Posted on 08/21/2005 11:34:55 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Unilever is employing cutting-edge science to take the fat and guilt out of its top brands. James Hall reports
In a field somewhere in County Down, Northern Ireland, is a herd of 40 super-cows that could take all the poisonous guilt out of bingeing on ice cream. Unilever, the manufacturer of Persil and PG Tips, is sponsoring a secret research project by a leading British agricultural science institution into how to reduce the levels of saturated fat in cow's milk.
The theory goes that by feeding the Friesians a specially fortified diet and allowing them to roam in lush surroundings they will produce more polyunsaturated fat - that's healthy fat - in their milk. In essence, it is an experiment in influencing what comes out of a cow by controlling what goes in.
Unilever believes that by procuring healthier milk it can produce healthier ice cream. And healthier ice cream should be a winner with customers, who currently spend £800m a year on various brands in the UK alone.
The experiment is typical of how a company such as Unilever - with a market capitalisation of £16bn and annual sales of £28bn - goes about advancing its food manufacturing operations. Indeed, for a company that offers approximately 2,000 ice cream products across 40 markets globally and enjoys annual ice cream sales of £3bn, innovation is vital.
Unilever's ice cream brands include Cornetto, Magnum, Viennetta and Ben & Jerry's. As summer draws to a close the company is busier than ever looking at ways that it can increase the appeal of ice cream. And it is working on new technologies that would seem more suited to Nasa than a food company.
But Unilever has been practising weird science in ice cream for more than 50 years. In its ice cream business alone it employs 150 scientists and spends £35m a year on research and development. The division has 120 patents and has hi-tech gelati labs in Rome and Bedfordshire.
Don Darling, the European vice-president for research and development at Unilever's ice cream division, reels off a list of inventions that Unilever has come up with over the years. In the 1970s it developed the Walls Twister, which created an ice cream using rope-making technology. In the 1980s it patented a technology that allowed it put thin layers of wavy chocolate in ice cream at high speed. The result was Viennetta.
It worked out how to freeze chocolate on the outside of a Magnum and how to freeze a ball of bubblegum at the bottom of a cone for the Screwball. "If you put a ball at the bottom of a cone and freeze it without altering its composition then you might get a few broken teeth," Darling explains.
The result of many of these inventions has been a surprisingly resilient year-round business. Around 45 per cent of Unilever's annual ice cream sales in the UK come between October and March. "It is not as seasonal as one would expect," says Henry Schirmer, Unilever's UK finance director for ice cream, although he does point out that Walls ice cream was only invented as the summer sideline for the Walls sausage-making business in the 1920s.
Health appears to be the new mantra. Not only is "vitality" part of Unilever's mission statement to convince customers to lead healthier lives, it is also a tag that Darling and his team believe is commercially important. The company already has low-fat or fat-free versions of its Carte D'or, Magnum and Solero products, but it is working on much more.
"Ice cream started off as a novelty and then became a dessert. Now it's about making it more foodie. And to make it foodie we have to use the goodness that's available to us in its main ingredients," Darling says.
As well as the tests on Irish cows, Unilever is looking at ways to increase the fruit content of ice cream and to raise vitamin D levels. It is also experimenting with nanotechnology, or the science of invisibly tiny things.
Unilever believes that by halving the size of particles that make up the emulsion - or fatty oil - that it uses to make ice cream, it could use 90 per cent less of the emulsion. The end result would be that ice cream - which traditionally has between 8 per cent and 16 per cent fat in it - would have less than 1 per cent fat. The technology would not go into commercial use for years, but it is a mark of Unilever's ambition that this is the kind of thing it is working on.
The company has also been using smarter marketing techniques to push its ice cream brands. Earlier this month its Ben & Jerry's brand held a music festival - Ben & Jerry's Sundae - on London's Clapham Common.
The company charged 5,000 guests £5 a head for tickets to see bands such as Irish indie poseurs The Thrills and local bad boys Alabama 3. All the proceeds from the sold-out event went to an appeal to renovate Clapham Common's dilapidated bandstand.
The event was more like a village fête - it had a helter-skelter, coconut shy and its own mini-farm with cows. More than 50,000 free scoops of ice cream were given out.
In a straw poll carried out by The Sunday Telegraph, not a single member of the largely 30-something middle-class crowd knew that Ben & Jerry's is owned by Unilever, one of the largest companies in the world. But nor did they care.
Which doesn't surprise Di Houldsworth, Unilever's senior marketing manager for ice cream. She says: "Ice cream has a universal appeal that spans all ages. It is about fun and pleasure." And about nanotechnology and the Irish super-cow.
Sigh. I have 0 faith in mankind. We are still acting like children. Ice cream is not unhealthy. Sitting on your butt and eating a gallon of ice cream a day IS unhealthy. We don't need super-cows or nanotech, we need individual discipline and personal responsibility.
Can nanotechnology cure mastitis?
If I want something without fat in it, I'll drink water. Otherwise, I'll eat ice cream (not ice milk) butter (not margarine) milk (not 2%) and cheese, with all the natural fats in them. I will also cook with lard and eat red meat.
One's body makes cholesterol, and if one doesn't eat natural fats, the body will try to replace the needed fats with the worst kind of cholesterol. Which is why folks who take cholesterol-lowering drugs find they don't work after a while....
(One of my family members gave up fat and her hair fell out. In gobs. She now cooks with coconut oil.)
By G-d, that was interesting - the health mullahs are wrong, as usual!
This, that, and the udder....
We aim to please!
I can give you a couple of interesting links if you want to read more.
(The brain needs red meat to function properly.)
Sure, give us the links!
Your wish is my command, O Irish Wonder!
http://www.coconut-info.com/links.htm
http://www.westonaprice.org/index.html
http://www.5htp.com/?src=overture
These are the best ones I have, and they will give you all the information you could want, and answer your questions. Enjoy.
'Face
Thank you, Face!
Wekkum, Irish!
Nice pic, I love Supercow!
I cook with olive oil, eat red meat at least 3 times a week, eat a dozen eggs a week, use butter, drink 2% milk, am over 50, and my combined cholesterol was at 167 just the other day.
LOL!
Olive oil is good too! I use it for a lot of cooking. My cholesterol is consistently below 155...it has been for years. So we must be doing SOMEthing right, huh?
'Face
Hehe - on the ball tonight Irish, as usual!
My brother in law is skinny, eats mostly vegetarian, and his cholesterol is almost 300. Go figure.
Yepper...and if he's a vegan, his bones will be green, as well.
Give me that red meat, with lots of dairy products, and CHOCOLATE!
;o]
Nanites eating the curdles, or whatever they're called...
Make a political stand out of being a carnivore - "I obect to NOT eating because Man is master of the animals and fishes".
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