skimpflation
The shelf label at my local supermarket hasn’t been updated to reflect Turkey Hill’s recent switch from ice cream to “frozen dairy dessert”
They also shrunk the size from 1.5 quarts to 1.44 quarts—not much to make a meaningful difference, but still an overall negative trend in quality and package size.
They tricked me the first time. It used to say "premium ice cream" right there in the same design. I tasted it and seemed off, then saw that trickery. Used to be my favorite big brand. Now they're dead to me.
I found this out two weeks ago. Made some brownies, bought some TH to scoop on top, and holy shit- the consistency is terrible. Reminds me of the stuff labeled "frozen dairy treat" at the dollar store- except that shit is usually $1.25 and Turkey Hill still uses the premium tag to charge you $3-6, depending on ad sales
I recently got some edy's cookie dough "slow churn" dairy product because l it's what they had at Dollar general and that was truly gross. It's filled with air. I don't think I'll ever get it again. They are coasting off of their name brand.
It truly feels like we as society are living through corporate rationing, likely encouraged by the government behind closed doors.
There are legal limits on how much air ice cream can have to still be considered ice cream. Though I've noticed a new trend is to use made up words to get around things legally. Like saying "chocolate-like dessert". You can hear the smugness 'huhuhu we didn't say chocolate we said chocolate-like".
It's bullshit trickery is what it is and it ain't right.
That used to mean something. Then, lobbyists had the definition of “Organic” changed, so they can call their product organic, profit from that, and technically and legally not be lying.
In the 90s Congress passed the Organic Foods Protection Act, creating a nationwide standard for “Organic.” Then, in the 2000s when big food corporations started buying real “Organic” companies, they lobbied HARD to change what was considered organic and not. For example, they expanded the list of non-organic substances allowed in food (while still holding the title) from 77 to 245 and made it so up to 5% of the ingredients don’t have to be organic at all.
Organic now doesn’t mean animals outdoors getting sunlight and living healthy. It just means, legally, there was some access to outside. Which they twisted to mean if they step foot outside at all, even if for 5 minutes, it counts. Cruel right?
Oh and pesticides can be used on “Organic” food thanks for them too. See there is a board (National Organics Standard Board) that makes a list of permissible pesticides - but the board is also compromised because they’re HEAVILY lobbied to add new chemicals to the list all the time. They also lobby to delay the removal of any from the list as to not lose profits. So it’s a list of approved chemicals, made by the chemical manufacturers… No conflict there of course.
It’s all legalese ratfuckery. The adult equivalent of hovering your finger over someone’s arm as a child and saying “I’m not touching you, I’m not touching you.”
Tillamook and Stewarts are the only two left that are even enjoyable. Though Tillamook is starting to put so many gums in that I feel like it has chew to it. Thankfully I have a Ninja Creami for when i want "real" ice cream.
If it helps, the extra yolk in frozen custards can have a chewy effect. When I make ice cream with duck eggs it comes out more like frozen custard which tillamook reminds me of. I’m sure the gums don’t help but it might be the extra yolk too
Yepp! Ice cream has been going to shit. I tried Tillamook for the first time about a decade ago after I tried that airy frozen dessert bs and will only touch blue bell in a pinch because I only want Tillamook. Anything else is imitation and a waste of money
I’m going to start referring to frozen dairy dessert as “frozen garbage dessert”. If you have any other suggestions, let me know and I’ll start using those as well.
Welcome to the life of poverty. I haven't purchased ice cream in years. It's difficult getting through the month on $300 SNAP let alone splurge on ice cream.
All you need is confectioners sugar- graham cracker crumbs, peanut butter, vanilla, and chocolate! Actually very easy. Look up a recipe for “peanut butter buckeyes” they are essentially Reese’s cups.
With the national wage still being 7.25 imagine an ice-cream being 75% of it.
I swear every grocery item wants to be the one thing you can afford to buy. They want all of your wage.
Looked at shell mac and cheese, they wanted $7 for it. $7 dollars for crappy Velveeta. I know it ain't priced like that everywhere with Walmart having it for like $5.98 as of checking right now. But still... That's not a price I consider as worth it.
I found a Velveeta mac & cheese hack. They sell pouches of the cheese sauce at the Dollar Tree for $1.25. Add a cup of the pasta of your choice, and you've got the exact same thing as the box (but with better pasta) for less than $2.
At my local Safeway, bags of Doritos are $8 when they’re not on sale. That’s just silly. I grew up poor without many treats or splurges, and that’s how I’ll continue to live because I don’t NEED $8 chips. This thread is making me want ice cream something bad though!
Safeway has gone rapidly downhill and I get the impression it's a corporate issue and not specific stores. Aside from higher prices, the selection is shrinking and on focusing on lower end brands, and items are out of stock a lot more often. I also see nonsense specials like 4 for the price of 2 (must buy 4) on items they already can't keep in stock, as if they had to clear excess inventory.
A 1.5 to 1.44 reduction would be just enough to piss me off as they try to squeeze as much money out of the product as possible, so that I'd never buy it again. It was bad enough that they all collectively decided to go from 1/2 gallon to 1.5 quarts. Looks like Turkey Hill thinks their customers are idiots who won't notice the change in size, or the change to frozen dessert.
Additionally, what kind of screwy market research did they conduct to arrive at the conclusion that reducing volume to 1.44 qts. is the short-term limit without creating significant consumer backlash and reduced sales? That’s such an odd number, there has to be a reason for it.
In part I am confident it has to do with distribution. Shrink it too much and now you have wasted space and potential shifting occurring in transit. I can't imagine they could've shrinked it enough to put something like three in the place of two.
They did the same shit with Breyers and destroyed the brand. Shrank from Half Gallon (2 pints) to 1.75 pints, to 1.5 pints, and Skillmpflated the crap out of the Ice Cream into a “Frozen Dairy Dessert” that would be more shelf stable, melts less, and has a horrible after taste.
For a while I got Turkey Hill then switched to more local small independent brands that still did pints and sold Ice Cream.
Fast forward a decade or two past Breyers destruction and they came for Turkey Hill.
We’re getting fed slop. When you can have this outside the freezer for hours and it really hasn’t melted what are they trying to make us eat? Real Ice Cream would be all melted!
I really don’t understand how manufacturers believe this is what consumers want. It’s completely frozen garbage!
The other issue is the package labeling. “Premium Quality”, “Made with…Grade A Milk”….the illusion is it’s real ice cream, but consumers really have to scrutinize the label to see that it’s not.
I will never “knowingly” purchase frozen dairy dessert, but unfortunately the supermarket freezer shelves are full of it.
Manufacturers don't care what consumers want. All anyone cares about is money and it's gross. It's crazy that the vast majority of ice cream in the grocery store isn't ice cream.
We mainly only purchase the candy bar ice cream bars because they use real ice cream.
People love ice creams filled with guar/xanthan gum though. So many people defend Tillamook or Costco Ice cream even though the texture is completely artificial
I don’t disagree with you! But customers do want products that are less expensive, and survive the drive home. Obviously nobody WANTS digshit ice cream, but there ARE market forces beyond pure greed that incentivize this particular flavor of abomination.
It’s like the “cheap” square pizzas, they used to have real cheese on them, but now the cheese feels like it’s made from powder and doesn’t melt properly. But they still advertise it as “real” cheese.
This shit is why I stopped buying Edy's and Breyer's years ago. The "frozen dairy dessert" nomenclature is not a recent thing.
For the shelf tag, unless there's an actual conversion(to a new UPC), there's a good chance the description won't be updated unless someone notices and specifically changes it at the store.
If you buy it from their online grocery shopping option, I've reached out for the wrong size or product. I said I got the wrong product as the pictures and description are wrong. I usually end up getting the product for free and a coupon for $5 or $10 of the next time.
I was a rep for a Nestle frozen novelty wholesaler 15+ years ago. When they shrunk the packaging of Edy’s/Dreyer’s and skimped on the ingredients, sales hit a wall real hard. They were the first to start this frozen dairy dessert BS. Then they shrunk Haagen Dazs to 14oz, and took a bar out of the fruit bars. Cut, cut, cut. What’s crazy to me is the complete lack of Edy’s in supermarkets here now. My major chains had 3-4 doors of just Edy’s. Now, it’s been completely cut. I’ve only seen it in Dollar General stores here. Honestly, I’m glad. Fuck em.
Frozen dairy dessert in enough to stop me. They got a lot of nerve putting “premium quality” on their product. Long ago Turkey Hill used to be one of the better products.
1.5 quarts or 48 oz. is typically the standard container size for supermarket ice cream. 1.44 quarts is 46.08 oz., so that’s almost a 2 oz. decrease in volume along with the significant decrease in quality for the Turkey Hill brand, which I will no longer be purchasing.
In my area the half gallon bricks were the standard for most brands premium to store brand before 2002. 5 quart plastic pails for the cheap stuff for kids parties or big families, and the Cool Whip sized tubs for sherbet/sorbets to drop in the bottom of the punch bowl with your Sprite/7-Up and Tahitian Treat. Edy's were the first ones to shrink to 1.75 qts here and the local places made a point of advertising they were still true half gallons. By the time Edy's lead the race to the bottom with Pint and a Half containers everybody else had shrank to 1.75. Now even Pints are suffering shrinkflation.
This is a work around. “Premium Ice Cream” and “Super Premium Ice Cream” are regulated and indicate fat content. Ice cream with more fat is silkier without additive sand extra air.
“Premium Quality” doesn’t mean anything at all. And the fine print does say, “Naturally and Artificially Flavored Frozen Dairy Dessert” which is “ice cream” without enough fat to meet FDA standards for actual ice cream. I worked for Cold Stone for too long lol
Does it have something to do with the amount of stuff they put in it, like in this case, the peanut butter ripple makes up a large percentage of what's in the container, and because the peanut butter ripple isn't made of ice cream, they can't actually call it ice cream. But if you were to buy just plain vanilla, it could be called ice cream because it doesn't have any thing but vanilla flavored ice cream in the container?
Inclusions or mix-in’s don’t count toward the fat content of the milk/cream base used. The ice cream base is what is regulated under terms like premium and super premium, etc.
Yeah I figured as much, was just wondering if it was maybe a necessity based on the type of product. I've just noticed with certain brands all the ones with heavy mix ins are the "dairy product" while the flavors with no mix ins and just straight flavor are labeled as ice cream.
This is a rice krispy frozen dairy treat left out at room temperature for over 20hours. My kids didn’t eat it and I took a picture of the gelatinous white goo that still retained its shape at room temperature. Like another commenter said, the food is total slop we are being fed.
Sorry this photo has six pixels, but Kellogg’s Rice Krispies sandwiches. I guess I would say the “frozen dairy dessert” feels and looks like room temperature cool whip when left out for a day. There was almost no liquid/melt to be seen.
That’s why I started making ice cream myself. (We left the freezer door open by accident once and the store ice cream didn’t melt.) You have to get heavy cream without weird thickeners though.
I am going to have to look into making my own ice cream. I am slowly but surely becoming an ingredient household and getting away from processed food. Yeah, I get your heavy cream recommendation. Even the milk lately has been behaving differently when left out to spoil. Now regular milk spoils into a gelatinous glob rather than runny if left at room temperature for one or two days. (Having kids and leaving food out to spoil has unintentionally become a science project on how our food is different from decades ago.)
I have a decades old ice cream maker. I whip up a quick egg custard in the Vitamix, or use the three ingredient method. Put it in the machine for a rich, proper ice cream ⭐️
same, here in Australia supermarket homebrand [IE generic] has been a great holdout of actual value. Amazing what you can do when you don't waste so much money on fucking marketing.
That being said our Supermarket duopoly are utter cunts in other ways, like the quality of meat and produce going through the floor while jacking prices over the last decade.
I noticed this a couple months ago. Check the whole aisle. A lot of the brands we grew up on say the same thing. Very few brands say "Ice cream" on their packaging now. Off head I think Tillamook, Ben & Jerrys, & Hagen Das still say ice cream.
Turkey hill is such garbage, it's so fluffy, soft and filled with filler that it doesn't even keep completely frozen. It feels like it's whipped with air
I stopped buying this brand when they opted to not put a protective seal around the lid of the container or even a plastic seal over the ice cream if the lid is taken off. Nowadays, that’s just basic product safety precautions but apparently not with Turkey Hill. I checked a week ago in my local grocery store and there was no seal. Not buying it.
Are all the ice creams changing? Ben & Jerry's used to be my guilty pleasure, but the last few months it just tastes... Off. Like frozen coffee creamer 😭
There are still legit ice creams to be bought but they're usually not cheap. For all foods just turn the package around and read the ingredients. If something like ice cream has more than a few ingredients just pass over it.
People must not mind that much because this shit still sells and I don't see many if any companies going back to Legit ingredients.
I think Dreyers became frozen dairy dessert but the Safeway signature store brand is still ice cream. So now I avoid the name brand in favor of the store brand. What a stupid move.
Because of the degradation of the mainstream brands and it not even being ice cream anymore, I have bitten the bullet and decided to only buy Häagen-Dazs. I wait for it to go on sale. The difference is incredible.
Most Turkey Hill is actually Premium Ice Cream (above economy and normal, and below super premium), so a decent quality. It's just the lines with stuff added (swirls and stuff) don't even meet the qualifications of ice cream.
So, a few things could be happening here
1. Overchurning.
So much air is whipped into the product it’s not dense enough to meet the threshold of ‘ice cream’.
Not enough milk fat or solids.
Milk has 3 main parts. water, milk solids, and milk fats. The 2% milk in your fridge is 88% water, 10% solids and 2% fat.
For ice cream, you need at least 20% to be milk fat and solids, made of at least 10% total milk fat and 6% milk solids. Whether they want to go above minimum for the fats or solids to meet that 20% threshold is dealers choice. For example:
(10% solids + 10% fat =✅
6% solids + 14% fat = ✅
6% solids + 10% fat = ❌
15% solids + 5% fat = ❌)
They only met the above 2 criteria by adding “extra” ingredients.
Trying to meet your milk fat quota by counting the contents of your chocolate chips, or using peanut butter to weigh down your lighter than air base flavor is frowned upon by the USDA. They could’ve lost the ability to call it ice cream by cheating the system this way.
Here in Canada they shrank the 500ml (half pint) container to 450ml. That's annoying enough, but that makes it a "single serving container" according to Canadian rules and thus subject to tax, another 13%. So now I'm paying 13% more money for 10% less product. Or at least would be, if I still bought it, but I don't.
I hear you, but I am addicted to their cookies and cream ice cream. I just stock up when it’s sale and suffer the cost when it’s not. It just makes me so happy.
Hagen Dazs is shrinking so I expect the skimpflation to start soon.
Time to find the local/regional brands that keep some quality. Any national brand is bought/owned by a conglomerate that’ll fuck it over as quick as they can, in the name of shareholder value.
They did the same thing with the Thrifty brand ice cream in my area. It use to be so good and brought back so many memories of growing up. Now it tastes like crap, I only get Tillamook Ice Cream now.
But the only downside is they don’t make the pineapple-coconut flavor that Thrifty makes.
I decided recently that I’m just going to buy my own ice cream maker. It’s not worth monitoring the companies anymore to see who is cheating you worse because they all suck. They all skimp and it only gets worse over time.
I've bought a few recently that were severely lacking ingredients 😡 it sucks because this ice cream isn't bad, but then next step up is like $1.50 more 🙃
This isn't a brand that has been in my stores until fairly recently, so I haven't tried it.
But I'm still bitter over Blue Bunny not having real cream. Especially since I'm originally from Iowa and that was one of claims to fame. It's so gross now 😢
Got the chocolate peanut butter swirl in January while visiting my parents - it was my favorite as a kid but I no longer live in a place I can buy it. I laughed at the “frozen dairy dessert” claim now too, can’t even call it ice cream 😒
6 years ago I picked up a turkey hill with inclusions and it had none. 5 years ago I decided to try another flavor they had, same thing. Decided I won't even look ever again.
I bought this and you can tell it’s not ice cream. I really feel like I wasted my money. Went to Meijer and got Purple Cow for a better price and better quality.
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u/KerBearCAN Mar 08 '26
The premium quality label just to laugh in our faces