Is Portion Control Possible When It Comes To Ice Cream?

Is Portion Control Possible When It Comes To Ice Cream?

Walking down the dessert aisle in a grocery store can be a harrowing experience. You may come in looking for a few individual ice cream cups, and end up walking out with enough frozen treats to open your own wholesale company. Who could blame you? Ice cream is delicious. If only it could be made out of some magical ab-busting super ingredient.

A recent survey surmised that most Americans eat ice cream, frozen yogurt, or gelato
28.5 times a year. That doesn’t sound like much, but surprisingly, the people who put on the most weight from Rocky Road or Moose Tracks don’t eat it more often, they simply take in bigger portions. That’s right, it’s not how often you consume it, it’s the amount. This may sound like common sense, but you would be surprised that out of the 90% of U.S. households that stock their freezers with sweet treats, less than half practice portion control.

Smaller Bites For A Smaller Belly

Many companies that produce frozen treats are now offering custom ice cream cups that come with mini tasting spoons. These are just like the plastic colored spoons that you might use at your local frozen yogurt shop. They come attached to multi-packs of plastic ice cream cups, as well as many types of frozen yogurt and gelato snacks. You may wonder why companies would bother including sample spoons when you could just use a smaller utensil of your own. Well, studies have shown that people that buy packs of multiple flavors tend to dive in to all of them at once. With the tiny tasting spoons, ice cream fans are more likely to sample the flavors in a more conservative manner, and with much smaller portions. It’s like having your own ice cream parlor in your kitchen.

Great For The Eaters And The Makers
A conservative estimate shows that there are around 1.5 billion gallons of ice cream-like deserts made every year in America. Still, the most popular flavor is vanilla. With these taster spoons, families are expanding their palettes without expanding their bellies. This also means that the ice cream industry is creating more and more flavors for us to enjoy. Sometimes the best things come in small packages.