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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That’s MAOLA, not Moola buttermilk……..NORTH CAROLINA BASED DAIRY.
I’ve compared most of the ice cream brands in the supermarket for vanilla. Although I would prefer no tara gum, Breyer’s has the best tasting vanilla by far and the most real looking and feeling vanilla beans. Personally I slightly prefer the less creamy Breyer’s without tara gum. I’ve tried the TH Philly style vanilla. That is all natural, but the vanilla taste is weak, not intense like Breyer’s and there are fewer beans. It’s also better than Edy’s, Hagen Dazs, friendly’s, baskin robbin, etc. So, I think Breyer’s should lose the gum, and keep the same amount of vanilla, not reduce that. As far as chocolate goes, I like TH Philly style chocolate the best. Tastes like the old breyer’s chocolate, but creamier and more fatty.
Intensity of flavor is what counts most, not texture. Texture is important to some degree however. I recently had an ice cream parlor vanilla loaded with beans and delicious!! And Edy’s recently(maybe 2 years ago) stopped making their homemade vanilla bean which was very good. Color was not white, cause it was loaded with beans which gave it a tannish color which is what vanilla should look like. Why did they stop making that?
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To me Turkey Hill “All Natural” Vanilla and “All Natural” Chocolate are the best tasting ice creams that you can find in a grocery store. They are smooth, creamy, rich and delicious. I tried the Breyer’s vanilla with the tara gum for the first time tonight and found it to have a bit of an artificial quality and the taste was slightly off.
Since I just moved to an area where I can no longer purchase Turkey Hill, I may not be eating any ice cream for a while.
Has anyone noticed acid-reflux from eating this icecream with tara gum? I didn’t used to have a problem, but something changed, and I wonder if the tara gum is the problem.
My family’s favorite ice cream for quite some time had been Breyer’s Strawberry. About a year or two ago, my mother & I were eating a bowl of it and both felt something was “off’ about it. It just wasn’t the same stuff that used to make us feel like we were in heaven. I checked the ingredients list and found something new was being added: TARA GUM!!! Evidently, tara gum is supposed to make Breyer’s ice cream more creamy. I think tara gum was supposed to help correct a problem Breyers sometimes has when distributing their ice cream…if not handled correctly during distribution, huge temperature fluctuations would occur causing the ice cream to become grainy or gritty. (I myself experienced a few cartons of grainy ice cream over the many years that I’ve been eating Breyers.) Instead of fixing their distribution problems, Breyers chose to add tara gum to keep it creamy. I could put up with the “very occasional” grainy Breyers. But I cannot put up with a Breyers ice cream that has tara gum added. Instead of creamy, to my family it tasted more like a combination of marshmallowy & gummy.
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going on 80 years old and at least 65 of them was spent eating Breyers. Then noticed something changed in the taste.I blamed
old age and old taste buds…By chance happened to glance at the ingredients and “Voila” tara had been added. Talked to a Breyers
deliveryman at my local supermarket. He suggested I check out
Turkey Hill Ice cream in the black box. I did and guess what.
Ingredients read as follows: Cream, Nonfat Milk, Sugar, Vanilla,
Vanilla Bean.
I switched.
Sincerely and Thanks,
Evelyn
Dear Breyers; Please bring back the vanilla ice cream without the tara gum! My daughter-in law can’t eat it !
Thank-you!
Good for you Evelyn!!!
Klondike is another Unilever product with the same formula (for disaster). The taste and texture is an identical mess.
I wrote THEM saying that at ZERO degrees, it is still a soft mess to TRY to eat since it’s all air!!!!!!
….. so they sent me a coupon for a free one.
Sadly Verda, Breyers died with the sale to Unilever (the soap company).
Breyers will never return from the grave.
I never post anything in response to articles on the web, but I take my ice cream very seriously and felt compelled to comment! My wife and I have worked extra hard in Abu Dhabi in the UAE to find an ice cream that doesn’t have all of the additives included that ultimately just make the “ice cream product” taste worse than it should. I was excited to see Breyer’s in the freezer this evening and happily read the ingredients until I ran across “tara gum” on the list. Yuck! Thank God for the internet, however, to explain what tara gum is and why Unilever stuck it in my ice cream. Thank you Daily Scoop and add me to the list of those who will pass by Breyer’s and continue looking for real ice cream.
For those of you who have seen it, there is a U.K. brand called Waitrose that markets an all natural vanilla that is fantastic, but unfortunately we’ve only found it once, long ago, in our local grocery stores….
The Breyers Vanilla situation has further deteriorated. Gone is the label touting “33% more vanilla bean”. Indeed, now Tara Gum comes before, rather than after, flavor in the order of ingredients. In fact, the ingredients do not actually include VANILLA per se. Are ‘flecks’ smaller than ‘specks’? Their web site still describes the product as having vanilla bean specks. The package we bought yesterday says vanilla bean ‘flecks’. Since 2006, it has certainly gotten worse. Just recently, it has become no better than, maybe inferior to, ordinary cheap brands. From the post above, I need to find and try Turkey Hill.
Ingredients like tara gum, guar gum, and carageenen are all used to make icecream thicker and as a substitute for cream (or milk fat) which is more expensive. It is a scam by Unilever to cut costs, just as they did last year when they changed their standard 1/2 gallon ice cream container to 1.5 quarts but continued to charge the same price. This process of substituting cheap ingredients for the original ingredients is becoming more and more common. Look at candybars. Many American companies are now using PGPR (an oil derived from the poisonous castor seed) as a substitute for cocoa butter in their chocolate.
Well I have never been allergic to anything. I went to buy a vanilla ice cream for a coke float, I had never tried Breyers. I purchased Breyers all natural French Vanilla. Late at night i fixed the flooat, and bout 10 minutes later started itching all over! By the next morning I looked like i had the german measels! After spending $200.00 for doctor and medicine, I am allergic to Tara gum! So much for the Breyers Ice cream. I didn;t like the taste anyway.
Unilever, if you are follow this, this is for you.
My family has been eating Breyer’s ice cream for at least 3 generations. My grandmother ate Breyer’s, my mother ate Breyer’s, and I enjoyed it greatly myself.
Like other poster’s here, I take my ice cream very seriously. What makes you think you can fix a distributor problem by changing the recipe? I know that is just an excuse to cut costs and save money, but your excuses are as bad as your ice cream tastes now.
When the recipe first changed, I thought there was a problem with the batch of ice cream I bought. Then I bought some more from another store, same bad taste. Could it really be all from the same batch? Weeks go by, now I think it is my freezer not keeping it cold enough. I HAVE MY REFRIGERATOR REPLACED. One of the first things I do is go out and buy Breyer’s ice cream just to see if that fixes the problem. Same disgusting taste. OK, I’ve bought multiple cartons, from multiple different stores, at multiple different times, and had my refrigerator replaced. Could it be possible that they changed the recipe? Why, in the wonder of wonders, would they do that? I look at the ingredients and sure enough, tara gum has been added to my Breyer’s ice cream.
Unilever, you have destroyed a brand and a family tradition. No longer does my family enjoy your ice cream. I will not be passing down this tradition with your ice cream to my children. I will make sure that everyone I know who enjoys ice cream knows the short cuts and the corners you are cutting. What was once a household name will never grace the inside of my freezer again.
Oh, and I sent a complaint in to the website. What I got back instead of a response was two coupons for free Unilever products. Well, giddyup. Just what I wanted. Coupons for free bad ice cream.
Other manufacturers are apparently able to work through these distributor issues and deliver quality ice cream to the store shelves. See: Haagen Dazs, Turkey Hill. Why can’t a company the size of Unilever get it done?
Oh, and for those that are in the St. Louis area, please go find Quezel ice cream. Some of the most amazing ice cream and sorbet comes from this guy. If I could get it where I live now, I would pay to have it packed in dry ice and shipped.
Unilever, your ice cream and I are done.
Wow, this was super interesting. Thanks guys for your work. I “was” also a die hard consumer of Bryers Ice cream and absolutly noticed the difference in texture “and” flavor. I thought to myself how weird it was and just shrugged it off thinking of all the possibilities why it could be (shipping, thawed and refrozen, timing maybe it was just me etc) today I looked again at the ingredients and shure enough noticed that they added tara gum so I came and looked it up online and found you guys.
Same old same old. The world seems to be going to pots with these people that are so only worried about profits instead of quality and morals, and staying true to their original recipe. So me too may just start making my own ice cream at home like my daughter has for a few years now.
Hats off to you guys. We have to stand up for our beliefs and stop supporting, as much as possible, these corporate giants and make more effort to support our local, organic, home grown suppliers.
Wow, I can’t believe this. I’ve been buying Breyers for many years. This is the only ice cream we ate while raising our children, and it is what I’ve been giving my grandchildren for the last 10 years. It is has been a part of every holiday and birthday meal. We were very good customers (and the occasional graininess did not stop us from coming back).
I have food sensitivities–but Breyers has never bothered me, UNTIL NOW! I started noticing issues that I have when eating something I can’t handle, but shrugged off the connection to Breyers, because it has never bothered me, and has decent ingredients–at least in my memory.
Well, tonight, after giving the grandkids some strawberry Breyers, I thought I had better recheck the ingredients before having some myself, since it seemed rather obvious the last time I had Breyers that it might be implicated in my gut issues, though I didn’t want to believe it could be so. Hadn’t read the ingredient list in a long time, but to be on the safe side I did tonight. What a surprise! What is Tara Gum?!!!
Another odd thing too–both grandkids did not want to finish their ice cream. My body has been reacting, but it was hard to fathom that such a trusted food was to blame. I am DONE buying this ice cream unless something changes, but it is hard to trust a company that has put profits so obviously before quality and tradition.
My hubby has had acid reflux and vomits the Breyers Vanilla and now I know why….Tara Gum….so much for ALL NATURAL! Another perfectly good natural recipe has now been ruined.
**FYI…his blood pressure also went way up after eating this ice cream!
I always loved Bryers.Years ago the company based in Philadelphia Pa(Before The USA fell apart),bought out Dolly Madisen,and Abbots both excellent.But than Wall Stret took over.Bad enough;now a viciouse Rothchild Front(UNILEVER)added fancy flavors but destroyed the brand with Tara Gum(Sounds like a stripper).DON’T buy Bryers.It’s merely a name.
I’m going to agree with Chris B, from the July 23rd. comment. Breyers has been a tradition in my family for 3 generations, as well. But now, I’m cuttin ties with it. Not only because of the ice cream, but also, because of the yogurt. As of April 2011, they no longer make Breyers Yogurt. I grew up on the stuff and it was the only yogurt I would eat. Now, I have to start over with the trial and error method of finding something that tastes as good as the what my family’s been enjoying for nearly 70 years. THANKS A LOT UNILEVER!!!. In just a couple of years, you’ve completely turned an entire family (nearly 100 people including aunts, uncles, cousins, etc), who’ve enjoyed your products for generations, against you forever. I hope you’re happy. At this rate, Breyers won’t be around much longer because you’re going to drive away all of your customers and go out of business.
The purpose of the added gum is so Unilever can make more profit by selling air instead of ice cream. Then they market it as double-churn, extra creamy etc. and make it sound premium when it is really not that good. I hate the texture and taste. When they did this a number of years ago, we simply stopped buying ice cream in the store with the exception of Haagen-Dazs occasionally. The majority what we eat now is home made, and I doubt we will ever go back to this exploited brand again.
The tara gum gives me extreme stomach pain and then extreme painful disrrhea.
Regarding the tara gum in the Breyers chocolate ice cream I ate this afternoon…I thought it was just me!!! It really tasted weird & I’ve been a die-hard Breyers fan forever, even if it cost $5.00+! The taste & texture is terrible so I’ll be looking to purchase an ice cream machine for my family as well!
I’m with the rest of you. I used to love Breyers ice cream BECAUSE it didn’t have all those strange ingredients. Now I see things like tara gum, guar gum, and other in every ice cream I pick up, and all of them make me sick to my stomach. It’s disgusting to eat that stuff, and I’m refusing to buy it any more.
I’m hoping to find something else, perhaps at the health food store, that doesn’t have that crap in it.
Breyers has turned to garbage. The gum they add turns their “ice cream” into a goopy slime they tout as “creamy”. . . Bullshit.
Will never buy Breyers again, and wouldn’t even take it for free.
We are Haagen Dazs lovers, but when it is not on sale it can be costly! So My husband usually gets Turkey Hill as a close second. However, the supermarket was out of the Turkey Hill Vanilla so he brought home the All natural Breyers. Really? “All natural”? Listen Unilever, Why the hell did you add TaraGum to an already good product? and you think you can still call it “All natural” just because Tara Gum is from a tara tree in South America? If I never heard of it, its probably not natural.. First of all, it still has to be “processed” and anything processed isn’t natural in my book. While your ice cream may be more creamy, something is not right. I’m sure if you do not remove the “natural tara gum” you will have very dissatisfied customers and more people will be switching to other brands.. I’m sticking with Turkey Hill and Haagen Dazs & I’d rather do without my ice cream treat for the evening than eat your crap! Thanks Unilever, and stick to soap & lay off the food products!
I just purchased a half-gallon of Breyer’s natural vanilla in Brooklyn today (Sept 5 2011) and immediately noticed that it tasted ‘cheap’ …just like any other old ice cream… something was off. It wasn’t as cold and crisp as it normally is. Instead it was a bit clammy and gooey. I checked the ingredient list, and sure enough there was tara gum listed. …so I did a search and found this site.
I remember Breyer’s being only milk, cream, sugar, and vanilla… the ONLY vanilla ice cream in the supermarket that ever came close to the amazingness that is homemade ice cream.
Now it tastes cheap and artificial and I will never buy Breyer’s until the tara gum is no longer there.
Thanks Unilever, you just destroyed the Breyer’s brand for me.
Add me to the ranks. The Pride of American ice cream is no more.
Now people will refer to European, Aussie, and New Zealand brands as the simple natural brands (with no yukky Tara Gum), where Breyers once proudly stood.
Kinda like American beef with hormones vs. Aussie beef with none.
I live overseas and was bragging about Breyers when a fellow American who hasn’t lived overseas as long as me, pointed out that Breyers is now airblown and the formula changed.
And here I was putting Breyers over Ben & Jerry’s. But they’re both under Unilever now.
Dear Sir. I just bought some French Vanilla Breyers ice cream and the only unknown ingredient unfamiliar was TARA-GUM. I was just diagnosed with Celiac so I am not sure if I can eat this product. What is Tara-Gum and would I be safe in eating your Ice Cream.
Thank you,
Arlene Sax
This site is super interesting. Thanks for talking about the tara gum issue. I didn’t think the Breyers vanilla flavor was that bad, but I did realize they were a lot umm, gummier, lol. They also lasted longer in the freezer. That does suck that they added it. As for the poster who mentioned Turkey Hill ice cream, thanks! Apparently they sell it at the Ralphs and Food4Less stores, so I’ll be sure to buy that next time.
I, like most of you, am a serious ice cream eater and have been for all of my life. I grew up on Breyer’s Vanilla and loved it to death. Rich vanilla taste and that special consistency when slightly melted. Guess what: the new stuff doesn’t have the same characteristics or freezing/melting properties. I will never purchase Breyer’s again, even when it’s on sale 2 for 1 at my local grocery. I buy Turkey Hill Philadelphia style vanilla and chocolate. Both meet or exceed the old Breyer’s for taste and consistency. I love TH black box and since we live close to production in MD, there is always plenty in stock. I urge all who read this to try it and see for yourself!
Found this blog after getting my second carton of gritty, grainy ice cream from Bryer’s. I have always loved Bryer’s and deeply appreciated that they were all natural. I had yet to contact them regarding the sand like consistency of their ice cream and thought first I would see if anyone else noticed a change. Well, obviously you have, but in the opposite way. Apparently, there IS a distribution problem regarding the temperature in shipping, since both packages I purchased turned gritty, however, I can certainly attest to the fact that the addition of Tara-Gum did not solve the problem they claim to be trying to solve. After reading your posts above, I am not going to even bother buying another carton. That gummy, gooey consistence that so many of you have referred to is the whole reason I won’t eat cheaper brands of ice cream. I am certainly not going to pay over $5.00 to get it! Thanks so much for all your posts and to Unilever I say… please rethink what you have done, you already charge more for your product than almost any other brand, I think you can afford the extra cream.
There is a store here in Upstate NY, “Price Chopper” that sells a really tasty FULL HALF GALLON of Vanilla Ice Cream (under their Market Classics brand), with the flecks and everything, and NO yukky Tara Gum , and since I discovered how good it tastes, it’s my favorite Ice Cream of choice.
Yesterday I was in a different store and couldn’t get my fave so I picked up the Breyer’s Vanilla instead….
from the first taste, I sensed weirdness, looked at the label and said to myself , wtf is “Tara gum” ?? Came online to look up Tara gum and that’s how I found this website…..
Yes, I can attest to the fact it does NOT taste the same, and it is definitely NOT an improved taste !
Even tho’ this tara gum crap is supposedly from “natural” sources, it left me with an unpleasant after-taste that tasted synthetic like a plastic based glue or something.
Also, I noticed that the left over icecream in my cup was melting in a strange way, some of it puffed up into a bubble and then the rest seperated and was a runny liquid,
anyway,
From now on, whenever I’m not able to buy my favorite Price Chopper Vanilla “Market Clasics” brand , and am forced to buy another,
I will READ THE LABEL FIRST , and strictly AVOID any product that has this tara gum sh*t in it.
And the fact that it’s INDIGESTIBLE and gave some ppl raised blood pressure, all the more reason to stay away from it !
In closing I would like to say to those GREEDY CORPORATE BASTRDS at Unilver : Grow a CONSCIENCE, and stop POISONING US with INFERIOR INGREDIENTS !
Isn’t it enough , you schmucks, that you charge top dollar, PLUS , made the portion considerably SMALLER, doesn’t that make you a big profit right there ?
On top of that you had to cheapen and ruin the quality of the product by adding this BHULLSH*T Tara gum baloney ?
I hope your sales keep dropping and dropping until you realize the error of your ways and LOSE the tara gum…
Give us real cream or say GOODBYE ! And go reform yourselves at Greedy Fcks anonymous while you’re at it.
Signed, and Ex-3rd generation Breyers eater.
Indeed,the ice cream is crap. But I am pleased to have found this website,and all of you like minded consumers.I’m so fumed over the quality of ice cream made in the United States,that my frown lines have deepened considerably{nicer than saying I want to kick some ass}.Just like an earlier poster noted above,I ,too,had stomach cramps and the runs after pretending to enjoy a bowl of Breyers “Natural” Vanilla. The stuff literally made me sick!But what really gets my goat,is the way the Food And Drug Administration allows these cheapskates to whip a pint of cream and milk into an airy {not dairy} nothingness,and label it as a quart! Class action anyone?
No wonder the grocery stores have practically been giving it away!!! 2 for $4…for Breyers???? Should have known! I agree on the turkey hill all natural. Its delicious but unfortunately can’t always get it.
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