Huh

I get the NSCA (National Strength and Conditioning Association) journal sent to me though email and occasionally read it. The recent one talks about sugar in our diet. Added sugar actually. Women are now recommended to have no more than 25g per day and men 37.5g (yeah they pretty much get the best of all worlds). So out of curiosity I decided to check up on the details of frozen yogurt. It's got less fat than regular ice cream but I've heard it's usually loaded with sugar in order to make up for the lack of taste from lower fat (for those who don't know- fat tastes fabulous- so does salt and sugar).

Since we all know ice cream can be absolutely horrendous to our health, I picked a relatively healthy kind to compare to the frozen yogurt. I chose Dreyers slow churned chocolate ice cream to compare to yogurtland's dutch chocolate frozen yogurt. For 4 ounces (half a cup) here's the results: the yogurt had 44 more calories, no fat (compared to 4g for the ice cream), no cholesterol (compared to 20mg in the ice cream), twice the sodium (68.8mg) of ice cream, twice the carbs (34.4), 7g more sugar, slightly more protein (0.6g) and 6% less calcium. The bottom line? If your cholesterol is high, you'd be better off with the yogurt, otherwise the ice cream is a healthier pick. For the ice cream, 3g of the total 4g of fat were saturated which isn't great. However there were no trans-fats in it. I'm thinking the extra carbs, calories, sodium and sugar in frozen yogurt would probably outweigh the measely 4g of fat in ice cream. Again, this was only for plain chocolate- no toppings added... and only for half a cup. If you tend to eat a cup (or more) of ice cream or frozen yogurt, you can do the math.

For info on yogurtland's nutritional values: http://www.yogurt-land.com/
For info on Dreyer's nutrional values: http://dreyers.slowchurned.com/idol
And for the NSCA Journal: http://www.nsca-lift.org/perform/

Oh and by the way, if you're looking to reduce your sugar intake by choosing Dreyer's No-sugar added, you'd be doubling your sodium intake. Generally not a good idea. Remember if you're taking something out, there's probably more of something else in it. Bummer huh?