Dr Oz: Frozen Yogurt VS Ice Cream + Healthy Fro-Yo Order

Dr Oz: The Truth About Frozen Yogurt

Dr Oz took a closer look at diet ice cream to find out if it’s truly a healthier option, but what about frozen yogurt? It’s been touted as having the same benefits as yogurt, with lower fat and calories than regular ice, but are we being fooled into eating glorified ice cream? First of all, frozen yogurt isn’t actually frozen yogurt. Mark Schatzker visited Culture in Brooklyn, New York where they still make frozen yogurt the old-fashioned way. Jenny, the owner, explained that they take liquid whey, add sugar, real strawberries for the strawberry flavor, then a lot of their own Greek yogurt. That is then blended to create their frozen yogurt.

As for chain frozen yogurt shops, they tend to make their fro-yo with a dry yogurt mix that contains just a small amount of dried yogurt a lot of other ingredients. That version is more like a frozen processed food, especially given that the flavoring comes from syrup, not real ingredients. The truth is that most fro-yo sold at popular chains isn’t even yogurt at all, but mostly just a bunch of chemicals.

Dr Oz: Fro-Yo VS Ice Cream

The truth is that frozen yogurt is more popular than ever but you may just be better off eating regular ice cream. If you eat a half cup serving of vanilla flavored ice cream, you’ll ingest about 36 grams of sugar, as opposed to 32 in frozen yogurt. Ice cream would have 19 grams of fat while frozen yogurt would have just 2 grams of fat. Ice cream has about 373 calories for a half cup, while frozen yogurt is 200 calories. When you look at it that way, frozen yogurt seems healthier.

Mark explained that the problem is that people go from thinking it’s a healthier alternative, to it being healthy, and that’s not the same thing. Also, when people get frozen yogurt, they tend to throw on a bunch of toppings, which add to the fat, sugar, and calories.

Dr Oz: Probiotics In Frozen Yogurt

To find out if frozen yogurt has the same amount of probiotics as yogurt, they sent six brand and 19 frozen yogurts to be tested for live and active cultures. When real Greek yogurt was tested, they found 36 million cultures per gram. The best frozen yogurts had 700,000, which is less than 2% of what you’re getting in a quality Greek yogurt. Then it goes down to 300,000 and keeps going downhill in terms of live cultures. 

Dr Oz: Tips For Ordering Healthy Frozen Yogurt

There is no federal standard for the word yogurt, which means companies are providing people with a product that is different than what they believe. To be sure you’re getting a somewhat healthy bowl of frozen yogurt, nutritionist Sharon Richter suggested you add your toppings first. Instead of going for the candy toppings, reach for nuts and fresh fruit. You should also stick to one flavor because it tends to be more satisfying. Original tends to have the least amount of sugar.

You should also try to keep your order to under $3 which is about 3 oz worth.