A Facebook post about Breyers Ice Cream garnered outsized attention by claiming that the ice cream made by Breyers is not required to be labeled “frozen dairy dessert” because it’s at least 50% air and therefore cannot be labeled ice cream. Is there any truth to this claim? Is Breyers not legally ice cream?
The claim is false. Breyers sells both ice cream and frozen dairy desserts. The person making the claim showed images of Breyers “Frozen Dairy Dessert” product and asserted that it was labeled this way because the company’s ice cream had failed to meet standards of quality for ice cream set by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Breyers, America’s favorite ice cream, is no longer ice cream. It now legally has to be called Frozen Dessert, as it is 50% air, and has only a tiny percentage of actual milk or cream. When Unilever bought the brand they wanted to cheapen the ingredients, because quality food is expensive.
In all fairness, the guy’s not wrong about Breyers ice cream having a lot of air whipped into it. The FDA regulates the definition of ice cream by how much milk solids and milkfat it contains. The United States Standard of Identity for Ice Cream says that “Ice cream shall contain at least 1.6 pounds of total solids to the gallon, weigh not less than 4.5 pounds to the gallon, and contain not less than 20 percent total milk solids, constituted of not less than 10 percent milkfat. In no case shall the content of milk solids not fat be less than 6 percent. Whey shall not, by weight, be more than 25 percent of the milk solids not fat.”
However, to be labeled ice cream, a product has to have “less than 100% air” in it. The amount of air in ice cream is called “overrun.” And, yes, you bet your sweet tooth that Breyers ice cream has a lot of overrun. The difference in weight between an entire half gallon of Breyers and a pint of premium ice cream will instantly reveal this. A carton of Breyers is much too light.
While this is not required, “Premium” or “Super Premium” ice creams usually have an overrun of less than 50%. If an ice cream has 100% overrun, this means that it has one part air to every one part cream. Oddly, the person who made the post may have been being generous by stating that Breyers contained 50% air.
However, products that don’t meet the legal requirements to be called ice cream must be labeled as “Frozen Dairy Desserts.” To qualify as ice cream, the product must contain at least 10% milkfat. It must meet a certain density requirement, in weight per gallon, meaning that it’s overrun cannot be too high. This weight is at least 4.5 lbs per gallon.
Breyers makes both ice cream products and frozen dairy desserts. While the company’s ice cream does have a high overrun, it meets the requirements to be labeled ice cream. The post is lying by showing images of Breyers Frozen Dairy Desserts and pretending that these are now the only products the company can legally sell. product
Breyers Ice Cream is legally ice cream. Regardless, you can certainly buy higher quality ice cream than Breyers, and even ice cream that costs twice as much may well be a higher value. But does Breyers contain 50% air? I do not know since the company does not share this information, for obvious reasons. But, casual observation and comparisons with Premium ice cream brands would tend to persuade me that Breyers ice cream has a very high overrun or, in other words, contains a whole lot of air.
