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.
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.
I 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.
> 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.
I’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!
The 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.
On 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.
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):
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.
Not 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.
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[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 78.8 ms ] thread"Cream and egg yolk are expensive; industry tightens its belt."
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.
They have saved thousands or millions of US lives. But hey, they've inconvenienced your profit lines, so boo on them.
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.
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.
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.
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/...
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?
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.
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.