What the current froyo renaissance is really about

Like embellished denim and indie sleaze, frozen yogurt is back.

The signs of the froyo renaissance are everywhere. First, like any food trend worth its mettle, acquiring the treat at a hip purveyor might include a long line. In New York City, wait times could be upward of an hour and might include hairstyling or a DJ while you cool your heels. Meanwhile, ice cream upstarts like Van Leeuwen have started introducing their own froyo offerings. And then there are the many wellness influencers freezing their beloved yogurt at home with a few dollops of chocolate or peanut butter for a DIY “indulgence.”

The third wave of froyo resembles the previous crazes in one key way: The dessert is still marketed and perceived as a healthier choice than other treats. Every time it comes out of hibernation, frozen yogurt has revealed something about the diet culture of the moment, and this resurgence is no different.

This go-round, the emphasis is on froyo’s super ingredients — namely, the probiotics and protein in each bite. Mythos Greek Frozen Yogurt, for instance, promises “godly probiotics in every bite...supporting gut health and overall wellness,” as well as “prebiotics, probiotics, postbiotics, and enzymes to support your digestive, metabolic, mental, and cognitive health.” It’s all about highlighting what the treat does have, whereas previous froyo fads differentiated the dessert by underscoring what it lacked, namely: fat, lots of calories.

On the surface, today’s wellness culture focuses on being additive as opposed to depriving yourself and counting calories, which we saw in previous iterations. The idea is balance: Balanced diet, balanced gut. The word “holistic” gets thrown around a lot. But the same motivation — a desire for thinness — underpins it, even if the language has become less explicit. And that’s exactly what we’re seeing in every swirl of the latest froyo renaissance.

Liz Moskow, who predicts food trends as a principal at consultancy Bread and Circus, didn’t have to strain her third eye to foresee the resurgence of frozen yogurt. “The buzz words in the wellness realm — longevity, gut health, bone health, high protein — all lead back to yogurt,” she told Vox. She described frozen yogurt in particular as “that permissible indulgent way to get more protein in a dessert moment.”

Frozen yogurt first took off in the 1980s, as Americans obsessed over health and exercise — including President Ronald Reagan, who set up a gym at the White House. It was the heyday of fitness stars like Jane Fonda and Richard Simmons. The treat promised all the enjoyment of “naughty” frozen desserts, like ice cream, without the fat. Imagine: A guilty pleasure sans guilt. TCBY (full name: The Country’s Best Yogurt) was the standard bearer of the era.

But the collapse of the low-fat diet trend, and consumers’ desire for overall low-calorie treats as opposed to just low-fat ones, brought an end to froyo’s first wave. “When you remove fat, you have to add flavor, typically with sugar,” Moskow said. Froyo’s status as the healthy alternative lost credibility once overall calorie counts came into play.

When froyo reemerged in the 2000s and broke wide in the early 2010s, tabloids and Tumblr were awash in a toxic sea of body shaming. This time, the flavor du jour was “tart,” which played up the natural taste of the yogurt and gave it another veneer of health. After all, it wasn’t sweet and rich like ice cream. At destinations like Pinkberry and Menchies, you self-served your yogurt and piled on toppings from a well-stocked buffet of options. And sure, you could opt for a mountain of fresh fruit, but you could also select gummy bears, Reese’s Pieces, and other confections. So, yet again, froyo receded “when vilification of sugar started happening,” Moskow said.

And now, we’re back in the ring with froyo for another round, amid an intense cultural focus on GLP-1s, proteinmaxxing, and gut health. This time, there are a lot of scientific terms getting thrown around. The website for Culture An American Yogurt Company, which has two outposts in New York City, cites the World Health Organization and Harvard Medical School to vaunt the benefits of its probiotic cultures and names the specific bacteria strains they use (Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus, Streptococcus thermophilus, Lactobacillus acidophilus, Bifidobacterium lactis, in case you were curious). The toppings on offer at many of these shops — fresh fruit, manuka honey, organic dates, and granola — also provide a halo of health. They seem “better for you, and even a little more posh,” Moskow said.

While probiotics definitely take center stage this time, other ingredients are also getting their moment. For example, Meli Frozen Yogurt, in Miami Shores, promises six grams of protein per serving (and “zero regrets”). Yogurt Club in Manhattan briefly sold a banana milk-flavored froyo with collagen, which the company claimed in a social media post “improves skin/nail/hair health.”

Will eating froyo actually improve your digestive tract and confer all of these other health benefits? It depends. Dietary probiotics are generally good for you, and yogurt with live cultures is considered a high-quality source. But it’s not clear if having froyo every so often will do a ton for your microbiome. (Poppi, a soda that promised it was “gut healthy,” settled a lawsuit last year; the plaintiffs argued that the company improperly labeled and marketed its products, and that merely drinking one can wouldn’t benefit the gut.) As for collagen, however, studies about its effectiveness when ingested have been inconclusive or simply haven’t occurred. “There isn’t enough proof that taking collagen pills or consuming collagen drinks will make a difference in skin, hair, or nails,” Payal Patel, MD, and Maryanne Makredes Senna, MD, wrote for Harvard Health’s blog in 2023. And things weren’t looking much better as of 2025.

Still, the focus on hair, skin, and nails isn’t surprising in our current moment. “It’s a lot easier to say, ‘Well, I’m eating this for gut health’ instead of ‘I’m eating this because this whole cup has 80 calories,’” Mikala Jamison, writer of the Body Type newsletter and the forthcoming book The Forever Project, told Vox. The current iteration of froyo is intertwined with the broader trend of “clean” living and the “clean girl.” Take Mimi’s Frozen Yogurt, which is located near New York University and regularly has lines around the block. Mimi’s describes itself as “Clean & Natural Froyo…Light as air, full of care.” But “clean” is similar to “plant-based” or “natural” in that it doesn’t really have an agreed upon definition in the food world. It’s mostly vibes-based and can be as much about morality as much as it is about nutrition. Meanwhile, “light as air” isn’t particularly subtle. Mimi’s has collaborated with Shark Beauty to style people’s hair as they wait in line, further connecting frozen yogurt to a specific aesthetic. Mikono, which just went from pop-up to brick-and-mortar in Chicago, was part of a Porsche & Pilates event, tagging the Instagram post about it “#healthy.” Myka, a growing chain in more than 20 cities with long lines at its Paris outpost, says its product “is more than frozen yogurt: it is a way of understanding life. A way to enjoy what is simple, natural, and effortlessly beautiful.”

Jamison coined the term “luxe lean” to refer to the current cultural moment: “Your body needs to be lean, not fat, look like you work out a little bit. But also, you pair that with these luxury signifiers. You have a blowout, you have the expensive workout set, you have the nails, you have the glowing skin.” As she sees it, it’s a body type that is also a class and status signifier. You want to look good without implying that you tried to look good, while still communicating that looking this good costs money.

She wonders about the legacy of the body positivity movement. While some people have given up the pursuit of thinness and are making a concerted effort to build a world where women aren’t constantly denigrated for their weight, there is also an active cadre of people publicly advocating for being as skinny as possible, at the same time that GLP-1s are impacting every aspect of American life. And then, there are the people caught in the middle. “Maybe they do want to lose weight, but they don’t want to admit it because that doesn’t seem like the correct, feminist, progressive, body positivity whatever thing to do,” Jamison said.

And that’s where the current froyo trend stands: promising “wellness” while letting the impetus for it remain unsaid.

But if you simply love frozen yogurt, enjoy this renaissance while you can. Moskow expects it to “wax and wane” as it has in the past and, especially, as studies emerge that show the health benefits of ice cream. “I think we might be at peak yogurt.”