From the truth behind the "mint" leaf to what ice cream really means to Breyers to that Viennetta relaunch, here's the untold truth of Breyers ice cream.
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00:00Breyers isn't just any ice cream brand. No, this is an ice cream brand with a history.
00:06Its origins date back to the 19th century, and over the decades,
00:10it's remained innovative as trends and tastes have evolved.
00:14Keep watching to discover everything you need to know about Breyers ice cream.
00:19Long before ice cream trucks were roaming neighborhoods looking for hungry children,
00:23Breyers took its ice cream on the road. Right after the Civil War ended in 1865,
00:28a man named William Breyer started the brand in Philadelphia.
00:32With a bit of cream, sugar, and nuts, as well as a fair amount of elbow grease,
00:37he started making ice cream using a hand crank. He sold the ice cream to his neighbors and then
00:42demand grew throughout Philadelphia, forcing him to take his show on the road and begin
00:47delivering his frozen treats throughout the city by a horse and wagon. By 1882,
00:52Breyer had five ice cream shops in Philly, along with the horse-drawn delivery side of his business.
00:58He and his family would continue with this method for a few years,
01:01before they opened up a full wholesale manufacturing plant in 1896.
01:07In 1896, William Breyer passed his ice cream business along to his son, Henry,
01:12but the brand name wouldn't stay in the family for long. Henry incorporated the brand in 1896,
01:18and the independent company then grew to mammoth proportions. By 1918, Breyers was churning up more
01:25than one million gallons of ice cream per year. The company remained an East Coast brand,
01:30as it primarily shipped between the two major urban hubs flanking the Breyers' home base in
01:34Philadelphia โ New York City to the north and Washington, D.C. to the south.
01:39But the Breyer family would soon cash out on William's baby,
01:42and sell Breyer Ice Cream to National Dairy Products Company in 1926.
01:47Around that time, National Dairy Products was in the business of buying up other brands.
01:52In 1930, they also bought up a little cheese business based in Chicago by the name of Kraft.
01:58As a result, sometime later โ in 1976, to be exact โ National Dairy Products would come to
02:04be known as Kraft Inc. But that doesn't mean that Breyers is now still a Kraft product.
02:09As it turns out, Kraft sold the brand to Unilever in 1993,
02:13and Breyers is now part of Unilever's Good Humor Breyers Ice Cream Company.
02:18If it looks like ice cream, smells like ice cream, and tastes like ice cream,
02:23then surely it must be ice cream, right? You would think so, but maybe not.
02:27As it turns out, certain Breyers products don't actually include enough dairy to
02:32officially be called ice cream, so they're instead labeled as frozen dessert. So what's
02:38the difference? As a spokeswoman for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration explained to The
02:43New York Times in 2013,
02:45"...ice cream requires specific levels of milk fat content, nonfat milk solids content, total
02:51solids in each gallon of ice cream, and total weight in each gallon of ice cream,
02:55while frozen dairy products do not."
02:57In most cases, ice cream requires a minimum 10 percent dairy fat. At the time of that New York
03:03Times article, about 60 percent of Breyers products were still ice cream, but the remaining 40 percent
03:09had to be considered frozen dairy desserts. But can consumers even tell the difference?
03:14For some taste testers, not at all, until you ask them to try the two varieties side by side.
03:20On their own, frozen dairy desserts can fool anyone and taste like you'd expect ice cream to
03:26taste. But when the real deal is right there to compare it to, frozen dairy desserts are just a
03:31cheap imitation. Nevertheless, Breyers justified the change by noting that frozen dairy desserts
03:37have a smoother texture and less fat.
03:40You can still find a few ice cream brands using all-natural ingredients,
03:43but they tend to be few and far between, and they tend to be pricier."
03:47Do you know that famous mint leaf on the Breyers carton? As it turns out, it's not really a mint
03:52leaf at all, although we can understand why anybody would assume that it is one,
03:56seeing as it does look very much like one. Even the Philly History blog from the Philadelphia
04:02City Archives calls it a mint leaf, in a post discussing Breyers ice cream parlors
04:06that were once found across the city. Similarly, a Philadelphia Inquirer article references the
04:12mint leaf when detailing the Philadelphia Breyers factory by noting,
04:16"[Its Philadelphia factory is crowned by a large billboard bearing the Breyers insignia,
04:21a green mint leaf, that can be seen from the Schoolkill Expressway and passing Amtrak trains."
04:27But despite what these seemingly reliable sources have to say, the leaf in the logo is not a mint
04:33leaf. Instead, as noted by Ice Cream, a technical science and technology textbook on ice cream
04:39production, it's a Breyer leaf. William Breyer's sons Fred and Henry adopted it in 1896, when they
04:45opened their first ice cream manufacturing plant in Philadelphia to meet growing demand and needed
04:51some more official branding. Even though a Breyer leaf has nothing to do with ice cream, it's easy
04:56to see why they chose it, considering that their name is pronounced the same as that particular
05:01leaf. Do you ever panic if you take out a carton of ice cream but then get distracted and forget
05:07about it?
05:08Who wants melted ice cream?
05:11If you find yourself in this predicament, you actually might not need to worry.
05:16If you're expecting to discover a puddle of melted ice cream,
05:19you might avoid that if you've got Breyers. Or at least, that's what a rumor claims.
05:24Spoon University tested that claim by setting two cartons of Breyers products,
05:29the Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream and the Cookies & Cream Frozen Dairy Dessert,
05:33out on a kitchen counter at room temperature. Both melted at about the same rate, and after
05:38one hour, they were both, as Spoon University described them, on their road to soup.
05:43This rumor has also sparked broader questions about why certain ice creams do or don't melt,
05:49and it turns out that it's not always a question of whether or not an ice cream is real
05:54or a dairy dessert. Sometimes it's just a matter of ingredients and additives,
05:59some of which are perfectly natural.
06:01If you're a fan of Breyers and you're looking for an ice cream that you can enjoy while following
06:06a strict diet, then you're in luck. The company makes a range of ice creams for specialty diets,
06:12including dairy-free, gluten-free, no sugar added, and carb-smart for low-carb dieters.
06:18One of their newest specialty options is the Breyers Delights line that was introduced in
06:222017. It offered four flavors of ice cream with low and reduced fat and more protein than you
06:28might expect in a serving of ice cream. Each pint of Breyers Delights contains between 260
06:35and 330 calories and 20 grams of protein. A few years earlier, in 2014, Breyers released
06:42gluten-free flavors, including 36 varieties that are approved by the FDA via its gluten-free
06:48validation and labeling process. Other specialty diet ice creams from Breyers include non-GMO
06:54options and some products that are lactose-free. And if you're wondering, yes, lactose-free is
07:00different from dairy-free. The non-dairy-free ice creams are made from almond milk,
07:05while the lactose-free ice cream is made with dairy without lactose.
07:10Once upon a time, Breyers offered Americans an unfamiliar ice cream dessert that had
07:15previously achieved significant popularity in 1980s Great Britain, the Viennetta ice cream cake.
07:21This frozen cake is made with alternating vanilla ice cream and chocolate layers,
07:25and it comes in a few different flavors, like chocolate and mint.
07:29Despite Viennetta's cult fandom and unique texture, Breyers wasn't able to make the sale
07:34on all Americans when they offered this dessert stateside in the 90s, and it was thus discontinued.
07:40If you're a bit sad you missed out the first time around, don't cry too hard,
07:44because you could end spilling your tears in your very own Viennetta ice cream cake.
07:49In 2021, Unilever announced that it would be bringing the Viennetta cake back under its
07:54Good Humor brand. For the time being, the cake is only available in the vanilla variety
07:59and in a smaller size with six servings. But considering that it's only 130 calories per
08:05serving, we wouldn't blame you if you ate the entire thing yourself.
08:09One slice is never enough.
08:12Do you ever have a hankering for ice cream but you don't feel like getting up off the
08:16couch and trekking to the grocery store? That's no problem. Just like in its earlier days,
08:21Breyers has you covered with delivery services that can bring ice cream directly to your door.
08:27The Breyers ice cream shop can be found in select locations on popular food service apps such as
08:32DoorDash, Grubhub, Uber Eats, and Postmates. And this isn't just a Breyers service. It's
08:38a Unilever initiative that also includes other Unilever ice cream brands, like Magnum,
08:44and it's available in more than 1,500 U.S. locations.
08:48It's also available outside of the United States, where it's known as Ice Cream Now.
08:52Ice Cream Now was launched as a pilot program in London to help Unilever overcome the seasonal
08:58slump that typically befalls ice cream sales. In 2020, the service really boomed in popularity
09:04due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As CNN noted, for Unilever, the growth of ice cream at home,
09:10led by brands including Ben & Jerry's and Magnum, is on track to more than offset the
09:15collapse in its out-of-home ice cream revenue in 2020, which includes sales to restaurants
09:20and catering companies.
09:22In 2020, a legal case was raised against Unilever stating that Breyers was falsely advertising its
09:29natural vanilla ice cream by claiming that it contains vanilla flavor exclusively derived from
09:34vanilla plants. Plaintiffs claimed that this was misleading and consistently false advertising,
09:40as the ice cream also contains artificially flavored vanilla on top of the naturally
09:45sourced vanilla, according to laboratory analysis in a 2019 Rutgers University study.
09:50Plaintiffs further claimed that the ice cream contained at most only a trace of real vanilla.
09:56The claim also stated that if the members of the class action knew about this artificially
10:00flavored vanilla, they either wouldn't have bought the ice cream at all,
10:04or they would have expected a lower price. There was an attempt to dismiss this case,
10:08but that motion was denied by a California federal judge in July 2020.
10:13A similar case was filed in early 2021 against Breyers Delights Vanilla Bean Low-Fat Ice Cream,
10:19in which the plaintiff asked for $5 million in return for what she called
10:24deception that created the, quote,
10:26"...reasonable belief that the vanilla bean ice cream contained vanilla beans."
10:31When you peruse a brand's website, you probably expect to see pages boasting about ingredient
10:36quality and perhaps even information about responsible sourcing practices. That's what
10:42you get for the most part with Breyers' website, but there's one particular thing that stands out.
10:47The admission of unsustainable farming practices for one key ingredient.
10:52On the ingredient's pledge page, you'll see pledges to use only 100% grade A milk and cream,
10:58naturally sourced colors and flavors, and sustainably sourced fruit and vanilla.
11:02But then an asterisk points out one exception.
11:06Since the 1800s, we've pledged our ice cream was made with ripe fruit,
11:10natural sugar, pure milk and cream, nothing artificial.
11:15As it turns out, the raspberries used in Breyers' products aren't sustainably farmed.
11:20So what does that mean? What exactly is an unsustainably farmed raspberry?
11:25While you'll be hard-pressed to find any more information regarding these suspicious raspberries
11:29on the Breyers' website, you can come to your own conclusions with a little more research.
11:35According to the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition,
11:38sustainable agriculture, or farming, is essentially a mode of farming that
11:42protects the environment, is economically profitable, and provides social and economic
11:48equity. Alas, most raspberries don't meet these sustainable farming criteria for one big reason,
11:54pesticide use. As reported by Slate in 2009, according to the Pesticide Action Network,
12:00raspberries account for an average of 20.2 pounds of chemicals dumped on every acre of treated land.
12:07So an unsustainably farmed raspberry is very likely a pesticide-laden raspberry,
12:13and Breyers cannot help but admit the truth.