Soft serve ice cream first hit the market in the late 1930s, when two ice cream parlors started pumping air into the ice cream they served. A typical soft serve ice cream cone can contain as much as 60 percent air, according to an article in the "National Post."

The US Department of Agriculture defines a serving of chocolate soft serve ice cream as one cone with 1/2 cup of ice cream. One serving contains 150 calories.

Walter Willett, Harvard nutritionist and author of "Eat, Drink and Be Healthy," writes that the nutrients the calories come from in a food are as important as the total number of calories. A serving of soft serve chocolate ice cream includes 89 calories from carbohydrates, 45 calories from fat and 15 calories from protein.

The dairy fat in soft serve chocolate ice cream includes 3g of harmful saturated fat. That's 17 percent of your USDA recommended daily intake with every cone.