Ice cream is undoubtedly everyone’s favourite delicacy. When the temperature outside reaches nearly 30 degrees Celsius, we are hot and thirsty, ice cream can be a real godsend. Children love it, adults love it. Today we would like to stay on their subject, but in relation to our diet. Is ice cream caloric? How does it affect our diet? Is it a fact or a myth that they help us lose weight?
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According to many reports, ice cream can cause not weight gain, but on the contrary – weight loss. But is it even possible? How? Many think that to digest it, we need a greater dose of energy than they can provide. Because of their low temperature, the body must use a lot of energy to be able to heat it in the stomach to the right temperature. Is this even possible? Can we eat our favourite food and still lose weight?
Let’s start from the beginning. There are several types of frozen desserts, such as:
• Sorbets and water based ice cream – they consist of juices or fruit purees. In addition, they have a minimum amount of fat and, unfortunately, a very large amount of sugar.
• Dairy – they consist of milk, egg yolks, sugar and vanilla, as well as specific flavour additives
• Cream – they consist mainly of cream and milk and are certainly fatter than the dairy option.
It’s true that ice cream is sweet; however, looking at its composition and caloric content, many of them are definitely better in this respect, compared to various types of chocolates and bars. Their big advantage is that they contain large amounts of water, which makes them fall out better than other sweets. Which have the least calories? Sorbets and water based ice cream, because they do not contain cream or milk. The most caloric are those based on cream and one such serving can contain a lot of calories. What is especially important, the ice itself can be quite good in terms of low calories, but the biggest problem is all the additions: wafer, sprinkles, sauces, cookies, topping and other treats that boost calorific value to a very high degree.
Ice cream slims – truth or myth
Many people wonder if ice cream can actually slim us down. Because if, for example, the ice cream scoop has 40 calories, and we need 50 calories to warm it up in the stomach, aren’t we actually losing weight here? Unfortunately not, which will make all these people, who wanted to switch to an ice cream diet right away, sad. These types of theories appear on television as an excellent marketing ploy and an attempt to evoke sensation. The truth is, however, that we need only a few calories to warm up a portion of ice cream in the stomach. The theory of specific heat works perfectly here, i.e. the amount of energy we need to heat a given product by 1 degree Celsius, as well as the theory of melting heat, i.e. the amount of energy needed to change the state of matter from solid to liquid. So let’s look at an example:
We have a scoop of ice cream, which is 45g and has 50 calories. Its temperature is around – 10 degrees Celsius and we want to heat it to 0 degrees Celsius. The heating process amounted to 0.2 calories. Further, while melting ice, we consume about 3.6 calories. When the ice becomes liquid, we need to heat it to our body temperature, for which we need about 1.7 calories. So, as you can see, eating a scoop of ice cream that has 50 calories, you can only burn 5.5 calories while eating the ice cream alone.
So there is absolutely no possibility that ice cream cause a deficit in the human body and lead to weight loss. What’s more, they are high in calories, and if you’re not careful you will gain weight instead of losing it.
Ice cream – calories alone are not enough
We focused here on the calorie content of ice cream and on the issue of how they affect the weight loss process. However, it’s worth noting that the source of calories also plays a very important role, because 50 calories of protein are completely different to 50 calories of simple carbohydrates, right? In the case of ice cream, we are dealing here with carbohydrates and not those needed, necessary and healthy. The main ingredient is glucose-fructose syrup, which is the worst evil you can ever choose. When buying ice cream in the store, it’s definitely worth checking the label. It may turn out that ice cream is not all the same. The shorter the label, the better the ice cream. And it’s not just about the calorie count, but just a look at it a bit deeper and choose ice cream that is the least harmful.
So eat ice cream or not eat?
It’s difficult to answer this question unequivocally, because everything really depends on the point of view. Nobody will stop you from eating them and it’s an individual matter for everyone what they want to do, what they choose and what their diet should look like. It’s true that these ice cream from the store are not good products and eating them affects both our appearance and our health. We should avoid such ice cream. However, if it comes to homemade ice cream, here we do not have to give up these delicacies, but we should know moderation in eating them as much as possible. Homemade ice cream does not have to contain sugar, dyes, emulsifiers and other additives that are very harmful to our health. So without spending a lot, we can quickly and easily prepare really good quality ice cream.
How to make homemade ice cream?
For sorbets and water based ice cream, all you need to do is freeze the juice or fruit cocktail by pouring it into ice cream moulds or yogurt containers. In the case of cream ice cream, milk is simply added to the fruit and numerous additives so that the whole thing tastes really only of its kind.
In the summer, we do not have to completely give them up, but it’s worth maintaining moderation. Ice cream absolutely does not help us lose weight, on the contrary, eaten in excess can increase our weight. It’s worth making homemade ice cream, because they are the healthiest, and try to avoid shopping at wide angle. Because if we’re in full health and excellent figure, if we have ice cream it should only be the home made one.
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