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physicsguy 3 minutes ago [-]
My great uncle worked for Walls after National Service; he died this year. He emigrated to Australia in the 60s so must have been before that.
Few stories I remember him telling me... part of his job was that he went out on the road giving freezers away to shops so that they could stock Walls ice creams (and only Walls ice creams). He said they had particular difficulty with this in Ireland where shopkeepers would accept the freezer for the shop but put a cheaper competitor's product in.
ggm 56 minutes ago [-]
There's a great sequence in Bill Forsyth's "comfort and joy" where somebody records their ice cream van jingle on a kids toy xylophone and plays it through a handheld PA. Just the right degree of mind-numbing repetitiveness and decibel ear busting noise.
It's fictionalised from very real British experiences with ice cream and fish and chips, working class communities, Italian family business, crime. And of course deep fried ice cream. I worked in an Italian migrants coffee bar/greasy spoon as a dish pig in 1970s edinburgh, the local chip shop and ice cream scene was almost entirely Italian, in some parts of Scotland going back to the end of the 19th century.
For some people the "99" from a van with a squirt of raspberry sauce is a key childhood memory, a lift from the darkness of intergenerational mass unemployment, and rainy day holidays on stoney beaches.
Gelato is posh. Mr Whippy is what poor people ate.
pasc1878 20 minutes ago [-]
M
r Whippy and 99s are still there (although called flake now) having had them on a few of the recent hot days
> When you talk with cheese aficionados, it doesn’t usually take long for the conversation to veer this way: away from curds, whey, and mold, and toward matters of life and death. With the zeal of nineteenth-century naturalists, they discuss great lineages and endangered species, painstakingly cataloguing those cheeses that are thriving and those that are lost to history. [...]
ablation 1 hours ago [-]
A fantastic article. Ruby Tandoh's writing on food is always of high quality and gets an immediate bookmark from me.
fsuts 1 hours ago [-]
For anyone not from Britain, majority of parents, taken in by advertising, feed kids highly processed ice cream sold at low prices, no different to most other countries.
Ingredients are terrible for all the brands mentioned. And British children have high obesity rates and dental issues.
The golden age was pre-big food when ice cream was made naturally.
The celebration of targeted product design, branding and advertising is something we should move away from. The companies don’t care about its customer’s health, just its profits.
hgomersall 3 minutes ago [-]
There's been a real rennaisance of quality produce in the UK, including ice cream. There's some really good stuff to be bought, even in mainstream supermarkets.
lynx97 41 minutes ago [-]
According to your statement, the vast majority of parents also do not care about the health of their own children. The reality is probably a bit different. Its not about caring, it is plain lack of information/stupidity. I know what I am talking about, grew up in a working class family. Looking back, there are soooo many things which happened while I was still in my parents house... From undiagnosed mental health issues of my mother to being fed sugar and milk to a point where I vomitted every other week. Turned out I am mildly lactose intollerant. Nobody helps these kids. The state cant help either, because it is notoriously bad at caring for basically anonymous kids. Its a dilemma. Nobody talks about the dangers of stupid parents, because, you know, its kind of a taboo.
fsuts 34 minutes ago [-]
You perhaps missed where I said ‘taken in by marketing’.
Companies don’t spend multi millions on advertising for no reason, advertising works.
lynx97 30 minutes ago [-]
Does it really matter who influences parents? After all, they are grown ups, have the responsibility. Its their call. If they fall for marketing, its still their own stupidity which endangers their children. Lets calla spade a spade.
tetris11 4 minutes ago [-]
No one has both the time to avoid every deception set by large industry. We're all experts in our respective fields but can be completely side-jumped by something just adjacent to it, and we can't be experts in all.
Sometimes you just want to buy a tangerine without having to research beforehand which ones aren't absolutely plastered in antibiotics on their peel (read: the majority).
fsuts 5 minutes ago [-]
I would urge you to refrain from using the word stupid.
All humans are not born equal, many are born with poor critical thinking which is not helped by regimented schooling and the isolated nuclear family pattern.
It’s for the strong to protect the weak, but instead modern consumer capitalism is built on the strong exploiting the weak.
13 minutes ago [-]
nitin_flanker 31 minutes ago [-]
What a fantastic read into the history. I work with many food scientists and constantly track what's up with chocolate / ice-cream industry these days.
There's always a struggle between companies choosing profits (by adopting cheaper, more processed ingredients) and consumers wanting tasty but healthy foods. In UK things are improving because of regulations, but everywhere else things are not that good, and it's not just ice creams.
WhereIsTheTruth 2 hours ago [-]
It started with cream, to end up with additives
juleiie 7 minutes ago [-]
Those mass market ice cream are so tasteless and disgusting honestly. Do British even have any taste? As a French person it always astounds me what Britons can eat and proclaim they like it.
roshiya 2 minutes ago [-]
Genuine question: which French brands are you comparing them to? I'd be curious to know what you think is the benchmark.
Few stories I remember him telling me... part of his job was that he went out on the road giving freezers away to shops so that they could stock Walls ice creams (and only Walls ice creams). He said they had particular difficulty with this in Ireland where shopkeepers would accept the freezer for the shop but put a cheaper competitor's product in.
It's fictionalised from very real British experiences with ice cream and fish and chips, working class communities, Italian family business, crime. And of course deep fried ice cream. I worked in an Italian migrants coffee bar/greasy spoon as a dish pig in 1970s edinburgh, the local chip shop and ice cream scene was almost entirely Italian, in some parts of Scotland going back to the end of the 19th century.
For some people the "99" from a van with a squirt of raspberry sauce is a key childhood memory, a lift from the darkness of intergenerational mass unemployment, and rainy day holidays on stoney beaches.
Gelato is posh. Mr Whippy is what poor people ate.
I'll take any excuse to recommend Ruby's essay on British Cheese, "How a cheese goes extinct: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-gastronomy/how-a...
> When you talk with cheese aficionados, it doesn’t usually take long for the conversation to veer this way: away from curds, whey, and mold, and toward matters of life and death. With the zeal of nineteenth-century naturalists, they discuss great lineages and endangered species, painstakingly cataloguing those cheeses that are thriving and those that are lost to history. [...]
Ingredients are terrible for all the brands mentioned. And British children have high obesity rates and dental issues.
The golden age was pre-big food when ice cream was made naturally.
The celebration of targeted product design, branding and advertising is something we should move away from. The companies don’t care about its customer’s health, just its profits.
Companies don’t spend multi millions on advertising for no reason, advertising works.
Sometimes you just want to buy a tangerine without having to research beforehand which ones aren't absolutely plastered in antibiotics on their peel (read: the majority).
All humans are not born equal, many are born with poor critical thinking which is not helped by regimented schooling and the isolated nuclear family pattern.
It’s for the strong to protect the weak, but instead modern consumer capitalism is built on the strong exploiting the weak.
There's always a struggle between companies choosing profits (by adopting cheaper, more processed ingredients) and consumers wanting tasty but healthy foods. In UK things are improving because of regulations, but everywhere else things are not that good, and it's not just ice creams.