Your standard tub of ice cream is held together by emulsifiers, gums, and stabilisers, ingredients most people would never keep in their own kitchen. This M&S one uses egg yolk instead. That is why the label stops at five.
Those additives are not there for flavour. They stop ice crystals forming, keep the fat and water from separating, and slow how fast the tub melts on a warm day. Egg yolk does the emulsifying, and skimmed milk powder firms up the texture. That swap is the whole trick behind a five-ingredient ice cream.
Additives like these are one of the main lines between a food that is simply processed and one that counts as ultra-processed. A UK market study found the three most common flags for ultra-processing were flavourings, emulsifiers, and colours. More than half the calories the average person in Britain eats now come from ultra-processed food.
In 2019, an NIH team ran the first controlled test of whether the processing itself matters. Twenty adults lived in a research ward and spent two weeks eating ultra-processed meals, then two weeks on whole-food meals, with both diets given the same calories, sugar, fat, salt, and fibre. On the ultra-processed weeks, people ate about 500 calories a day more and gained about two pounds in two weeks. On the whole-food weeks, they lost weight.
A few of those specific additives are now getting a closer look. In mice, an emulsifier called polysorbate 80 and a thickener called cellulose gum thinned the protective mucus lining the gut and stirred up mild inflammation. A 2025 trial in 60 people found emulsifiers lowered the helpful compounds gut bacteria make, though broader inflammation did not shift over six weeks. Stronger in animals so far, early in humans.
It is still cream, honey, and saturated fat, and easy to eat by the bowlful. No supermarket tub is a health food. What makes this one unusual is plain on the label: five things you could buy yourself, and none of the additives that put most ice cream in the ultra-processed bracket.
Woke up this morning with 100k in my account. I was craving to go to my favourite cafe and give myself a treat. Which might cost me at least 30k.
Then I remembered I want to collect my sch transcript and lang proficiency, which would cost about 50k.
I wanted to buy one unique chair for my space, 45k.
I opened WhatsApp and saw a message from Lil Sis reminding me of her allowance and contribution towards her project. Another 50k.
I sent lil sis her 50k. Bought data 20k. Renewed 𝕏 sub. And I'm left with 24k to manage, I can't leave my acct entirely empty.
I called lil sis this afternoon to gist. She was eating, I asked what she was eating, and she said shawarma and parfait. That's 15k! I asked where she got the money from. And she answered that it's from the money I sent her in the morning. I was about to say something, and she said, "I can't come and kill myself."
Ngl, I don't know how to feel. I'm not angry. But I feel sorry for myself.
You call them kafirs.
You mock their beliefs.
You say they're doomed.
Then you queue up at their embassies.
Spend all night praying for a UK or US visa.
If kafirs are that terrible, why are you desperate to live among them?