Steve Gill, tristardaily.com
“You scream, and we all scream for ice cream” … But the FDA says it doesn’t fit the ice cream you got from the dairy queen!
Dairy Queen is known for its soft serve. Soft serves also serve as the basis for the famous (and tasty) snowstorm, but according to the FDA, its soft serve formula is not technically called “ice cream.”
“You scream, and we all scream for ice cream” … But the FDA says it doesn’t fit the ice cream you got from the dairy queen!
Dairy Queen is known for its soft serve. Soft serves also serve as the basis for the famous (and tasty) snowstorm, but according to the FDA, its soft serve formula is not technically called “ice cream.”
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations require that you contain at least 10% milk fat, the fat portion of milk, to qualify as an “ice cream.”
Dairy Queen’s soft serve “Ice Cream” contains only 5% milk fat. This means that it does not meet the government’s technical definition of ice cream because it does not meet the fat requirements.

The dairy queen’s lawyers apparently know this. The Dairy Queen menu does not use the word “ice cream.” Instead, their distinctive dishes are simply called “soft serves.”
The FDA was used to classify DQ soft serves as “Ice milk.” This included frozen desserts with a milk fat content of 2.5-10%. However, in 1995, regulations changed and products classified as ice milk were redesigned as fat, light, or low-fat ice cream, depending on their fat content. Despite that change, Dairy Queen did not change the recipe. Therefore, Dairy Queen’s soft serve is considered to be “fat-reducing ice cream” in the eyes of the FDA, which is not yet ice cream.
But don’t tell us that, still screaming for the dairy queen “Ice cream”!
Steve Gill is the publisher of Tristar Daily and is an avid fan of what Dairy Queen puts in the cone. And the fact that their ice cream machines seem to be working all the time.
