Is a Dessert With These Ingredients Considered Healthy or Is It Another Food That People Consider Healthy but in Reality, It Is Not?
15 Dec 2025 · 11 min
JJ Virgin breaks down a dessert with almonds, butter, erythritol, cream, 90% cacao, inulin, and stevia. She likes the low sugar and dark chocolate but flags the dairy for sensitive people and notes inulin can cause gas. For most people, occasional servings are fine.
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Is a dessert with these ingredients considered healthy? Or is it another food that people consider healthy, but in reality is not foreign? This is JJ Virgin, four time New.
York Times bestselling author, celebrity nutrition expert.
And fitness hall of famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions, and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the health expert Maddalena from Instagram. Ass. Is this dessert with these ingredients considered healthy? Or is it just another food that people consider healthy, but in reality it's not? Okay, so here's what's in it. Here's what she posted. And the biggest question I want to know is, well, what the heck was that? First ingredient. Almonds. Next.
Butter.
Next. Erythritol. Next. Cream. Next. 90% cacao chocolate. Next. Inulin. Next.
Water.
Next. Natural vanilla extract. Next. Next, raising agent using disodium disphosphate, sodium hydrogen carbonate and rice flour. And then stevia glycosides. Any ideas? I'll be right back with the answer.
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All right, okay. So I so want to know what the heck this is, but I don't know what it is because she didn't tell me what it was, which I think was even kind of more fun. Um, but let me just break this down for. I think the bigger question is, how do you read a label? Now, ideally, ideally, we're using minimally processed foods. And someone asked me the other day, like, your bars are processed. Yes, we're going to use processed food, but you want to use foods that are minimally processed with ingredients that you understand and that are safe and okay to use, you know, on the long haul. Unless it's like every once a year. But even then, no artificial sweeteners, right? No artificial colorings. Get that stuff out. So when you're looking at a label, it's all about being able to pronounce the things, know what they are. Minimally processed, and what comes first is what's the most of. Now, I do not have the calories in here, so I don't know where the calories are coming from in terms of carbs, sugar, fat and protein. But I can make some pretty good guesses just based on what I'm seeing here that this is super duper low sugar. Because the only place really that they'd be getting a little sugar is from the natural vanilla extract that has a little invert sugar syrup and glouce coast syrup. But truthfully, that is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. It's number eight on the list. So it's basically irrelevant. They used erythritol and stevia to sweeten, and those are two sweeteners that I am totally cool with. So the sweeteners that I'm good with, allulose, monk fruit, also called lohango, erythritol, xylitol, if you can tolerate it, and inulin can also act and chicory can act as little sweeteners. They are prebiotics, they're good for your gut. Sometimes they can make you gassy. So you'll have to see with this one if it kind of puts you over the edge or not. But again, that inulin is number six on the list. And it can be great, it can be great in healing for your gut. But also prebiotics, they feed the good bacteria in your gut, but they also can make you gassy. So. So buyer beware. All right, so that's that. Sweeteners. Oh. So monk fruit, xylitol, erythritol, allulose, stevia and then things like inulin, glycine, cinnamon, vanilla. Vanilla's got some natural sweet to it. So I wish they hadn't put the sugar in it. But it's so far down the list and they use so little. Not worried about it. So the big first ingredient, almonds. Awesome. Next one, butter. If you're not dairy sensitive, butter and cream are fine but you know you're going to get some casein in there. So if you're dairy sensitive, this would be a no go for you. I love the 90% cacao chocolate. That's an A. And then there's the vanilla. Here's where the issue is. And then of course the very end, stevia. Here's where the issue is, is this raising agent that's got disodium dish phosphate and sodium hydrogen carbonate and rice flour. Okay, so let's talk about sodium hydrogen carbonate. It's baking soda. That's all it is. I wish they could have just said baking soda but legally they probably couldn't. Rice flour. Okay. Disodium dysphosphate. I went and pulled up some info on it and really what it does is regulates the acidity of food, thickens it, stabilizes it, maintains it the proper moisture level and can help keep oil and water based ingredients which would separate together. And it's used in a bunch of stuff like everything from bakery products to ice cream to cereal to chewing gum to chocolate, salt substitutes, soup, blah blah, blah, blah, blah. So it's the only thing I saw here with this is that if you have a health condition where you need to have a low phosphorus diet because it comes from the mineral phosphate and sodium, then you should be careful. Here's the thing, like ideally we're, we're really minimizing these things. I would love it if it wasn't in there, but I don't think this thing eaten every once in a while would be an issue. My bigger concern is the dairy in it, so that's what we will have to see.
Okay.
This is JJ with Apple Ask the Health Expert. I do this five times a week, so make sure you never miss a show by going to subscribetojay.com.
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