Why is Ben & Jerry's so good? It involves a secret ingredient you never knew about.
The Real Reason Why Ben & Jerry’s Tastes So Good
Updated on May 28, 2025
The very first scoops of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream were sold out of a renovated Vermont gas station in 1978, a major moment in the history of ice cream, one of the world’s oldest desserts. Today, Ben & Jerry’s is one of the most popular ice cream brands in America—it raked in more than $951 million in sales in 2023 alone! You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t enjoy the brand’s creamy treats, but why is Ben & Jerry’s so good in the first place? After all, ice cream is ice cream, right?
Technically, yes. All ice cream starts with the same basic ingredients: sugar, cream and milk. But there’s one “ingredient” that separates everyday ice cream from the premium, high-quality kind—and you’re breathing it in right now.
Reader’s Digest dove into the history of ice cream and spoke with Kimberly Bukowski, director of the Dairy Certificate Program at Cornell University, to get to the bottom of this little-known food fact. Read on to learn the surprising (and delicious) details.
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Why does Ben & Jerry’s taste so good?
Believe it or not, air is a huge factor in determining the overall quality of any ice cream—and Ben & Jerry’s has a lot of it (which we’ll get to in a minute). The dairy industry uses the term overrun to indicate the volume of air pumped into ice cream while it’s being manufactured relative to the base mixture. This aeration, as the International Dairy Foods Association so eloquently puts it, “keeps the mixture from becoming an inedible frozen mass.”
If each bit of Ben & Jerry’s makes you wonder why it tastes so good, you like ice cream with low overrun. And it boils down to the fact that low overrun means less air content and more room for butterfat (the fat from milk and dairy products), leaving you with richer, denser ice cream. Yum!
How does other ice cream stack up against Ben & Jerry’s?
The government has a set limit for overrun, basically so that companies can’t sell you ice cream that is mostly air. In short, a gallon of ice cream must weigh at least 4.5 pounds. Meanwhile, the dairy industry has classified ice cream based on the amount of overrun it contains, according to Kimberly Bukowski, director of the Dairy Certificate Program at Cornell University. Here’s the breakdown:
Economy: With at least 8% to 10% butterfat and the maximum permitted overrun, economy ice cream meets the government’s most basic requirements and is generally the cheapest.
Regular: This type of ice cream also meets federal standards for ice cream at 100% to 120% overrun, but it is a step up from economy with 10% to 12% butterfat. It’s the ice cream you’ll see most often in grocery-store freezers.
Premium: Here’s where brands like Ben & Jerry’s and Häagen Dazs fit in. They have a whopping 60% to 90% overrun, a higher percentage of butterfat (12% to 15%), and higher-quality ingredients, which also helps explain why Ben & Jerry’s is more expensive than your run-of-the-mill ice cream. Bukowski says that for her, 14% is the butterfat sweet spot.
Super premium: These ice creams have even lower overrun (as low as 25%) and more butterfat (15% to 18%) than premium kinds. They’re most commonly found in high-end restaurants. Super premium ice creams may also be made in the French style of ice cream, which includes egg yolks.
So the next time you take a spoonful of your favorite Ben & Jerry’s flavor, thank its manufacturers for going easy on the air. As for the difference between gelato and ice cream? Well, that’s a whole other story.
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Sources:
- Kimberly Bukowski, director of the Dairy Certificate Program at Cornell University; interviewed, May 2025
- Statista: “The leading ice cream brands of the United States in 2023, based on sales“
- International Dairy Foods Association: “Ice Cream Labeling”
- USDA: “Standards for Ice Cream”
