Baskin Robbins India launches Kulfi ice cream for the local market

Baskin Robbins is offering a kulfi ice cream in India to celebrate its 65th anniversary (as a company, I'm presuming, not as a presence in India).  The flavor sounds delicious - it will feature saffron, cardamom and cinnamon.  From the photo, it doesn't look like it will resemble a true kulfi, which is made with boiled-down milk and is usually much richer and heavier than normal ice cream, and is often served on a stick in a cone shape.  Still, I would eat it.

Pus in your ice cream, from John Robbins

John Robbins, the only son of Baskin-Robbins founder Irvine Robbins, had a piece in the Huffington Post this week about Monsanto's recombinant bovine growth hormones (rBGH) showing up in ice cream.  Ben and Jerry's has pledged not to use rBGH-tainted milk in their products, and Robbins calls on other companies to do the same:

Ben & Jerry's gets all their milk from dairies that have pledged not to inject their cows with genetically engineered bovine growth hormone (rBGH). Why, then, can't Haagen Dazs, Breyers and Baskin-Robbins do the same?
Starbucks now guarantees that all their milk, cream and other dairy products are rBGH-free. So do Yoplait and Dannon yogurts, Tillamook cheese, Chipotle restaurants, and many others. But ice cream giants Haagen Dazs, Breyers and Baskin-Robbins continue to use milk from cows injected with rBGH, a hormone that's been banned in Canada, New Zealand, Japan, Australia and all 27 nations of the European Union. As if to add insult to injury, Haagen Dazs and Breyers have the audacity to tell us, right on the label, that their ice cream is " All Natural."

Later he quotes a veterinarian who has some disturbing news about rBGH's effects on white blood cell count:

Does the increase in udder infections have an effect on the milk, and thus any ice cream, cheese or other product made from it? Most definitely, according to Dr. Richard Burroughs, a veterinarian deeply familiar with rBGH. "It results in an increase of white blood cells," he says, "which means there's pus in the milk!" The antibiotic use, he adds, "leaves residues in the milk. It's all very serious."

A sick cow

At the end of the article, he highlights a "Take Back Our Ice Cream" campaign from the Oregon chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility and urges readers to get engaged by contacting companies to demand they use hormone-free dairy products.

The "Worst" Ice Creams in America, via the Daily Beast

The Daily Beast has a slideshow of 40 dastardly ice cream desserts that run from 880 calories (a Dairy Queen nut and fudge waffle sundae) to 1,900 (Baskin Robbins' Fudge Brownie 31 Below dessert).  Most of the offenders are, predictably, from the likes of Carvel, Friendly's, Dairy Queen, Cold Stone Creamery and Baskin Robbins.  Most of them also contain mix-ins like peanut butter, fudge, Oreos, brownies and chocolate chip cookies.  Most of them also sound distressingly good. 

The article inspired an incisive comment on mix-ins, posted on Gawker:

"I can't eat ice cream at a Cold Stone Creamery. I just don't get it. Why the hell do I need gummy bears and Apple Jacks chopped into my ice cream? It's ludicrous. People who frequent shopping malls love this place. They're all in there, waiting in line to say, "I'll have the Cherry Do-Wop, Pillsbury Crescent Roll, Cinnamon, Cookie Crisp Delight, with extra Booberry chunks please." And I'm like, "You fucking sugar monsters. What the ever loving kidney failure are you doing here? Just raid a supermarket and poise your jiggle-butts under a Dominos sugar two ton feed bag. And die quietly."

A day's worth of calories.  Yum!