What is Gelato?

When people in Italy talk about gelato, in actual fact they can be talking about two different products as regards both their composition and their production technology:

One is gelato, the other is industrial ice cream.

Outside Italy, these products rightly have two different names: "ice cream" is, in fact, industrial ice cream, while the term "Italian gelato" is used for that typically Italian specialty produced by artisans. Though not everyone has a clear idea about the differences between these two products, rather we often find ourselves comparing industrial ice cream and gelato, considering them to be the same thing.

It then becomes necessary to stress the differences between these two types of ice cream or gelato.

The main difference is certainly associated with the FRESHNESS of gelato, which is made fresh every day using choice ingredients such as pasteurized milk, fruit in season, natural paste,sugar. Whereas industrial ice cream follows an industrial process in which large quantities of product are manufactured and distributed to the points of sale with a shelf life in the order of many months.

The composition of industrial ice cream is different, too, in that it contains much more fat than gelato. Gelato, on the contrary, ranges from no fat at all (for example in fruit gelato) to a fat content of 4-5% on average for the creamy flavours. The fat content of industrial ice cream is highly variable, ranging from 7% to as much as 18% for premium ice creams.