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What Big Food Did to Ice Cream
- MengerSponge 4mo agoThere'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.
- esafak 4mo agoProse that reads as artificial as the 'dairy dessert' it describes.
- cronelius 4mo agoglad I wasn't the only one. every other sentence had antithesis, it was exhausting to read even if accurate
- SOLAR_FIELDS 4mo agoThe content was pretty good though IMO. It’s something that I think a lot of people in the USA have long believed and experienced, but seeing a technical takedown demonstrating it hits harder for some reason. The prose and filler did make me skip a huge chunk of it though. It could have been probably a quarter of the length and had similar impact
- philipswood 4mo agoI could skim the article. Wasn't too distracted or annoyed by the obvious AI voice. Learned a bit about ice cream and American (Western?) enshitification at work... ...but these endless, superior, contentless, dogmatic, boring streams of comment threads about how AI it all is. *Rolls eyes* I almost actively _long_ for the days when commenters simply didn't read the article/post/treatise/repo and went straight to the comments, or complained about the paywall or the fact that it is on Twitter. Please be interesting.
- topheroo 4mo ago[flagged]
- r_lee 4mo agowhat's the value of these AI generated posts? it takes more value than it gives you as you need to verify everything and hold everything under scrutiny I'd rather just not read at all
- wahnfrieden 4mo agothey're monetized
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- roadbuster 4mo ago3000 words which can be distilled down to 10: "Cream and egg yolk are expensive; industry tightens its belt."
- esafak 4mo agoWe found the prompt, guys!
- SOLAR_FIELDS 4mo agoIgnoring the obvious flaws in the writing and the prose, I find it interesting because it’s one of the more obvious examples of enshittification that plagues American culture - often in ways that are so subtle that one might be considered paranoid for trying to recognize them. It lays bare, in a way that any American can understand (most Americans eat and enjoy ice cream) the consequences of the never ending treadmill of corporate greed
- msftgreed 4mo agoI think that's extremely ungenerous and misses the point of the article. The article is specific in the mechanisms by which the industry has changed formulae -- adding air, gums, and stabilizers. It also includes information about who the offending companies are (Unilever). It includes information about how many calories per cup indicate a high quality ice cream, as well as the legally required labeling you can use to recognize not-quite-ice cream. It also specifically addresses the "cream is expensive" concern, and discusses dairy prices which have fluctuated but not spiked. No, this is greed and "the customer is a fool who won't notice". The products of capitalism run to a point where there's basically no recourse (short of, I suppose, manufacturing the ice cream yourself) because everything's become one giant megacorp who knows you don't really have much of a choice in brands.
- mitthrowaway2 4mo agoBut you'll miss out on such priceless gems as "This is the story of the dairy frog, boiled by ever poorer ice creams."
- onion2k 4mo ago"industry worked out a way to sell you air at the price of cream and eggs" would be a more accurate distillation. They haven't reduced the quality of the product because the ingredients got expensive; they've reduced the quality because they worked how to sell you less for the same money, which results in more profit. If the law banned 'frozen dairy dessert' they'd go back to selling the higher quality product, probably at a similar price to the worse product (price elasticity being a thing and all.) The only reason they sell the worse product is because they can, and they can because they hide the fact they're selling half a tub of air.
- voakbasda 4mo agoWe 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.
- msftgreed 4mo agoYou don't... heat it? Egg yolks change their role in ice cream when heated, increasing their emulsifying power and creating a richer ice cream.
- telesilla 4mo agoAn immersion blender like the Vitamix heats as it blends because of high friction, on high settings. I make soup with mine. https://www.vitamix.com/us/en_us/what-you-can-make/hot-soups https://www.vitamix.com/us/en_us/what-you-can-make/hot-soups
- professoretc 4mo agoA Vitamix is not an immersion blender; an immersion blender is one you "immerse" in the thing you're blending, i.e., a stick or wand blender. https://www.seriouseats.com/best-immersion-blenders https://www.seriouseats.com/best-immersion-blenders Wand blender don't make things hot enough to cook, so OP is indeed using raw eggs in their ice cream. Which is probably fine, it just means their ice cream isn't using a cooked custard base.
- IAmBroom 4mo agoOP didn't say they blended until it was cooked to custard. It's a non-trivial step you added.
- atmavatar 4mo ago> I have nothing good to say about the USDA or FDA. At least in the context of the article, the requirements for labeling ice cream as such forces some brands to change to "frozen dessert" when they skimp too much on ingredients. It's a small win, but a win nonetheless.
- Larrikin 4mo agoI grew up on Breyers, it was the only ice cream my parents bought. I read an article over a decade ago and pointed this out to my parents that the carton said dairy desert after reading a similar article. We were able to get a refund from the grocery store and Breyers was a completely dead brand in our family when it originally was the only brand they had bought even before I was born.
- Exoristos 4mo agoWhat happened to them happens often -- quality food brands are bought and the contents changed. You as a consumer have to stay on your toes.
- fouc 4mo agoGood read, aside from all the LLM-isms in the writing.
- haunter 4mo agoWe should more liberally flag these LLM generated posts regardless of the topic
- seszett 4mo ago> 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.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- userbinator 4mo agobecause they are learning what ice cream (and everything) is If you feed a 4-year-old "frozen dairy dessert" and call it "ice cream", then you're technically also legally wrong.
- freak42 4mo agoWhy was this written by a LLM?
- mikestorrent 4mo agoThat's the smoking gun -- he was absolutely right. It's not ice cream, it's slop!
- seszett 4mo agoIt's a general feeling more than a precise diagnosis, and I guess it could also be a human that has internalised LLM style, or a human-written draft that was reworded by an LLM. But it just really feels like LLM writing.
- freak42 4mo agoBut you wrote that it's a fact? That's not just a "general feeling"?
- luckydata 4mo agoAs an immigrant I thought for a while now that all ice cream in USA taste like shit, despite my wife saying I'm imagining things... Now I know why.
- msftgreed 4mo agoThere's still a few brands, you'll just end up paying through the nose for them.
- luckydata 4mo agothe brand the author of the article points at as "good" makes me want to vomit, my wife receives a large quantity of it every year from a service provider she works with as a christmas gift and it's my job do melt it and dump it down the drain since nobody in the family can stand it. I'm open to suggestions!
- msftgreed 4mo agoYou can name the brand... Häagen‑Dazs? Graeters? In any case, why would you melt and drain it? That makes zero sense. You don't have friends who would take it? Or a food bank? Or a local Food Not Bombs? It's totally fine to not like a brand, zero objections there, but like, why waste it?
- cush 4mo agoI’ve been making ice cream at home for the last few years and I’ll never go back. Store bought is all trash now. If you haven’t had the chance to taste ice cream from a Ninja Creami, you’re missing out!
- lowbloodsugar 4mo agoThe USA is poor now. The problem is not that companies are enshittifying ice-cream. The problem is that people are so poor that enshttified ice-cream is all they can afford.
- haakon 4mo agoHot take, but enshittified food is just another expression of inflation.
- lowbloodsugar 4mo agoLiterally true. The basket of goods for US inflation metric used to include steak. Then it was changed to ground beef. You used to buy ice-cream, now you buy “frozen dairy deserts”.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- userbinator 4mo agoThis reminds me of the similar fight over the term "milk": https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/02/almond-milk-can-keep-its-name-despite-lack-of-lactation-fda-says/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/02/almond-milk-can-keep...
- sasaf5 4mo agoNo more LLM-written articles in HN!
- riffraff 4mo agoOn the European side of the pond, single packaged industrial ice cream is also gone to shit. A Magnum or Cornetto used to be a well sized very tasty snack. In Italy the "cucciolone" (an ice cream sandwich) was literally marketed as being "10 bites". All of those are now tiny bland things that nobody should buy. The Magnum Company (neé Algida/Walls/etc) is a fucking disaster and everybody should stop buying their products, but other single packaged ice cream snack makers have been following suit and it's basically a meme that every one of those ice creams now looks like a mignon version of the original. Alas, small kids still like them and have no frame of reference.
- charamis 4mo agoAnd their prices have gone through the roof too!
- ginkoin613 4mo ago[dead]
- moltar 4mo agoAt the same time I can get store brand ice cream for €1.50 per box of 6 that has two or three ingredients and tastes delicious. That’s in Portugal.
- open592 4mo agohow 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/breyers-natural-vanilla-ice-cream-15-quart-id-00077567254238 https://www.fairwaymarket.com/sm/planning/rsid/4000/product/... - https://www.fairwaymarket.com/sm/planning/rsid/4000/product/breyers-extra-creamy-vanilla-frozen-dairy-dessert-15-quart-id-00077567250049 https://www.fairwaymarket.com/sm/planning/rsid/4000/product/...
- t43562 4mo agoenshittification is apparently what corporations do - they have no soul, only shareholders. There is no direction of travel for them other than the nirvana of selling you nothing for something. Competition obviously seems not to have fixed that. Food standards seemingly don't quite do it yet. I wonder what we could do to them to take the pressure off somehow?
- zarski 4mo agoJust a heads up. Only Haagen-Dazs Chocolate, Vanilla, Strawberry, and Coffee are no-gums and basic ingredients (i.e. you can understand), their other flavors have all the same crap highlighted in the article. Aldi's Premium Ice Cream is good less expensive alternative.
- josefritzishere 4mo agoThey ruined it. It used to be Milk, cream, sugar and maybe fruit for flavor, that's it. Now it's garbage.
- razmatazzle 4mo agoNot getting a LLM vibe from this article, other than I don't see a lot of mistakes. Almost surely cleaned up with AI, but who doen't anymore? The narrative has enough spikes/detours that it sounds like human thinking to me, not an LLM, which proposes a thesis and then just funnels down to the predictable reiteration of a conclusion.