• Time, Promo, Tuesday, August 3, 2010 10:44 AM

Josh Ozersky writes that ice cream must be the national food because everybody likes it, "no matter how badly it's made or marketed." It seems that despite the concerted efforts of change agents across the food industry to offer such innovations are fro-yo and gelato, as well as the introduction of up-scale brands like Ben & Jerry's and Häagen-Dazs a generation ago, the traditional, nonorganic, non-Belgian chocolate, standard-issue ice cream of the Eisenhower era remains as popular as ever.

Ozersky researched why for months, he says, and came to the following conclusion: "There are more Americans eating more ice cream who are fat, and there will never be enough ice cream-type products to feed us all. And the reason is that all ice cream is good." He's including Mister Softee, Fudgie the Whale and Cookie Puss in this assessment. So bring on your Goat-Milk Ice Cream, if you must, but don't expect to disrupt the market.

Meanwhile, Promo's Patricia Odell reports on a Ben & Jerry's ice cream truck that used Twitter to let people know where it was, and to direct it to its next destination, during a sampling tour in New York City earlier this summer. The tour handle, @benjerrytruck, had built up about 3,000 followers by mid-July, she reports. Now the truck is in Boston, where they call heros and hoagies "grinders" or "subs."

Read the whole story at Time, Promo »