How much air is in icecream? Someone told me it was 70% but it sounds too much?

Question

If it was mostly air I think I'd eat more :P

Answer 1

Modern industrially-produced ice cream is made from a mixture of these ingredients :
* minimum of 10% milk fat
* 9-12% milk solids which contain the proteins (caseins and whey proteins) and carbohydrates (lactose) found in milk
* 12-16% sweeteners: usually a combination of sucrose and/or glucose-based corn syrup sweeteners
* 0.2-0.5% stabilizers and emulsifiers, e.g. agaragar, or carrageenan extracted from seaweeds
* 55%-64% water which comes from milk solids or other ingredients
These ingredients, along with air incorporated during the stirring process, make up ice cream. Generally, less expensive ice creams contain lower-quality ingredients (for example, when vanilla bean is replaced with artificial vanillin), and more air is incorporated, sometimes as much as 50% of the final volume. Artisan-produced ice creams, such as Berthillon's, often contain very little air, although some is necessary to produce the characteristic creamy texture of the product.
Generally speaking, the finest ice creams have between 3% and 15% air.
So, the percentage of Air in Ice Cream ranges between 3% and 50% !

Answer 2

excerpt from Dandy Don's icecream website.
up to 70% could be correct. read this article.

http://www.icecream101.com/index.html

Air is pumped into ice cream during the churning process. Air can be churned in naturally (as in home machines and batch freezers), or artificially (as in larger continuous freezers used by national ice cream companies). The less air added during freezing, the better. Overrun is the term we use in the industry to describe how much air is in the ice cream. Technically it means the volume of ice cream obtained over and above the volume of mix used. High quality ice cream doesn't exceed 100% overrun. At Dandy Don's our overrun is very low. We put 6 or 7 gallons of ingredients into our machine and get 9 gallons out. That makes our overrun between 30% and 50%.

Answer 3

It depends on what brand of ice cream you are looking at. A better quality ice cream will have less air whipped into it. It will be a denser,and more creamy in texture. It will also have a higher fat content.
In a cheap brand, there will be considerably more air in the ice cream. Remember the old saying..."You get what you pay for"?
Well, I'd rather spend my money on a good quality product and not on air. But, that's just me.

Answer 4

Ice cream contains a considerable quantity of air, up to half of its volume. This gives the product its characteristic lightness. Without air, ice cream would be similar to a frozen ice cube. The air content is termed its overrun, which can be calculated mathematically.

Answer 5

Ice cream contains a considerable quantity of air, up to half of its volume. This gives the product its characteristic lightness. Without air, ice cream would be similar to a frozen ice cube.

Answer 6

There's no significant amount of air in ice cream. It's an unwhipped dairy product... that's like saying that milk is 70% air.

Answer 7

I have heard that normal ice-cream has a lot of air in it. This was on Food Network. Gelato, which is a kind of Italian ice-cream, has much less air. It is somehow thicker than average ice-cream, and tastes really good.

Answer 8

ha! I wish!