Ice Cream Preferences in the U.S.
These days, ice cream making has become a bit of an art. From Los Angeles to New York, innovative dessert makers are inventing frozen confections with flavor combinations that would have even the most adventurous of eaters proceeding with hesitance. Can anyone say pizza ice cream?
All the same, it seems that despite the recent craze in flavor exploration, Americans generally go for the tried and true old faithfuls, with only minor variations in flavor transpiring over the years.
In 2008, the Food Channel released new data, reporting that America’s favorite ice cream flavor was vanilla, garnering 29% of the vote. From there, chocolate, butter pecan, strawberry, and Neapolitan trailed behind, earning 8.9%, 5.3%, 5.3%, and 4.2% of the vote, respectively.
Yet in 2013, another survey revealed that chocolate stole the spotlight for America’s ice cream preferences. According to a Harris Interactive poll from that year, 28% of participants preferred chocolate ice cream, while 26% preferred vanilla. After that, the most popular flavors were found to be cookie dough or cookies and cream at 22%, butter pecan or swiss almond at 19%, and mint chocolate chip at 15% of the poll participants’ votes.
It’s important to note that in 2013, people began expressing a greater predilection for flavors that were off the beaten ice cream truck path. The remaining 13% of respondents for the Harris Interactive poll reported having an obscure favorite flavor that wasn’t listed in the options.
And in a strange twist of fate, a small 3% of voters reported that they didn’t enjoy eating ice cream. While we may not be able to understand their distaste for the frozen treat, at least that means there will be some left over for the rest of us!