Are All Ice Creams Created Equal?
Does that creaminess you love come from wholesome milk fat, or (gasp!) oil? No one's saying ice cream is the new health food, but when you're in the mood for a treat - choose something with wholesome and natural ingredients.
When you do your ice cream run at the supermarket, do you stop and wonder what's inside that tub of deliciousness?
Does that creaminess you love come from wholesome milk fat, or (gasp!) oil? And is your favourite fruity flavour made from real fruit puree, or literally just a mixture of water + artificial flavouring and colouring?
No one's saying ice cream is the new health food, but when you're in the mood for a treat - make it worthwhile by choosing something with wholesome and natural ingredients.
Not all ice cream products are created the same. Here's how to differentiate the good from the bad.
When it comes to assessing ice cream quality, let's look at 4 main components that make up an ice cream flavour: Base, Flavouring, Colouring, Mix-In
Let's start with our base.
Gif taken from our Inside Your: PB Sandwich video
Ice cream = dairy = milk and cream, right? Wrong.
Many products labelled 'ice cream' might not even contain any form of dairy fat, having used substitutes like palm or hydrogenated oils.
These oils mimic the creaminess of dairy fat – at a fraction of the cost, which then enables the product to be sold at a much more attractive price, too.
Aside from this, palm oil is known to have devastating effects on the environment. Think deforestation, destroying habitats of endangered species and something more close to home - the infamous haze pollution. Read more here. Sadly, 70% of brands in Singapore and Malaysia don't disclose their palm oil use properly. According to the WWF, 50% of supermarket products contain palm oil - so next time you're shopping, have a look at the label and see if it's listed as an ingredient - and if so, check if the palm oil is sustainably sourced.
We use only 100% dairy (no oils or fat replacers) in all of our gelato, ice cream cake and ice cream sandwich products. Our dairy products are responsibly sourced from Australia and New Zealand.
Next up: flavouring and colouring. These two components work very closely together, and are often coupled to imitate freshness and quality.
For example, you would find many strawberry ice cream that is a colourful pink. Mint ice cream that's a familiar bright green hue...and pistachio ice cream that's made from, well, synthetic pistachio flavouring, not ground pistachio paste.
Image source
These crowd-pleasers are often made with chemical flavourings to save cost - using the real deal tends to be much pricier. Adding colouring makes the product look more recognisable and marketable.
Our Strawberry Cheesecake Pint is made from strawberry puree, with no additional flavourings or colourings – giving you a pale cream scoop that's just pastel pink.
Our Simply Hazelnut Pint, too, in all its pastel brown glory, is made from 100% hazelnut puree – no syrups or flavourings for us.
Finally, our favourite part - mix-ins.
The good stuff. These are the chocolate chip cookies, fudge brownies, or cheesecake chunks you find in our flavours. All of our mix-ins are baked in-house - with ingredients you'd use when baking at home, like eggs, butter, flour, sugar and salt.
By baking our mix-ins, we retain control over the ingredients that go into our products, so you can enjoy your dessert with peace of mind.
