When was the last time you had ice cream? Two weeks ago? Congratulations! You just gave NPD Group’s research more weight. According to them, four out of 10, or 40 percent, of Americans consume ice cream at least once every two weeks.
Frozen treats have been enjoy by thousands every year. In fact, nine out of 10, or 90 percent, of home’s residing in the United States enjoy the sweet, tasty treat of frozen delicacies on a regular basis whether it is gelato, ice cream, frozen yogurt, or anything in between.
If you have been living under a rock for the past few decades and do not know what ice cream is, here is a refresher. Ice cream is, essentially, frozen milk fat, typically from dairy cows. It can be mixed with cream, or fruit or other sweet candies, and are generally sweetened. If you are an American, chances are you will eat ice cream at least 28.5 times in a single year. Maybe that .5 was that one time you could not finish.
You would think, looking at any nearby store, that much of the milk produced is used primarily on ice cream. You can’t walk to any store without seeing a stock of frozen desserts. But, surprisingly, only nine percent of milk produced in the United States is actually used to make ice cream. Most of which is produced for consumption during June.
Gelato, on the other hand, is Italian-styled ice cream and share only a few similarities. Pick up a gelato cup anywhere and you might immediately dismiss any difference between the two. That gelato cup may look like ice cream, but its ratio of contents are not. Gelato is made with cream, milk and sugar, like ice cream, but you will find more milk but less cream in a gelato cup. You usually won’t find any egg yolks either. You won’t find as much butterfat in gelato as well as less air. In fact, ice cream ends up with 50 percent air, or more, once the churning process is complete while gelato sits at 25 to 30 percent.
If you like ice cream but prefer a lower fat content, perhaps frozen yogurt is more your speed. While ice cream is made with cream, yogurt is made with cultured milk. No, it is not milk that is familiar with unique cultures. Instead, milk is fermented with lactic acid bacteria which, in turn, transforms it into fermented milk and eventually, yogurt. While it is strange putting it that way, it is not any stranger than taking cheese and fermenting it with mold. Processes like these have been done, improved upon, even perfected, for hundreds of years. This allows the yogurt to be infused with probiotics, microorganisms that can offer highly beneficial properties. However, probiotics do not survive the freezing process. Frozen yogurt serves, mainly, as an oftentimes healthier alternative to ice cream.
