Hacker News Reader

Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

> Americans are no longer the world’s top consumers of ice cream — that crown goes to China

That is insane to me. I lived in Beijing 20 years ago, and Chinese food had shockingly few sweet things ("dessert" was not a concept at all) and no dairy whatsoever. A few stores had Snickers bars by the counters next to sweetened bean paste, that was pretty much it.

The fact that the country now consumes more sweetened dairy than the US is... completely unimaginable to me.

Anyone from China here who can describe what happened and how it was adopted?

View on HN

If you go to McDonald's in China... They will have their main restaurant and a little window next to it. That little window serves ice cream and there always seems to be a line. It's dirt cheap (thinking back I hope it was real milk... But this is McDonald's so probably has better supply chain control) and I always got one if I was waiting around for someone.

I've also seen a vending machine that serves soft serve cones, which was interesting. So I'd say ice cream was probably trending after you left because I remember this from my high school days which was almost 20 years ago.

Additionally, I would not say there's no concept of dessert. You sometimes get red bean soup, or fruit, or other sweets after meals. Though nothing like the sugar loaded desserts in the western world (hence, diabetes snd weight gain...)

I'm in the middle of reading Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World by Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling, and Anna Rosling Rönnlund.

I think it provides a great model of what is happening in the world, especially in this case. Chinese people have more money per capita, and so now they can spend it on sweets and meat.

McDonald's being seen as an upscale brand probably also helps -- even cartoons (like Quanzhi Gaoshou, which is about eSports) have blatant product placement for McDonald's ice cream.

… more money per capita, and so now they can spend it on sweets

I thought sugar is a poor-man's food.

Read the book! It talks about how sugar is a sign of wealth in developing countries, and a sign of poverty in developed ones.

I was under the impression to have read that Chinese are mostly lactose intolerant. Does anyone if this is true? Is Chinese ice cream different from western ice cream which uses dairy?

I'm guessing the fact that there are 4x more people in China compensates for the cultural differences that would lead you to believe the average person does not consume ice cream.

Having 4 1/2 times the population of the US helps.

Koreans also eat a ton of ice cream.

Sugar is a drug. Thats what happened...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com