There are few things as wonderful as a hearty scoop of ice cream—especially when chocolate is involved. After all, chocolate is America’s second favorite flavor right after vanilla. But for those of us who take our scoops with a side of climate-consciousness, ice cream has a less scrumptious side. Milk and cream have a pretty hefty impact on the planet: One glass of moo juice has about the same emissions footprint as driving 2.5 miles.
Of course there are plenty of nondairy options made from alternatives like coconut to oat milk, but they don’t match the “real” stuff in flavor and consistency. But this could all change soon. Breyers is rolling out a chocolate ice cream made with “animal-free” dairy. If that sounds like an oxymoron, allow us to explain…
What is ‘animal-free’ dairy?
Instead of making ice cream with one of the many alt-milk options, Breyers partnered with the startup Perfect Day, who specializes in nondairy dairy. They use a technique called precision fermentation to create whey protein—the same one that occurs naturally in milk. It works like this: Genetically coded microorganisms hang out in tanks of sugary broth. While they soak in that nutrient-filled tub, they ferment the sugars, and their modified genetic code helps them spit out something nearly identical to natural whey. This protein is then processed into a powder that food companies can mix into all sorts of dairy products. Precision fermentation isn’t exactly new: We’ve been consuming products made by this method for decades in the form of vitamins, vanilla flavoring, cheese, medicine, and more.
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Compared with traditional whey production methods, a 2021 life-cycle analysis found that this process reduces water consumption by up to 99%, greenhouse gas emissions by up to 97%, and energy demand by up to 60%. According to Perfect Day, if Americans switched from cow dairy to their animal-free product, we could knock off 246 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions, the equivalent of up to 28 million homes’ yearly energy footprint.
Is this the first ice cream like this out there?
Breyers isn’t the first brand to tap Perfect Day’s whey—Brave Robot ice cream started using it several years ago—but it is certainly the biggest. The 150-year-old ice cream brand is part of Unilever, one of the world’s largest consumer products groups, which owns names like Ben & Jerry’s and Hellmann’s. While this might be your first time hearing about whey protein ice cream, it’s certainly not the first time you’ve heard of Breyers. In 2022 alone, Breyers made around $498.43 million on ice cream.
The market for dairy-free products is expected to surpass $65 billion by the end of the decade and analysts also expect a boom in demand for precision fermentation, so it’s the perfect time for legacy ice cream companies to make their moo-ve. Who knows, maybe next we’ll get ahold of some nondairy dairy Ben & Jerry’s Half Baked (a girl can dream, can’t she?).