theguardian.com – Britain’s longest heatwave since 1976 has seen ice-cream sales soar, but a survey has revealed that some brands are sold without vanilla, cream or fresh milk.

Vanilla has traditionally been Britain’s favourite flavour but a Which? investigation of supermarket and branded vanilla ice-creams found a number of them were lacking some key ingredients.

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One in five of the ice-creams examined by the consumer watchdog had none of the three ingredients shoppers might reasonably expect to find in vanilla ice-cream. Only half of the 24 surveyed contained all three traditional ingredients.

Of the five products offering soft-scoop vanilla ice-cream without fresh milk, vanilla or cream, three were supermarket own-brandsfrom Asda, Morrisonsand Tesco. Soft-scoop vanilla ice-creams from Wall’s and Ms Molly’s, which is exclusively sold at Tesco, were the other two products missing the three key ingredients.

Vanilla ice-cream is traditionally made from fresh milk, cream, egg yolks, sugar and vanilla, which are frozen and aerated.

In a number of the products Which? looked at, cream and milk were substituted with partially reconstituted dried skimmed milk, and in some cases, whey protein. Vanilla was often replaced with a general “flavouring”.

Additional non-dairy ingredients in some of the ice-creams included palm oil, coconut oil, palm kernel oil and water.

Until 2015, a product labelled “ice-cream” in the UK had to contain at least 5% dairy fat and 2.5% milk protein, but since the introduction of the FoodInformation Regulationsthese rules no longer apply.

First of all if you read this and are shocked that something you eat doesn’t contain the main ingredient it portrays then you sir are from a different planet. I mean taco bell hasn’t used real meat since well ever and its still the most delicious thing you will eat at 3am after a night of punishing your liver.

Now what did surprise me is that vanilla is the second most expensive spice in the world. I didn’t see that coming since vanilla well tastes very vanilla as in I wouldn’t pay an arm and a leg for anything containing it. Now I am sure it is used heavily in baking and cooking but I have no expertise in that nor do I care to.

In the end if you want to make sure something contains a certain ingredient either pick it off the tree yourself or just eat blindly like every other normal human being does. And honestly after seeing how vanilla is actually made it may be the most intense process ever. You find me a vanilla farmer and I will find you someone who hates their life.

Now you go eat your fake vanilla ice cream and you like it.