What Is McDonald's Ice Cream Really Made Of?

We all know McDonald's soft serve as a sweet and cold fast food staple (if the soft serve machines aren't broken, that is). But these days, all ice cream treats have been getting a little bit of extra scrutiny, because when you look a little more closely at some products, some aren't actually classified as ice cream. Take for example, Dairy Queen's version, which can't be called ice cream and is called "soft serve" since it doesn't meet the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) definition of ice cream. Don't get us started with why Drumsticks don't quite melt the same way regular ice cream does, because that's a whole different story. 

So is McDonald's soft serve technically ice cream, and what is it made of? First off, yes, McDonald's soft serve is, in fact, ice cream. Its ingredients are milk, sugar, cream, corn syrup, natural flavor, mono and diglycerides, cellulose gum, guar gum, carrageenan, and vitamin A palmitate. But it falls under a specific subset of ice cream: reduced-fat ice cream. That means that when you pick up a swirly cone, you're getting a treat that legally falls under the category of ice cream. Just one that's not too heavy on the fat.

The FDA defines "reduced-fat" ice cream as having 25% less total fat than regular ice cream.Note that the main ingredient in McDonald's soft serve isn't cream, but rather milk. Heavy cream has 38% fat content, and since it's not as big of a factor in McDonald's soft serve ice cream as milk is, the end product is naturally a little lighter in fat. Some of the other ingredients like cellulose gum, guar gum, and carrageenan are thickeners and stabilizers that don't contribute to the ice cream's fat content, either.

You've probably seen monoglycerides and diglycerides as common food additives in processed food items before. They're used as emulsifiers, which help oil and water to blend together to create a product where the fat and water don't separate (mayonnaise is a good example of emulsification). Finally, the vitamin A palmitate is a vitamin that's added to all low-fat milk to replace vitamins that have been stripped from the dairy when the fat is removed from the milk.

One component of all ice cream that's not listed on any label is its air content. All ice cream has air incorporated into it during the churning process, known as overrun, which is calculated by percentage. Soft serve in particular can contain 50% to 60% air, which contributes to the volume of soft serve ice cream as well as its overall fluffy texture. So, while McDonald's reduced-fat ice cream might not exactly be the most luxurious or silky on the palate, it's definitely easy to inhale a cone in under a minute, which is probably something you want to do on a summer day before it melts. 

Technically air doesn't count as an ingredient, which is why it's not listed, but since it contributes so much to the way ice cream feels in your mouth, it might as well be. And that's exactly what McDonald's soft serve is — ice cream. It's not a frozen dairy dessert, not a dairy-adjacent treat, it's regular old reduced-fat ice cream.