Baskin Robbins, one of the world’s largest ice cream brands, recently introduced two vegan flavours in India – Alphonso Mango and Mississippi Mud. Vegans across India were delighted to hear the news and displayed their excitement by posting pictures with these ice creams all over social media.
Like most vegans, we too decided to get a taste of these new flavours and visited a Baskin Robbins outlet. Before buying, we decided to check the label of ingredients, a regular practice by most vegans.
Regulars at Baskin Robbins would know that there is no labelling in takeaway and serving containers at Baskin Robbins outlets. So, we requested the counter boy at the outlet to show us the 4-litre box that was kept in the freezer along with other flavours. He showed us the Mississippi Mud box to remove our doubts.
Surprisingly, the label threw up an unexpected ingredient – Butter. It did not specify whether it was dairy butter or a nut butter which makes us assume it’s the dairy version.
Below is a picture of the label.
From the label, what we understood is probably the ‘fudge brownie cake pieces’, which form a part of the ice cream contain butter as an ingredient, besides other ingredients such as sugar, water, maida, cocoa solids, liquid glucose, preservatives, baking powder, natural colour and artificial flavouring. These ingredients are put in a separate curly bracket to distinguish them from the ingredients used in the rest of the ice cream.
Now, that got us really confused! It doesn’t even use the name of any nut, making it clear that the butter is not made of nuts. If it was so, the company could have clearly mentioned it. We could not understand how butter could be used in a vegan ice cream. The whole purpose is defeated if one eats a vegan ice cream that contains a non-vegan cake.
We have sent a mail regarding the same to the company’s customer care and are waiting for a clarification. We will keep our readers updated on the company’s response.
