I ate some Ben & Jerry’s icecream yesterday and was appalled by how poor it tastes these days. I used to love ‘Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough’ when The brand was first introduced in The Netherlands, but it had been a while since I had gotten around to one of those little buckets.

In 2000, Ben & Jerry’s was bought by Unilever. I happen to know someone who used to work in the Dutch Unilever frozen foods department, and he told me how for every product they have there’s a timeline. Upon introduction (or in this case: company takeover) the product is made with top notch ingredients, and over the next year or so the components are gradually downgraded to make the product cheaper to make, whilst still somewhat resembling the original. Kind of.

This is how the Magnum’s chocolate coating got so much thinner, and it’s also why Ben & Jerry’s doesn’t really taste any better than other brands anymore. On top of this timeline, there are tons of ingredients that are banned from Unilever products for production or allergy reasons. Among them is fresh milk, essential for making creamy icecream. They recently put milk back into Hertog icecream, anothe fine brand acquired by Unilever, when the public started to notice the difference and moved to other brands.

The company website still boasts about Vermont hormone-free milk being used, but I’m sceptical. It just doesn’t taste like it any more….