John Harrison (born 1942) is an
American ice cream
Ice cream is a frozen dessert typically made from milk or cream that has been flavoured with a sweetener, either sugar or an alternative, and a spice, such as Chocolate, cocoa or vanilla, or with fruit, such as strawberries or peaches. Food ...
taster, who worked for ice cream company
Dreyer's
Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream, Inc. (or simply Dreyer's) is an American ice cream company, founded in 1928 in Oakland, California. The company's two signature brands, ''Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream'' and ''Edy's Grand Ice Cream'', are named after its foun ...
(also known as Edy's) as its "Official Taste Tester".
Career
Harrison joined Dreyer's in 1956, serving until his retirement in 2010,
tasting on average sixty ice cream flavors daily. Harrison does not consume the ice cream, and instead spits it out. Based on his own estimates, he has tasted a few hundred million gallons of ice cream at Dreyer's.
He has aided in the creation of more than one hundred unique ice cream flavors;
he claims that he invented the flavor
Cookies n' Cream. According to a ''
World
The world is the totality of entities, the whole of reality, or everything that Existence, exists. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the world as unique, while others talk ...
'' report on Harrison, "his taste buds are so fine-tuned he can immediately taste the difference between 12-percent and 11.5-percent butterfat in a product."
The report also described him as the "most popular ice cream man in America". Harrison believes himself to be "the first national spokesman on ice cream". He has appeared on many television programs, as well as on other media.
In 1997, Harrison was awarded the American Tasting Institute's Master Taster of the Year title.
Personal life
Born in 1942,
all of Harrison's paternal family, up to his great grandfather, were involved in the ice cream industry in one way or another.
In his younger days, he would help out at the ice cream factory his uncle owned. Harrison is married and currently resides in
Palm Desert,
California
California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...
.
Harrison's taste buds are insured for a million dollars.
He adheres to a very strict diet, so as not to affect his tasting skills.
References
1942 births
Living people
People from Palm Desert, California
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