The Brand Behind Great Value Ice Cream Probably Dominates Your Grocery Store Freezer Aisle

Frequent Walmart shoppers should be familiar with the Great Value brand, which offers numerous products, ranging from snacks to beverages to household supplies. Notably, Great Value products are often cheaper than the name brand counterparts. (We even have a list of must-have Great Value items that you can find for under 5 bucks.) One inexpensive Great Value product you may find yourself buying often is ice cream.

If you've purchased Great Value ice cream, you may have wondered if you're giving up quality for a lower price. However, what you may not know is that the brand behind Great Value is also responsible many of the recognizable name brands that dominate the freezer aisles at many stores. The company in question is Wells Dairy, which has been manufacturing ice cream since 1925. The other notable brands manufactured by Wells Dairy include Blue Bunny, Bomb Pop, Blue Ribbon Classics, and even the health-conscious Halo Top. 

Now that you know that multiple ice cream brands come from the same company, you may be wondering the best way to decide on a tub of Great Value ice cream. The only brand it's difficult to compare to is Halo Top — as a light ice cream brand, the ingredients, flavor, and even the price are going to be too different to fairly compare with Wal Mart's store brand. Nevertheless, we can look at the differences between Great Value and Wells Dairy's other brands. 

Although prices are subject to change, at the time of this writing, a 48-ounce container of Blue Bunny vanilla bean ice cream costs $3.87 at Walmart. Meanwhile, a comparable tub of vanilla bean Great Value costs $2.97. So, you'll save nearly a dollar, which can certainly add up over time.

Then, there's the ingredients to consider. Unfortunately, two Wells Dairy brands, Great Value and Blue Ribbon Classics, made our list of the ice cream brands with the highest and lowest quality ingredients — and fell into the lowest quality category. Specifically, we noted the use of ingredients such as high fructose corn syrup, additives, and preservatives.

However, not all of the ice cream varieties from these brands contain these ingredients. For example, Blue Bunny's vanilla bean ice cream contains only milk, cream, sugar, skim milk, egg yolks, natural flavors (including vanilla extract), and vanilla bean specks. Its Great Value counterpart contains the same ingredients (minus egg yolks) along with cellulose gum (a thickening agent) and corn syrup, which is used as a thickening agent as well a sweetener. Despite the fact that Great Value contains both sugar and corn syrup, the total amount of added sugar is similar to Blue Bunny — 13 versus 14 grams. In this case, it choosing the cheaper option may be a wise decision. All in all, it's worth examining each ice cream for the aspects that matter the most to you, whether that's quality of ingredients, sugar, or calories, before deciding between Great Value and a name brand from Wells Dairy.