Summer has us thinking about cold treats, and you know, we’re going to be living off DOLE Whips, milkshakes, and ice cream sundaes in the parks, right?

©Dairy Queen

But we’re craving some cold treats at home, too, and one of our favorite places for cold treats is Dairy Queen. Now, I’m an avid Dairy Queen fan and will inhale a Blizzard in minutes, but let’s just say that I was utterly surprised when I recently learned that Dairy Queen’s sweet soft-serve treats are NOT ice cream. Wait…what?

According to Syracuse.com, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has determined that Dairy Queen’s sweet treats cannot legally be called “ice cream.” You might have noticed that when you order from Dairy Queen, none of its menu items have the words “ice cream” in them. But there’s actually a very good reason why.

©Dairy Queen

Dairy Queen’s soft-serve only contains 5% milk fat. FDA and USDA regulations require actual ice cream to contain at least 10% milk fat, meaning that anything less is not considered “ice cream,” regardless of how much it looks and tastes like…well…ice cream. Here’s the official statement on the USDS website:

“Ice cream shall contain at least 1.6 pounds of total solids to the gallon, weigh not less than 4.5 pounds to the gallon, and contain not less than 20 percent total milk solids, constituted of not less than 10 percent milkfat. In no case shall the content of milk solids not fat be less than 6 percent. Whey shall not, by weight, be more than 25 percent of the milk solids not fat.”

Cruella Ice Cream Sundae in Disney World

Now, for a while, Dairy Queen’s soft-serve was categorized as “ice milk,” but the FDA abandoned that classification in the 1990s and added new categories of ice cream: reduced-fat, light, or low-fat. So Dairy Queen is technically now low-fat ice cream. Oh, good, then I can order two Blizzards now, right?

Note that this also pertains to McDonald’s ice cream, which is referred to as soft-serve. But it’s still all ice cream to me and it tastes just as good.

Stay tuned to DFB for more.

The Kitchen Sink & More of the BEST Ice Cream Disney World

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What’s your favorite Dairy Queen order? Share with us in the comments!