The History of Ice Cream(bostonglobe.com) |
The History of Ice Cream(bostonglobe.com) |
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?
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 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 thought sugar is a poor-man's food.
Have any of your notes or videos online?
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.
Old school media outlets are just so clueless about digital models
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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.
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.
That's actually pretty neat. Did it taste good?