Wednesday, September 02, 2009

Make believe

Unilever is hoping to be able to develop an ice cream which will keep at room temperature – to be frozen when you get home.

That took me back – I cannot believe this – 40 years. North American tv ads for a cream which did not need refrigeration.

As someone who loved cream, lived in the tropics, where fresh dairy products were anyway next to unobtainable, that seemed like a dream come true.

Almost the first stop on my next trip to the supermarket, reach down a packet of the miracle product. Looked at the label, purely out of curiosity.

There was hardly one word that I recognised, certainly not as a food. Deciding that a taste test would almost certainly be deeply disappointing, I reluctantly returned it to the shelves.

But I have never since lost the habit of reading the label.