What Big Food Did to Ice Cream: The Decline of the American Pint
I document the systematic degradation of store-bought ice cream by multinational conglomerates like Unilever. Through regulatory arbitrage, brands like Breyers now sell 'Frozen Dairy Dessert' with less than 10% milkfat, replacing cream with air and hydrocolloids. This isn't nostalgia; it is a documented technical retreat where profit margins have replaced the original Pledge of Purity, turning a rich dairy treat into a stabilized foam.
Store-bought ice cream hasn't just 'changed'; it has been systematically reformulated by multinational food conglomerates using regulatory arbitrage and formulation science to determine how much cream they can remove from 'ice cream' before we notice.
- seszett
> Perfect for feeding 20 hungry four-year-olds who wouldn’t know the difference. But few adults were fooled
Setting aside the fact this was written by an LLM, I think this line of thought (which wasn't invented by the LLM, I mean it's something people actually think) is the very origin of this problem.
The 4 year olds don't know better, but it's because they are learning what ice cream (and everything) is. And if you're feeding them shit, that will set their base level for ice cream for the rest of their life.
IMO young kids should be given quality products as much as possible exactly because they don't know the difference. Unless you want them to grow into adults that still don't know the difference.
- voakbasda
We have a milk cow. We prep our ice cream from scratch in about 5 minutes: two cups of raw milk, 1/4 cup maple syrup, 1t-1T vanilla, 1/4t salt, and 6-8 raw egg yolks. Blend everything in a quart jar with an immersion blender and pour into a Cuisinart ice cream maker. AFAIK, you literally cannot buy anything close to this good.
As a small farmer, I have nothing good to say about the USDA or FDA. I would rant further, but I’ve kinda given up at this point. I’m selling my farm next year.
- roadbuster
3000 words which can be distilled down to 10:
"Cream and egg yolk are expensive; industry tightens its belt."
- MengerSponge
There's a frozen custard shop in my town. They sometimes do silly things like including raw sliced strawberries that just turn into ice shards, but their vanilla and chocolate absolutely beat the pants off anything I can find in the grocery.
- open592
how much of this is just trying to optimize the nutrition facts to come across as less unhealthy? the "full of air" version is half the fat and has less sugar. consumers are generally trending in the direction of avoiding these two line items so guess it's a win win for breyers if it's also cheaper to make.
edit: also if i'm looking at the website correctly, it looks like both the "ice cream" version and the "frozen dairy desert" version are the same price ($6.99):
- https://www.fairwaymarket.com/sm/planning/rsid/4000/product/...
- https://www.fairwaymarket.com/sm/planning/rsid/4000/product/...