Remember cute Breyers commercials where the little boy reads the back of a non-Breyers ice cream container and can’t pronounce the artificial ingredients? Then he picks up a container of Breyers and can pronounce all of the ingredients because there are only four well-known natural ingredients: milk, cream, sugar, natural flavors. Well, now there is a fifth: tara gum. No, it’s not as scary to pronounce as cargenceen and gaur gum; but it’s not the simple ice cream that was formerly advertised. Tara gum is a new ingredient that Breyers has added to their ice creams to make them creamier.
Admittedly, when I first reviewed Breyers Natural Vanilla ice cream it didn’t even occur to me to look at the ingredients. A commenter informed me that the Breyers Natural Vanilla recipe was no longer as simple– tara gum had been added. Sure enough, I looked at the ingredients on the package and there it was. Since then, I have spent some time investigating this new addition to Breyers ice cream and will discuss my findings in a 4 part series. Today, in the first story of the series, I will outline the basics about tara gum and detail Breyers response to some questions I asked them. In the upcoming weeks I will post a taste test comparing Breyers All Natural Vanilla with and without tara gum, specify odd ingredients in other brands’ ice creams, and conclude with a story about the future of ice cream ingredients.
Tara gum is a natural ingredient from the tara tree, a plant commonly found in South America and Africa. Studies have shown it to be safe for human consumption. New Zealand and Australia Food Standards approved it as did the World Health Organization. However, the results of these studies were not entirely positive, as tara gum is indigestible and causes various problems when consumed in high quantities (>5%) by rats and dogs. Though, most humans will not consume this amount of tara gum and should not have anything to worry about.
Due to my curiosity about tara gum I contacted Unilever (the parent company of Breyers) with a number of questions about the product. These questions included:
When tara gum was first added to Breyers ice cream?
Is tara gum (or a similar substance) added to all of the Breyers ice creams or only
certain flavors? Also, is it added to other Unilever brands, such as Ben and Jerry’s?
Is there any plan to add tara gum to other brands of ice creams in the future?
Does the addition have anything to do with the Double Churned ice cream that is now being
sold?
Why was it decided that tara gum should be added to the ice cream?
Have you received complaints about the new additive?
A PR representative from GolinHarris got back to me with the following response:
In response to your questions regarding the use of tara gum in its ice cream, Breyers is proud of its all-natural heritage. It’s a position we take very seriously and one we work hard to maintain. We value the confidence our customers have in our products and go to great lengths to ensure exceptional quality and great taste.
So when consumers expressed concern over the texture of our products, we responded. By adding a natural gum to Breyers All Natural Vanilla ice cream, we’ve helped to protect the product’s texture while staying true to our all-natural commitment. We use tara gum from natural plant sources to help Breyers ice cream stay creamier and more enjoyable for longer periods of time.
Because ice cream is temperature-sensitive, this addition has further allowed us to ensure the ice cream’s quality throughout it distribution. As you can imagine, ice cream’s taste and texture can be unfavorably affected if exposed to temperature fluctuations during shipping or storage. Our customers describe the problem as ice cream with a “gritty” or “grainy” texture. In fact, growing distribution and increased handling of our ice cream in the marketplace has indeed resulted in greater chances for temperature abuse and heightened potential for texture problems.
Clearly, Unilever’s/Breyers response didn’t address the majority of my questions, which made me think that they’re not completely convinced that tara gum fits into the category of traditionally “natural products.” So my curiosity about this mysterious ingredient intensified and I decided more research was necessary. Stay tuned for my findings as I explore and analyze the ingredients of non-Breyers ice creams. Is this tara gum phenomenon is unique to Breyers or is it an industry-wide trend?
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I suffer from digestive issues and food allergies and have to spend three hours in a grocery store figuring out what I can eat. When I first discovered Breyers “All Natural” ice cream I was overjoyed! But now, with the Tara Gum, I get digestive issues and have had to search for yet another ice cream. I think I’ll buy an ice cream maker and make my own. I don’t think the recipe it comes with will tell me to use Tara Gum when I make it.
It is not greed it is stupidity – but if we don’t buy it then they won’t be able to sell it – make sure you stick to your guns and we can take back out super markets!! Share what you know and then no one will buy the crap they sell since the 80’s.
That includes- aspartame- in most gums BTW and addictive! Gives headaches! Sucralose Splenda- real crap too. Strokes, brain tumors, seizures and joint pain from them. Use agave and stevia.
( poor diabetics were the biggest target of this tragic change from saccharine- rumor about it causing cancer is a lie!! Big BUsiness wanted their paws on the fake sugar market- diets were a big trend!)
Stay away from Gardasil!!! Evil and will leave you a victim of rheumatiod arthritis ( homebound!) Polysorbate 80- evil!! Triple Vaccines like MMR- triple the dose of timersol ( lethal) and aluminum or mercury- lethal. BE CAREFUL! READ your LABELS!
Breyer’s new formula is clearly inferior. I used to salivate at the prospect of consuming their ice cream, and now it taste like processed garbage like all ice cream filled with whey and tara gum. Haagen Daaz is the only really common brand left that DOESN’T put garbage in their product. And you can taste the difference. Eat a scoop of new Breyer’s coffee ice cream, then compare it to Haagen Daaz coffee. I used to deem them equally tasty, with their own uniquely desirable palette of flavors. Now Breyer’s taste TERRIBLE!!! What a shame. One of the most stalwart and delectable brands ruined by cost-cutting. And they thought the discerning ice cream aficionados wouldn’t notice!!!! The public will, in time, turn away from their new product. It’s pricier than the really cheapo brands, so there’s no reason to buy it if its filled with the same trash.
ICE CREAM CONNOISSEUR SIGNING OUT
Okay I just went through that Gloria lady’s post—- I thought this was an ice cream Web site!!! I was kind of with you about the synthetic sugars, and then you start rambling about vaccines?? I don’t think you’re in the right forum man!! Now, if the Breyer’s folks ever come across these more pointed critiques of their new crap ingredients, they are going to write the comments off as the pontifications of a bunch of health-food nuts!
I couldn’t find anything about tara gum in Harold McGee’s “On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen.”
What I do notice is that Breyer’s ice cream with tara gum in it is more sticky than I remember it being before they started adding it.
I suspect that it enables them to get a higher yield and that they’re listening more to their biz-school boys–for whom ROI is king–than to their customers–for whom taste is what it’s all about.
I hope others will ask them to reconsider. After all, tara gum is not natural–it does not occur in nature–but is, instead, a processed food.
Tara gum is a genetically modified fish protein (GMO). Unilever is all about cost cutting. Unilever does not care about the product or what the customer really wants. It’s all about the profit.
I am curious about taragum because as much as I enjoy ice cream ,I am usually satisfied with a cup serving.Not so with the Breyers Chocolate Crackle.I can eat the whole 1/2 gallon at one sitting,although I haven’t allowed myself to do so,but wondered what possibly “addictive ingredient” might be lurking within and if anyone else has had this experience.It is just too delicious !
My brother was a Breyers addict. (I must admit getting up in the middle of the night for a second serving, myself. ) Several years ago
my brother contacted the makers of Breyers and asked what did they do to their ice cream. They were surprised that he had noticed any difference. If you have a Harris Teeter grocery chain near you, their name brand natural ice cream is a good replacement for the OLD Breyers.
At first Gloria just seems like your garden variety CHICKEN LITTLE
but click on her name and you find she is out to make a buck herself on “Natural stuff” I generally find it amusing but sad that so many people are such idiots about ingredients that are unfamiliar to them.
I remember one years ago that claimed that an emulsifier used in some ice creams was actually anti freeze! Good God people GET A LIFE!
I have purchased Breyers for the last few years because of the natural ingredients and no corn syrup. Tonight my 16-year-old son ate some of the chocolate flavor, and broke out in hives around his mouth and chin and had bad diahhrea. I kept saying it couldn’t be the ice cream, until I looked at the carton and saw the tara gum listed that never used to be there, and am guessing that’s the culprit. Kind of scary.
I agree that Breyers was once one of the good ice creams. I recently bought some Breyers French Vanilla Classic (which isn’t allowed to call itself ice cream here in Canada). It tastes to me like that white stuff that comes in a jar and calls itself marshmallow. Maybe some flavours are still likeable.
I checked this website after having an allergic reaction to Breyer’s Chocolate Ice Cream. It was a milder version of the very severe allergic reaction I get from Brazil nuts. So I checked the package and the only ingredient I didn’t recognize was tara gum. So by deduction, I figured that was the cause. Some are saying it’s from a South American bush and someone else said it’s a fish derivative. Well guess what, I’m also allergic to certain fishes. So I get a double whammy when I eat it. I will not buy Breyer’s again and I will be writing them to demand that they put an allergy warning (like they are supposed to anyway) on their boxes.
I’m not the least little bit surprised at anything that these guys do! I’ve already had it out with them concerning ‘GREED’– and their downsizing of their ice cream containers — ‘less for more.’ And one of the next questions I’m going to ask these fools, is their continuation of downsizing other products…sneakily — trying to pull the wool over consumers eyes while the Company’s hands are now stealing from the pockets. I hope they’re proud of themselves?? I wish I had a dollar for every cutthroat Company I’m running across — doing these crafty things. (Millions of dollars is not enough it seems!)
Pathetic…
I also e-mailed unilever about their screwing up a great product and they sent the same form letter to me and a page of coupons which included a $1 dollar off if I bought 2 containers,they’re not even half gallons anymore,of they’re lousy product.Buy Hagen-Daz,throw Breyers in the trash where it belongs
Been a long time fan of Breyers, the only ice cream that was like eating home-made, until they started messing with their recipe. I have food sensitivities, including to some of these “gum” additives that are put into cheap ice cream. So it was nice to have a high quality choice. It’s been through some changes, though, which I first noticed by the taste/texture, and then started reading the label (though I don’t remember seeing tara gum there at first). Then I started noticing the mysterious shrinking ice creams everywhere, Breyers included, yet the price only going up, so not buying it anymore unless it was on sale. Then suddenly I am getting bad reactions to eating it, and I am reading the label and seeing the recipe has changed again, and this thing called tara gum. So sad, how something that was once the ONLY ice cream for me, is now making me sick. Well, Breyers, congratulations on taking a great product and trashing it.
We just bought some Breyers on sale (Chocolate and Vanilla ‘bean’) Breyers used to be great, we haven’t had it in a while because of cost and it was a pretty cold winter in the Northeast. The last time I had Breyers vanilla icecream you could actually see the vanilla beans, not anymore! They probably just use vanilla extract (the artificial kind too!) because there is not one vanilla bean in the container. The color is off too it used to be white with little flecks of bean, now it’s yellowish!? This reminds me of the cheap, cheap, cheap store brand icecream! Why should I pay so much for Breyers when I can get the store brand for half the price since it’s made the same? Also, the containers are smaller and the label should’t say All Natural anymore, it’s false advertsing. I will never buy Breyers again, unless the useless corporate scum lose so much money and market share that they decide to pull a Coke Classic….
Another disgruntled former Breyer’s lover here. I hadn’t had Breyer’s for years–since my childhood, really–when I noticed some containers of it in my local grocery store freezer. The stars aligned, and I had an insurmountable craving for Breyer’s chocolate ice cream, the most perfect chocolate ice cream ever made, as I well remembered.
Imagine my dismay when I took it home and realized that the ingredients list had been tampered with. Breyer’s used to have a wonderful, delicate texture, and a unique, SOFT chocolate flavor. When I saw a claim about “now with 33% more chocolate” on the box, I started to get uneasy. And then I turned to the ingredient panel, saw the added tara gum, saw that the company had been bought by Unilever since I tasted it last.
Sure enough, “new” Breyer’s is okay, but nothing special. It’s no different from any other ice cream. It doesn’t melt as beautifully and lusciously as it used to. The chocolate flavor these days is, dare I say it, vulgar. Did they add more chocolate to cover up for a bad taste or texture that comes from the tara gum? You have to wonder? Or maybe it was only a way to condescend to their customers–maybe there’s some food trend analyst telling Unilever that Americans want everything chocolaty-er.
Corporate consolidation may be the way of the world; I don’t have anything against Unilever for being big, or for buying the Breyer’s line if it seemed like a good investment. But to change a time-honored, winning formula and keep on marketing it in the same carton–trying to trade on the considerable brand equity that Breyer’s had built up over time by making, hands down, an awesome product–that’s pathetic and irritating.
And the thought that I will never taste real Breyer’s chocolate again…that just makes me sad.
My family loved the old Breyers. We ALWAYS had a carton of the vanilla bean variety in the freezer. It tasted better than any other store bought ice cream. Now it tastes like everyone elses, but in a way that ended up being a good thing for us because it made us buy a litte cuisinart ice cream maker and we’ve been making our own ice cream. We don’t put in tara gum or “natural flavor”. We use sugar, cream, milk, and vanilla or cocoa.
The clean, original Breyers type ice cream is now being made by Turkey Hill! Its called Turkey Hill All Natural Vanilla – and its almost exacly like the old classic Breyers, just SLIGHTLY more fat – bu
t VERY close!!
I sent then a big thank you for this product, and they vere appreciative. In the northeast, tShaws carries it, but not Stop & Shop.
UNILEVER / GOOD HUMOR totally ruined the old Breyers with their “all natural GUM ADDITIVE”- claiming it stopped the ice cream from “phase changing/ crystallizing” if it partially melted in shipping- which in 20 years of buying the old formula i NEVER had a problem with – but i SURE have a problem with ice bream that turns to YELLOW RUBBER after a few weeks in the freezer! Shareholder profit greed ruined Breyers.
Dear Janine June 2, 2010 at 9:21 am
Just think that … Breyers is now Unilever … the old family name was purchased with future profits in mind.
When you have a few hours to blow,,, read this whole page from top down.
The gum has some qualities of preservation, but also allows insertion of more whipped AIR into the mix. Innovation from the makers of SOAP!
I have yet to put it in the sink (since I’ve bought my last of this sludge) to see if it has decayed/melted by the next morning.
Sure wish this Turkey Creek brand would appear in Florida!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Unilever’s All Natural Ice Cream, YUM!!! NOT!!!!!
I just had some ( have not had it lately), anyway, when I ate it, the first thing I said was “this taste gummy”. I couldn’t have been more right. So I take a look at the label and said “what the heck is tara gum?” So I headed for my netbook and started my search. That is how I found this site. Please, Please, Please Bryers, if you ever read these things, bring back the old recipe. And while your at it, I wouldn’t mind the old size container as well. I’m thinking of trying my hand at home made also. It has to better.
WELL
I
HAVE AN ICE CREAM MAKER AND BEEN USING IT GUESS WHAT I USE, STRAIGHT ALDI CONDENSED MILK TO MAKE IT
BETTER THAN BRYERS ON SALE FOR ONE DOLLAR AND EIGHTY EIGHT CENTS. ONE HALFCUPPURE CANE SUGAR AND VINILLIA.
BREYERS HAS TURNED TO GREED
This explains two things: First, why my very most favorite ice cream in the whole world — Breyer’s Coffee — tasted closer to cardboard than coffee ice cream; and second, why I got diarrhea after eating it. Like others here, I have an extremely sensitive system, and I have to really watch what I eat. I always used to brag that I had to go with “high-end” ice creams like Breyers because they were the only ones I didn’t get sick on. Now this ice cream has to stay at the store too. I didn’t even think of looking at the label, I was so used to it being “natural.” And that creamy effect the company’s bragging about? It sucks. There are some of us out there that like ice cream because it’s, uh, duh — icy! Note: They changed Ovaltine too. And it was for the worse too. Please, if anybody knows a company that makes plain old ice milk these days, let me know.
P.S. Doesn’t Unilever make soap too? It tastes like they make the ice cream & soap in the same batch.
tara gum causes diarhea and the ice cream is mushy and not the texture of ice cream anymore. shame on you Breyers. Not natural anymore and I am writing to the FDA about it so you can’t say natural. I am so tired of these companies lying about it.
LET’S ALL BOYCOTT BREYERS!!!!!
The only “real” ice cream that I will eat is Hagen Das! The rest are just chemical conncoctions – “natural” flavor usually hides the fact that it contains MSG! So many word games by the corporations!
I don’t care what the size is, just bring back the original recipe. Until then, Breyers, YOU ARE DEAD TO ME!.
I was a Breyers addict growing up. I bought Vanilla by the box, and sat at my local stationary store counter, where they served up cones of chocolate chip – which was extra special because it wasn’t in the stores. It was an amazingly light and refreshing ice cream. I always preferred it to Haagen Dazs for its lightness, which was mostly due to the absence of eggs in the recipe, but these days I wouldn’t eat it if the stores were giving it away. I used to work for a company that Unilever took over, and it went to s**t, just like Breyers! I personally believe the shrinking containers and additives are a result of the rising milk prices in this country, and i think Breyers added Tara Gum to try to mask using less milk and/or cream in their ice cream. I can definitely taste the lack of milky/creamy flavor, and it only highlights the tara gum taste. Breyers is now gummy whipped ice, with just a splash of milk and a hint of vanilla. Tara gum was previously listed as the last ingredient, but is now ahead of vanilla (flavor – whatever flavor means – didn’t it used to be real vanilla beans?) Luckily, I can buy Straus Ice Cream, which is made by a small family owned dairy, and is truly an all-natural, gum and additive free ice cream. It’s only sold in the health food markets in my area, and I’m glad to have it available since even the health food markets stock ice creams containing gums and fillers. I miss the Breyers of my youth – it WAS the perfect ice cream .
Oh the humanity! Unilever has ruined Breyers Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream. It used to be such a treat, the white crisp icy flavor – there was nothing else like it. Why on earth would they mess with it? Bring the original back. I will not put another spoonful in my mouth until they do. This is an outrage.
Trish ……. why would they mess with the recipe???? ….. GREED
Blue Bunny Ice Cream makes a vanilla with only milk, cream, sugar and vanilla.
I agree, food additives are taking the place of real edibles. Breyer’s used to be the only ice cream that was worth the name and true to it.
So what can I buy here in central/northern California to replace it? Besides HaagenDaz ?
Not only have they begun adding ingredients not found in a home kitchen, but they have replaced the real semi sweet chocolate chips in their ice cream with “chocolate flavored chips!” I noticed it immediately when I got their mint chocolate chip, and checked the ingredients after finding it tasted “off.” Sure enough, it was listed as chocolate FLAVORED chips. Helllllooooo……that’s NOT real chocolate. If my supermarket brand ice cream can use real chocolate chips and cost two dollars cheaper than Breyers, then I think Breyers can go back to doing the same. I remember when they first started labeling their smaller packages as “space saver packages”….yeah, so is a pint. What a sham.
I agree. Why mess with a good thing. I am very disappointed in Bryers. Turkey Hill adds nothing extra to their vanilla or chocolate.
Never buying Breyers again. If tara gum is such a great idea, why didn’t they make a commercial bragging about it being added to their icecream? When a company sneaks things into the products we consumers trust, they deserve to go bankrupt.
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