Trader Joe’s Rants & Raves (mostly raves, a few rants)

WIKIPEDIA : “Gelato is made from a base of milk, sugar, and sometimes cream and/or egg yolks, similar to ice cream, but with a higher proportion of milk and a lower proportion of cream.“

Trader Joe’s “Italian Pistachio & Fior di Latte Gelato Style Frozen Dessert”, I say the whole thing needs to be in quotation marks, including the word “Italian”

My wife loves pistachio ice cream and saw this and got some for us to try. How is it? Well, to me, this product is a weird one. First off, if you love pistachio, you know its is one of the trickiest flavors to get right. Basically because pistachios are expensive. The pistachio flavor of this “frozen dessert” barely tastes like pistachio. It doesn’t have much pistachio. In fact the word appears way down in the ingredient list.

Yet I find some people on the net raving about this stuff. How they almost ate the whole container at one go. Really? I assume they’ve never had real pistachio ice cream or gelato. Another thing calls this a “chemical box”.

Doesn’t this even look a little weird to you?

Looking closely at the package I start to think about why exactly are they calling this “gelato–style frozen dessert“? Clearly it must be that this is not gelato. I assume they can’t legally say “gelato”, due to ingredients, so them must call it “gelato-style” even further emphasized by the addition of the words “frozen dessert“. When you can’t call your product gelato or ice cream, its a “frozen dessert”. Due to the ingredient list? You know the way American cheese is “cheese product” rather than “cheese”.

I look at the package and examine all the ingredients. Do you see that ingredient listed third? It says “Coconut Oil“? Listed as the third ingredient, the first being “water”. Really? Not milk. Some “whey solids” from something that started as milk somewhere.

Ingredients: (Fior di latte flavor): Water, sugar, coconut oil, glucose syrup, non fat dry milk, dextrose, whey solids, mono and diglycerides of fatty acids, spirulina extract….
The pistachio flavor ingredients are almost the same: water, sugar, coconut oil, glucose, etc. And then somewhat down the list it finally says, pistachio.

Anyway if you buy this seeing “gelato” on the package without really reading closely just realize you will be getting “Gelato-Style Frozen Dessert” as opposed to “gelato”.

Product of Italy? Mamma Mia. Trust me, Gelato loving Italians would never eat this “gelato style frozen dessert”. It’s made solely to export to us (dumb) Americans.

I won’t be buying this again. In fact, I came back and asked for a refund (rare)

That five bucks I will use to buy some really good Trader Joe’s ice cream like Mint Chip or Coffee Blast.

Trader Joe’s info on this: https://www.traderjoes.com/home/products/pdp/italian-pistachio-fior-di-latte-gelato-style-frozen-dessert-080323

Trader Joe’s Italian Pistachio & Fior di Latte Gelato Style Frozen Dessert $4.99

I have found some people praising online this! Me, I would not buy this again.

To each, his own.

Aha – I saw this after I reviewed this calling this product a chemical box: “Trader Joe’s Is Being Slammed By Shoppers for Their New $5 Dessert: It’s a ‘CHEMICAL BOX’

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/articles/trader-joe-being-slammed-shoppers-221500103.html