In response to your questions regarding the use of tara gum in its ice cream, Breyers is proud of its all-natural heritage. It’s a position we take very seriously and one we work hard to maintain. We value the confidence our customers have in our products and go to great lengths to ensure exceptional quality and great taste.
So when consumers expressed concern over the texture of our products, we responded. By adding a natural gum to Breyers All Natural Vanilla ice cream, we’ve helped to protect the product’s texture while staying true to our all-natural commitment. We use tara gum from natural plant sources to help Breyers ice cream stay creamier and more enjoyable for longer periods of time.
Because ice cream is temperature-sensitive, this addition has further allowed us to ensure the ice cream’s quality throughout it distribution. As you can imagine, ice cream’s taste and texture can be unfavorably affected if exposed to temperature fluctuations during shipping or storage. Our customers describe the problem as ice cream with a “gritty” or “grainy” texture. In fact, growing distribution and increased handling of our ice cream in the marketplace has indeed resulted in greater chances for temperature abuse and heightened potential for texture problems.
"...consumers expressed concern over the texture...!" - this product was PERFECT FOR 30+ YEARS, by my personal experience!
SHAME ON YOU, UNILEVER. If you're going to buy a brand, you've some obligation to protect its legacy and support the reasons your loyal customers have been buying it for generations!
Can I ask, has food shipping and handling technology gotten WORSE? Has our refrigeration and transportation infrastructure actually deteriorated over time, to the point where you could have a pure product made from only frozen milk, cream, sugar and strawberries for DECADES and it can be a top brand - inspire a lifetime's loyalty and be just a little bowlful of joy, a beautiful and perfect product in every way! But somehow now it has become necessary to add GUNK to it? And then tell me it's by popular demand. "Oh, we had many requests for the gunk. People today want gunk in there, and we responded."
Unconscionable! A top-quality product needs to be treated right at every point in the supply chain! It needs to be protected to ensure its excellence. Your job as a responsible corporation is to make sure that happens - not to adulterate it, to make it more forgiving of mistreatment, so you can handle it any old way you like!
This is worse than when Wrigley's laced their classic Wrigley's Spearmint with acesulfame of potassium. I can't even chew that stuff anymore. It's got a weird, sharp taste to it that it didn't used to have.
It wouldn't be so bad if your gunked-up ice cream tasted okay. It doesn't. I was eating some Breyers Strawberry, and I was just involuntarily scowling. "What did they do to this?" Involuntary scowling is not the reaction I want my ice cream to elicit! And then I read the ingredients: things in there that shouldn't be. And then I checked the side of the box: is the Pledge of Purity still on there? It IS!
FOR SHAME. REMOVE IT. THIS PRODUCT NO LONGER DESERVES TO BE SO EMBLAZONED. And don't give me "tara gum is natural" - who cares! "Pure" doesn't have a thing to do "natural" vs. "unnatural." Ice cream adulterated with "natural" gum gunk to make it cheaper for you to store, ship and handle is not "pure." Pure has to do with what is essential. With what this product has always been: the core pure sweet and simple ingredients, embodying the philosophy that made Breyer's our favorite ice cream growing up.
Gone now.
Either take off the Pledge of Purity, or take out what doesn't belong. Gum gunk has no business being in there. Gunk does not belong - call it "natural gunk" all you want, natural is not the problem. GUNK IS THE PROBLEM.
What should be in there? You know what should be in there. We all know. We remember the ads, okay? We remember what the legacy was. Milk. Cream. Sugar. Strawberries. That's right, Johnny. That's purity. And now Haagen-Duhs is coming out with some "5 Ingredient" line like that's some big thing! Like Breyers didn't already have them beat to that punch, for purity! But, sadly, Breyers doesn't anymore. I used to be able to recommend Breyers proudly to one and all. "Nothing in there that you wouldn't put in yourself, if you were making your own ice cream!" Well, scratch that.
There once was a product that had absolutely nothing wrong with it. There are very, very few products about which you could say that. Breyers strawberry ice cream was a perfect product. So was Breyers vanilla. So was Breyers butter pecan. So was Breyers peach. So was Breyers mint chocolate chip. So was Breyers cherry vanilla. Perfect products. Delicious. Pure. Nothing in them you wouldn't put in yourself, if you were making ice cream. Not once in my history of consuming Breyers ice cream was there any "concern with texture."
Now what do I do? I've got to buy an ice cream maker, I guess. I've got to make my own ice cream. What a pain in the ass this is. Milk. Cream. Sugar. Strawberries. All that effort, and it's not even going to be any better than Breyers used to be.
Probably not as hard to make as the chewing gum, though.
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