Ice cream may be poised to break out of its slump thanks to some better-for-you products. And while yogurt keeps growing, the pace of the growth has slowed, and unit sales dipped into negative territory in the first quarter.

Looking at the Top 10 ice cream brands two of the biggest winners have been Dreyer's Grand Light and Breyer's Carbsmart.

Carbsmart wasn't around a year or so ago, but it has now jumped into the top 10 with $22 million in sales as of June 13. Dreyer's has reinvented its premium light ice cream with its slow churned technology and the subsequent marketing blitz has sales growing by more than 70% by unit. These numbers, from Information Resources Inc., represent supermarket, drugstore and mass merchandiser sales, with the exception of Wal-Mart.

Overall, ice cream dollar sales grew a smidge in the 52 weeks leading up to June 13, but they were off slightly in terms of units. But that's an improvement over the steady one to two percent shrinking by both measures that took place late in 2003 and earlier this year.

As for yogurt, well, dollar sales are still up, but whether you look at dollars or units, the second half of 2003 and the first quarter of this year were not as dizzying as previous quarters. But, the most recent 12-week period looks a bit better, with significant growth by both measures.

Next we look at a couple of our favorite beverages. Milk sales continue to slide by volume, but jumped in the dollar column recently only because of the second quarter price spike. Orange juice is not fairing any better. Unit sales of milk were down by more than 4% in each of the last two periods. Orange juice sales have been off two to four percentage points for each of the last five reporting periods, apparently due to that large segment of carbo-haters out there.