It would be very based if Ben & Jerry would name their ice cream "Israel is Committing Genocide", "War Crimes by Israel", and "Oh look! The World is Enabling Genocide of the Palestinian people".
this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2025
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I’ve met Jerry, he literally served me ice cream, lol. He’s a very nice man. That being said, my response to this controversy has basically been “then why did you sell your company?”…What, they thought Unilever would just be like “sure, use our brand to do a swan dive into the most controversial subject on the planet! Great idea guys!”…Of course they’re going to block it.
AFAIK there is some clause in the sales contract that protects B&Js political activism as a brand.
It's been in the news a couple of times over the years as they clashed with their new parent company.
Not enough to put out a product supporting Palestine...
I guess that’s something but still
They got 25 years. That’s a pretty good run.
And more than half a billion dollars adjusting for inflation
I would have sold too. I don't know what he sold for, but it's probably hard to even imagine having this much. He gave up all riscs and he can still make his new flavour under a new brand if he really wants to.
Usually big company goes to small company and says "we want to buy you instead of competing with you, and if we compete with you, you better be prepared to dig hard into your savings."
Both sides smile at each other, and the small company capitulates whilst making themselves seem as big as possible.
TLDR: Sell out, or be muscled out
I've wondered that too. Were they sold into the idea that when the company is making lots more money it can do lots more good with it? Or are they really business men deep down struggling with their morals after seeing what happened to their 'baby'?
the idea that when the company is making lots more money it can do lots more good with it
The sales pitch of co-op carpet-baggers to their members since time began! It seems that "social entrepreneurs" aren't immune to the siren song.
..Were they sold into the idea that when the company is making lots more money it can do lots more good with it?
This. I remember the PR that came out at the time.
Imagine if they went full exploitive and made the ice cream flavor but then added an Israel flavor in some twisted fair and balanced way to undercut Jerry's wishes.
Off The Pager: it has pop rocks that go off in your mouth after 30 seconds
Seas Fire: it's filled with sweet candies that have denatonium in them. But between those it's quite mild.
Jaffa Orange Surprise; the surprise is that the container is empty in honor of all the starvation theyve forced on other people
Tastes like ashes and concrete dust.
"now is not the right time to invest in developing this product".
There it is, the most corporately banal statement ever
Wait till they're all gone first.
--Unilever
Then we can virtue signal "never again", while "donating" bribes to the nazi's and establishing our new office in nazi-controlled Gaza.
— Unilever
'Now is not the right time' is business code for 'this will impact our bottom dollar', the same excuse politicians give after every school shooting.
Bottom line. Bottom dollar is your last one.
Nestle, Unilever, Mondelez, who else should i add to my boycott list?
Basically every corporation at this point. Buy local when you can, even if you disagree with the local person's politics if your only alternative is a megacorp go with the local source.
They can be a shitty person, but they won't have the capital to invest in overseas slavery and election interference like mega corps
Capitalism... All of it.
There isn't a single multinational that acts based on ethics or morality.
Depends if you view any larges co-ops as a multinational, or are they merely alliances? Not all capitalist, though.
I wouldn't consider worker coops to be capitalist, since by its very nature, it's "workers owning the means of production."
Well, that's Mondragon OK then. And the other sorts of co-op? I think the consumer co-ops may be the biggest.
Definitely better than a standard corporation, but since the workers aren't the owners, they can still be exploited at the end of the day. With worker coops, the workers democratically run the business that they spend most of their waking hours working at. With consumer coops, the consumers decide how the business is run (in an ideal scenario), but the workers don't get a say, or at least don't get more of a say than consumers, assuming the workers are also consumers.
hmmm... but at least they're being exploited for the benefit of the commonwealth not the capital! (whistles past the graveyard)
What about Arizona Ice Tea?
Johnson and Johnson
Be specific about your reasons for J&J or people may assume it’s a tylenol thing. Next thing you know there’s a red hat surgically attached to your head, your IQ matches your shoe size, and your cousin has become inexplicably sexually attractive.
True. Mainly because asbestos in baby powder is an acceptable ingredient apparently.
Not only that, but they knew about it at the same time that they were aggressively advertising to black and Hispanic women, telling them to powder their crotches, which caused a bunch of uterine cancer
I'm glad I only ever applied that shit on my feet while wafting the baby powder scent into my face.
I remember the good ol time when J&J was boycotted for the covid vaccine, how reasonable it would seem in contrast to what's happening nowadays
Monsanto would be a good addition.
I'm not in the US so this one is easy
German Bayer bought it after it was on thin ice due to the roundup lawsuits.
More to the point, in America, the USDA regulations allow for hard pack ice cream to have up to 40% of its volume expanded with air.
WAAaaaay back in the early 2000's after Unilever bought them, I bought a pint of Ben & Jerry's Vanilla ice cream and got home and it sat on the counter and melted - much to my dismay - (It ended up under a towel and did not get put away.)
When I opened it, the level of ice cream in the container had dropped down by almost a quarter. What the hell? So I got another pint and at that time noticed that it was easier to scoop - a sign that there's air being incorporated.
Yeah.. nope. Done.
Haven't bought Ben & Jerry's in over 20 years. (besides, there's a real homemade ice cream shop around the corner from my home - it's what I get now and I support the woman that runs it.)
I like the lighter, fluffier ice cream with more air in it over tough, dense, lardass ice cream. Finer ice crystals give a smooth, creamy texture. Higher fat content or higher overrun of smaller, dispersed air cells achieve that by keeping ice crystals small during dynamic freezing.
When I run an ice cream mixer, I aim for higher overrun using plain milk to achieve a snowy, fluffy ice milk. We just don't find anything like it in stores.
Ice cream should be sold by weight. Volume makes Calorie counting so much more complicated.
It's not like that currently. Ben & Jerry's is very dense. At least in Canada.
Ben & Jerry’s is very dense
Apparently so dense that they thought Unilever wouldn't interfere with the campaigning.
yeah because we live in a country with laws up here
It is the most dense ice cream that I purchase in the US.
I'm totally behind the message, but honestly watermelon ice cream is a terrible idea. Taste of watermelon is very mid for ice cream, i wonder how Ben could pull it.
It can be incredible for sherbet, though.
There's a fast food chain the southeast US called Cook Out, and in the summer they have a seasonal watermelon milkshake that's just watermelon and vanilla ice cream, and it is honestly SO GOOD. There are bits of watermelon in the shake that kinda freeze up a little and soak up some of the vanilla.
I think it could be done.
I make ice cream for a living, and watermelon is very difficult to pull off without artificial flavoring.
To start with, it has a lot of water in it, which is bad for making quality ice cream. You have to filter out as much as possible, and collect only the pulp. Since watermelon has a very mild taste, it takes a LOT of pulp, which still carries a lot of water in it.
Bottom line is that it is difficult to collect enough pulp to carry enough flavor, without adding too much water, and compromising the creaminess.
Of course, some artificial flavoring would do the job easily, but I am fundamentally opposed to that in my ice cream, and I would imagine Ben is as well.
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