Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by wtracy 846 days ago
To elaborate:

In the USA at least, to use the name "ice cream", there needs to be a certain density of cream. If the product isn't dense enough, you need to use another name, like "frozen dessert."

The products called frozen dessert are whipped up to contain lots of air. There's several advantages to this for the manufacturer: You can fill the same size container with less material, so you can cut costs. You can also list fewer calories for the same size serving.

1 comments

If you truly want what actually used to be called ice cream, you want 'frozen custard', which is legally required to contain egg, something ice cream used to be required to have, but industry lobbied the feds to drop it.

The enshittification of our food chain marches on, in the never-ending quest to milk every dime out of the cost of production.

Egg-free ice cream is a thing, you know. It's colloquially called Philadelphia Style, and has been around for a long time. I make it at home for reasons far removed from cost (I just like it).

When were eggs legally required to be in ice cream? Philadelphia style ice cream predates modern food regulation.