Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Golden Age of British Ice Cream

vittlesmagazine.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 69 posts

Re: The Golden Age of British Ice Cream

#41

Post by zarzavat »

fsuts wrote: post #4

For anyone not from Britain, majority of parents, taken in by advertising, feed kids highly processed ice cream sold at low prices, no different to most other countries. Ingredients are terrible for all the brands mentioned. And British children have high obesity rates and dental issues. The golden age was pre-big food when ice cream was made naturally. The celebration of targeted product design, branding and adverti…

Either teach your children moderation or else be disappointed when they become teenagers with their own money to spend. Helicopter don't fly forever.

Re: The Golden Age of British Ice Cream

#43

Post by jgraham »

ymolodtsov wrote: post #26
fsuts wrote: post #4

For anyone not from Britain, majority of parents, taken in by advertising, feed kids highly processed ice cream sold at low prices, no different to most other countries. Ingredients are terrible for all the brands mentioned. And British children have high obesity rates and dental issues. The golden age was pre-big food when ice cream was made naturally. The celebration of targeted product design, branding and adverti…

However natural ice cream can be, it's still a buttload of fats and sugars. Fine in moderation but could be bad. Still, I highly doubt ice cream alone is the reason for high obesity.

> However natural ice cream can be, it's still a buttload of fats and sugars

My default base for homemade ice cream is a custard with 50g sugar for 6 egg yolks and 500g of milk/cream.

I'm not claiming it's a health food, but in terms of pure sugar content homemade ice cream is pretty low compared to most other things you might make as dessert.

Sorbet is very different; that is usually something close to a 1:1 ratio of sugar and water.

Re: The Golden Age of British Ice Cream

#44

Post by ozgung »

I’m not sure this is the story of “British” ice-cream. Unilever is a multinational company headquartered in London. But with their “Heartbrand” strategy they acquired local ice-cream brands and manufacturers and sell the same product line globally. So this story was the same in other countries as well. Cornetto was invented by an Italian company acquired later by Unilever and Magnum was from the Danish version. Currently they all belong to a Dutch multinational.

Also they dominated my local market (Turkey) not because they had better products than the local brands but because they had the distribution power of Unilever. Actually Turkish Competition Authority constantly warns and fines them [1]. Also their products with vegetable oils are not classified as “ice-cream” according to our laws. Actually one of their best selling products here is Maraş-style Turkish ice-cream, which is the only product line they use real milk and can be advertised as ice-cream.

[1]https://www.rekabet.gov.tr/en/Guncel/investigation-initiated...

[2]https://www.algida.com.tr/markalar/algida-maras.html

Re: The Golden Age of British Ice Cream

#45

Post by doublerabbit »

mrob wrote: post #21

British ice cream is generally terrible because our laws are too lax. Previously (from 1996 until 2015), "ice cream" required a minimum of 5% milk fat and 2.5% milk protein. This is still low compared the the USA's requirement of 10% milk fat and 6% milk solids-not-fat (proteins and carbohydrates combined), but it at least met the common-sense definition that an ice cream must contain cream. In 2015, this requirement…

The UK's "sugar tax" too have ruined most drinks. Most have been replaced with aspartame or sucrose. It doesn't even come near to how it used to taste. That and palm oil.

I miss the old Irn Bru which was something like 89% sugar.

Re: The Golden Age of British Ice Cream

#46

Post by hgomersall »

physicsguy wrote: post #39
hgomersall wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't, you just have to look. Most of the organic ice creams are fairly clean - Yeo Valley, Duchy. Similarly the organic vegan ice creams from Booja Booja. Some small producers are good - Alder Tree in Suffolk typically have 3 ingredients (cream, sugar, fruit) and are delicious. Saffron (around Saffron Walden) are great too.

It's interesting you note Yeo Valley because I've found their products very mixed - lots of them do have UPFs. It's interesting that their ice cream doesn't. There's no Waitrose within 50 miles of me (East Midlands) so Duchy not available. Booja Booja is all dairy free so I wouldn't really consider it ice cream. But in any case it all has coconut oil in it.

Which Yeo Valley products have UPFs? Genuinely interested since that's not my experience. They do put cornflour in their fruit yogurts, but that seems less egregious than most. Their frozen kefir does contain stabilisers.

You shouldn't dismiss Booja Booja. It's nut based and in my opinion excellent. A touch sweet, but a great mouthfeel - less cloying than dairy ice creams, but clearly creamy. The chocolate salted caramel (my favourite) contains no coconut oil. I'm not sure why coconut oil is problematic though.

Re: The Golden Age of British Ice Cream

#47

Post by fsuts »

dmurray wrote: post #40
fsuts wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are being idealistic and not basing your reasoning on science. All people are not born with equally capable brains. That’s just a fact. People are not equal in their decision making.

> All people are not born with equally capable brains You can't write this and then object to someone also shortening this to "stupid".

I would say that the word stupid is a derogatory term.

Re: The Golden Age of British Ice Cream

#48

Post by physicsguy »

hgomersall wrote: post #46
physicsguy wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting you note Yeo Valley because I've found their products very mixed - lots of them do have UPFs. It's interesting that their ice cream doesn't. There's no Waitrose within 50 miles of me (East Midlands) so Duchy not available. Booja Booja is all dairy free so I wouldn't really consider it ice cream. But in any case it all has coconut oil in it.

Which Yeo Valley products have UPFs? Genuinely interested since that's not my experience. They do put cornflour in their fruit yogurts, but that seems less egregious than most. Their frozen kefir does contain stabilisers. You shouldn't dismiss Booja Booja. It's nut based and in my opinion excellent. A touch sweet, but a great mouthfeel - less cloying than dairy ice creams, but clearly creamy. The chocolate salted car…

>They do put cornflour in their fruit yogurts, but that seems less egregious than most.

These are UPFs. The point of adding cornflour or starches is to make them thicker and more luxurious in terms of the way they feel in your mouth without straining them like greek yoghurt to reduce water i.e. they're able to do it with less milk protein and fats = it's cheaper. They do this because you need 3-4x as much raw ingredient to do achieve the same result. Adding fruit purees which is the way they add most fruit to the yoghurts is similarly UPF.

There's a scale called NOVA which categorises products based on the amount of processing. Plain Yeo Valley yoghurt is fine and would be classed as NOVA group 1. Their yoghurts would be NOVA group 3 or 4 and so either processed or ultra processed. This isn't to say that all UPFs are bad but it's become so normalised that everything is ultraprocessed that we don't even realise it.

My wife's sister is a food scientist and this is literally her day job at a large American conglomerate with substantial UK operations - try to reduce cost of production by reformulating products while maintaining the same flavour/texture profile.

Re: The Golden Age of British Ice Cream

#49

Post by marliechiller »

juleiie wrote: post #13

Those mass market ice cream are so tasteless and disgusting honestly. Do British even have any taste? As a French person it always astounds me what Britons can eat and proclaim they like it.

These sorts of things are sold all over France as well so you can remove the Chauvinism

Re: The Golden Age of British Ice Cream

#50

Post by anonymous_sorry »

lynx97 wrote: post #24
fsuts wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would urge you to refrain from using the word stupid. All humans are not born equal, many are born with poor critical thinking which is not helped by regimented schooling and the isolated nuclear family pattern. It’s for the strong to protect the weak, but instead modern consumer capitalism is built on the strong exploiting the weak.

See, you dont like the word stupid, and I dont like the word strong/weak. It implies that people are not equal in their decision-making, which I strongly oppose. It also has a patronising touch to it, which I also oppose violently.

You may be weak in the face of marketing claims if you're exhausted, tired, distracted, or have insufficient understanding to question them. You fall back on a subconscious availability heuristic - "I'm always hearing about this thing, that has to be some kind of social proof that it's good".

You have the strength to resist misleading marketing if you have sufficient resources, experience, learning, energy and/or spare mental cycles.

I know my decision-making capacity is certainly affected by things like this. Sometimes I have limited capacity and I reasonably prioritise other concerns.

Post reply on HN