The History of Ice Cream(bostonglobe.com)
bostonglobe.com
The History of Ice Cream
https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2018/06/30/how-ice-cream-made-america/leqtRFPQZxn8IrCXww1W2O/story.html
35 comments
If you go to McDonald's in China... They will have their main restaurant and a little window next to it. That little window serves ice cream and there always seems to be a line. It's dirt cheap (thinking back I hope it was real milk... But this is McDonald's so probably has better supply chain control) and I always got one if I was waiting around for someone.
I've also seen a vending machine that serves soft serve cones, which was interesting. So I'd say ice cream was probably trending after you left because I remember this from my high school days which was almost 20 years ago.
Additionally, I would not say there's no concept of dessert. You sometimes get red bean soup, or fruit, or other sweets after meals. Though nothing like the sugar loaded desserts in the western world (hence, diabetes snd weight gain...)
I've also seen a vending machine that serves soft serve cones, which was interesting. So I'd say ice cream was probably trending after you left because I remember this from my high school days which was almost 20 years ago.
Additionally, I would not say there's no concept of dessert. You sometimes get red bean soup, or fruit, or other sweets after meals. Though nothing like the sugar loaded desserts in the western world (hence, diabetes snd weight gain...)
I'm in the middle of reading Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World by Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling, and Anna Rosling Rönnlund.
I think it provides a great model of what is happening in the world, especially in this case. Chinese people have more money per capita, and so now they can spend it on sweets and meat.
McDonald's being seen as an upscale brand probably also helps -- even cartoons (like Quanzhi Gaoshou, which is about eSports) have blatant product placement for McDonald's ice cream.
I think it provides a great model of what is happening in the world, especially in this case. Chinese people have more money per capita, and so now they can spend it on sweets and meat.
McDonald's being seen as an upscale brand probably also helps -- even cartoons (like Quanzhi Gaoshou, which is about eSports) have blatant product placement for McDonald's ice cream.
… more money per capita, and so now they can spend it on sweets
I thought sugar is a poor-man's food.
I thought sugar is a poor-man's food.
Read the book! It talks about how sugar is a sign of wealth in developing countries, and a sign of poverty in developed ones.
I was under the impression to have read that Chinese are mostly lactose intolerant. Does anyone if this is true? Is Chinese ice cream different from western ice cream which uses dairy?
I'm guessing the fact that there are 4x more people in China compensates for the cultural differences that would lead you to believe the average person does not consume ice cream.
Having 4 1/2 times the population of the US helps.
Koreans also eat a ton of ice cream.
Sugar is a drug. Thats what happened...
Some of you may have made liquid nitrogen ice cream... which is delicious. Even better is liquid argon ice cream, as the argon is heavier than air and gives the ice cream a frothy texture.
I feel hungry already just from reading your comment :P?
Have any of your notes or videos online?
Have any of your notes or videos online?
That's got to be some very expensive ice cream! Argon is not cheap
Yeah we ordinarily would have used nitrogen but we had access to some leftover argon that would have boiled away over the weekend anyways
Where do I buy liquid argon?
From your local cryogenics supllier I guess. In this case it was some liquid argon left over from an experiment that was going to boil away anyway.
if you happen to be in vienna, austria, the ice cream festival is this week-end at the augarten
[deleted]
I feel i'm on Greendale
Do I have to Facebook read this? Oh boy
It’s hard to have any sympathy for news organizations when they insist on this nonsense. How can any of these orgs report objectively about Facebook or privacy issues when they themselves are the biggest offenders by forcing this crap on people?
I am a paid subscriber to a select few news orgs, but even those try my patience. Very hard to care about the news business when they engage in this.
I am a paid subscriber to a select few news orgs, but even those try my patience. Very hard to care about the news business when they engage in this.
I finally paid for a subscription to New Yorker. Man, the entire experience was frustrating as hell.
Old school media outlets are just so clueless about digital models
Old school media outlets are just so clueless about digital models
Disable scripting (I use uMatrix). I wouldn't have known about that dialog if you hadn't alluded to it.
No. You do not have to Javascript to read it either.
The text of the article can be retrieved without any use of Javascript.
The text of the article can be retrieved without any use of Javascript.
Just click on the light gray Close at the top left.
[deleted]
The back button makes bad UX good UX!
[deleted]
Some myths are best perpetuated, e.g. 'nobody will ever need any more than 640K' (paraphrased) and in the UK there is a pretty good myth about Margaret Thatcher 'inventing' soft scoop ice cream. In some circles it has been repeated often enough to be as good as true.
One story that I wish was a myth is how ice cream used to be made from pig fat in the UK. Yes, pig fat, not dairy fat.
If you lived in Gloucester then you could see how this worked. The Walls Ice Cream factory was next to the Walls bacon factory. And they didn't have many deliveries from distinctive Milk Marketing Board lorries entering the factory gates. For vegetarians this 'secret' was not obvious, food labelling wasn't entirely required during the 1970's so one was assuming rather than knowing that the product was dairy based.
This did change and Wall's Ice Cream moved on from pig fat to palm oil. This was not to end the 'Aushwitz for pigs' aspect of the Gloucester factory, it was just economic realities. The pig fat could be sold at a premium on the global marketplace for such things and substituted with the cheaper, rainforest-destroying palm oil shipped in from the other side of the world.
Put together, I do wonder if any Wall's employees ever thought about the realities of what they were doing sending their vans around housing estates.
So first of all the product - cheapest sugar mixed with pig fat and padded out with air. Not exactly the ice cream product that people imagine it to be, not exactly great for diabetes and clogging arteries, not that it matters with kids to get them forming such life habits. They don't need vitamins when there are perfectly good preservatives to give them ADHD.
Then the ice cream vans themselves. Belching out fumes of lead at child height. Plus the noise pollution, spoiling the tranquillity of a children's play area with the throb of some poxy four cylinder engine not to mention the 'music' played over the PA system. Not all the drivers had a healthy interest in young children, but in those days we didn't have the words we have today for describing or reporting such characters. The mobile chicane created by the ice cream van could also bring death to the roads in the pre-speed bump era when housing estate speed limits were 60 mph and nobody had seat belts.
There is also the pester-power and FOMO aspects. What a heartless killjoy a parent would be if they didn't give their hard earned money over to their kids to fritter away on some pig fat whilst getting gassed with neuro-toxins at the ice cream van, to spoil their appetite for dinner?
At the time Walls had an advertising slogan that was a variation on the slogan the condom manufacturer's used. So, for ice cream you had 'Stop Me and Buy One!' and for condoms you had 'Buy Me and Stop One!'.
Despite all of the above people have extremely fond memories of ice cream vans.
One story that I wish was a myth is how ice cream used to be made from pig fat in the UK. Yes, pig fat, not dairy fat.
If you lived in Gloucester then you could see how this worked. The Walls Ice Cream factory was next to the Walls bacon factory. And they didn't have many deliveries from distinctive Milk Marketing Board lorries entering the factory gates. For vegetarians this 'secret' was not obvious, food labelling wasn't entirely required during the 1970's so one was assuming rather than knowing that the product was dairy based.
This did change and Wall's Ice Cream moved on from pig fat to palm oil. This was not to end the 'Aushwitz for pigs' aspect of the Gloucester factory, it was just economic realities. The pig fat could be sold at a premium on the global marketplace for such things and substituted with the cheaper, rainforest-destroying palm oil shipped in from the other side of the world.
Put together, I do wonder if any Wall's employees ever thought about the realities of what they were doing sending their vans around housing estates.
So first of all the product - cheapest sugar mixed with pig fat and padded out with air. Not exactly the ice cream product that people imagine it to be, not exactly great for diabetes and clogging arteries, not that it matters with kids to get them forming such life habits. They don't need vitamins when there are perfectly good preservatives to give them ADHD.
Then the ice cream vans themselves. Belching out fumes of lead at child height. Plus the noise pollution, spoiling the tranquillity of a children's play area with the throb of some poxy four cylinder engine not to mention the 'music' played over the PA system. Not all the drivers had a healthy interest in young children, but in those days we didn't have the words we have today for describing or reporting such characters. The mobile chicane created by the ice cream van could also bring death to the roads in the pre-speed bump era when housing estate speed limits were 60 mph and nobody had seat belts.
There is also the pester-power and FOMO aspects. What a heartless killjoy a parent would be if they didn't give their hard earned money over to their kids to fritter away on some pig fat whilst getting gassed with neuro-toxins at the ice cream van, to spoil their appetite for dinner?
At the time Walls had an advertising slogan that was a variation on the slogan the condom manufacturer's used. So, for ice cream you had 'Stop Me and Buy One!' and for condoms you had 'Buy Me and Stop One!'.
Despite all of the above people have extremely fond memories of ice cream vans.
I'm having a hard time figuring out what you're saying, because it seems like a rant bordering on conspiracy theory (e.g. preservatives causing ADHD, which I'm sure isn't based on any real science; or insinuating that ice cream van drivers are pedophiles). My take is that you simply don't like ice cream, and don't like other people enjoying it.
Not OP. Couple of supporting points.
The "E numbers" that supposedly caused hyperactivity, mainly orange colour IIRC, were banned in the EU I think.
Ice-cream vans were always badly maintained (repurposed older vans I think), and in the 80s used leaded fuel.
Ice-cream got worse in the last decade or so as now stabilising gums and foams have been perfected somewhat and so ice-cream is mainly air (you can scoop it from the freezer). Lollies too have gums in them that I'm sure they didn't used to.
The "E numbers" that supposedly caused hyperactivity, mainly orange colour IIRC, were banned in the EU I think.
Ice-cream vans were always badly maintained (repurposed older vans I think), and in the 80s used leaded fuel.
Ice-cream got worse in the last decade or so as now stabilising gums and foams have been perfected somewhat and so ice-cream is mainly air (you can scoop it from the freezer). Lollies too have gums in them that I'm sure they didn't used to.
> "One story that I wish was a myth is how ice cream used to be made from pig fat in the UK."
That's actually pretty neat. Did it taste good?
That's actually pretty neat. Did it taste good?
That is insane to me. I lived in Beijing 20 years ago, and Chinese food had shockingly few sweet things ("dessert" was not a concept at all) and no dairy whatsoever. A few stores had Snickers bars by the counters next to sweetened bean paste, that was pretty much it.
The fact that the country now consumes more sweetened dairy than the US is... completely unimaginable to me.
Anyone from China here who can describe what happened and how it was adopted?