That ACTUALLY tastes like ice cream! No joke. The brand is Halo Top. It’s low-calorie, high-protein, and low-sugar. The marketing arm for the company says “We use only the best, all-natural ingredients to craft our ice cream so that it tastes just like regular ice cream.”

Before I go on, my disclaimer: I am in no way connected with this company and am receiving no monetary compensation (not even a free pint for promoting these folks and their products). I’m jazzed about this stuff because my husband just had open heart, bypass surgery and has to eat a fat-free diet during his 2 month recuperation. From there it’ll be low fat for this ice-cream-loving fella. So to find a low fat ice cream that actually tastes good is a BIG DEAL to us; life will be OK again if he can have his ice cream now and then. And knowing heart disease and other health issues are pretty common now, I figured there may just be some of our readers that would be glad to know about this ice cream as well.

So anyway, back to the Halo Top. At first I was skeptical. “Yeh, yeh, we’ve heard it before.” And I wondered, if it’s low-sugar, what’s their sweetener? I sure hoped it wasn’t aspartame, Splenda, maltitol, etc. In short, they use organic stevia. Stevia is a plant native to Paraguay that’s been used to sweeten foods and beverages for more than 200 years. And, because it’s so tasty, the Halo company food scientists found they could use it as a sugar replacement. They also use Erythritol, which though it has a rather scientific-sounding name, is actually another all-natural sweetener found in fruits like pears and grapes. Though it’s technically a sugar alcohol, it's unlike the others (maltitol, for instance) because erythritol doesn’t affect blood glucose or cause bloating and gas.

OK, this sounds hopeful. So how does Halo Top stack compared to other ice creams we know and love? Here are the comparisons with 3 major brands:

WOW! For folks with any sort of diet restrictions, this is looking pretty good. Move over Haagen Daz!

Holy cow! Even though I’m a loyal Ben & Jerry’s fan, these numbers are looking awfully convincing. We may be jumping ship at our house.

Even though the differences are a little less, the numbers are still impressive. Halo Top is looking better and better!

But beyond numbers, there’s taste, right? So what do impartial taste-testers have to say about this “revolutionary” ice cream? There’s more good news:

• Cooking Light Magazine gave Halo Top’s “Mint Chip” the 2015 Taste Test Award. Their testers, admitted “unabashed ice cream gluttons,” raved about Halo Top in general.

• The folks at Prevention Magazine called Halo Top the BEST ice cream and gave it their “100 Clean Foods” Award.

• Editors and testers at the website, Buzz-Feed, tried Halo Top and called it “life changing!”

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  And the owner, writer of a super popular food website, Hungry Girl (www.hungry-girl.com), says this guilt-free ice cream is absolutely yummy.

• And the folks at the Healthy Eater website also found every flavor they tried really good. And they admit they went into their taste-tests with closed minds. One tester reported: “What really surprised me was that I could detect zero aftertaste which is usually typical for non-nutritive sweeteners. This is a win for me as I just won’t choose a low-calorie ice cream if it has a strange aftertaste.”

Flavor choices range from the typical chocolate, vanilla (vanilla bean), strawberry, to mocha chocolate, birthday cake, lemon cake, and the afore-mentioned mint chip. The majority of taste-testers said it was delicious and some said it seemed like a cross between ice cream and frozen yogurt. Everyone loved that it was sweetened with natural ingredients.

Presently it’s a little hard to find. But Halo Top’s website, www.halotop.com, has a WHERE TO BUY button that can help you out. Just plug in your zip code and a map with store names and addresses comes up for your locale.

The one downside might be cost. It’s a little pricey—depending on where you shop. But if we indulge only occasionally, and we’re no longer buying junk foods and other costly non-foods, then maybe the price of Halo Top is offset? That’s my thinking.

I’ll close with words from the Halo Top marketers: “We know it sounds too good to be true, so don’t just take our word for it – dig in and see for yourself just how good healthy ice cream can be!” Believe me, we’re counting the weeks at our house until we can do just that! Meanwhile, if any of you follow suit and give it a try, please report in. You’re the most reliable taste-testers we know!