g
- Carbohydrate: 20.5g
- of which sugars: 18.4g
- Fat: 11.1g
- of which saturated: 7.5g
- Sodium: 48mg
Food vs. supplement
At matched sugar, ice cream is more satiating than a soft drink — the fat and protein do work that liquid sugar simply does not.
Kitchen tip
Serve into a bowl rather than eating from the tub — with overrun varying so much between products, volume is a poor guide to how much you have had.
Common myth
“Frozen yoghurt is the healthier dessert.” In reality: It is usually lower in fat, and often higher in sugar to compensate — total energy frequently lands in the same place. The live cultures most people assume they are getting are largely absent from commercial frozen yoghurt, since freezing and the sugar load do them no favours.
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