Froyomonium

Schuyler Mitchell on frozen yogurt as a recession-era emblem of decadence and restraint. This article originally ran on May 18th, 2024.

Lately I’ve felt estranged from my own desires. I say “lately,” but really this bifurcation has always been there: The feeling of wanting something versus the analysis of why I want it. Sometimes the latter takes the form of a heavy shroud, blotting the former out or tamping it down. It makes the desire feel muddled and remote, maybe even like shame. When the thinking and feeling halves coalesce—well, I guess that that’s called pleasure.

Right now, especially, nobody knows what the hell to make of desire. People are fucking less, staying home more, epidemically lonely and isolated. Popular weight loss drugs suppress hunger, wiping out the desire for food and its attendant delights. Put simply in the language of the zeitgeist: Body positivity lowkey fell off. Meanwhile, inflation’s still high, affordable housing scarce, and industry-wide layoffs abound across sectors. It’s harder to tap into desire during times of precarity, indulgence eclipsed by basic survival imperatives.

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All of this has me thinking, naturally, about frozen yogurt.

Picture the quintessential froyo cup: A low-fat, sugar-free, guilt-free swirl, peeking out above pink or green cardboard, crowned by a heaping pile of toppings. Relatively affordable and purportedly healthy-ish, froyo also offers the personal pleasure of choosing your own adventure at the toppings buffet. That choice—to be able to want something and immediately get it—is all the more tantalizing when broader economic forces strip away opportunities for enrichment and delight. Froyo is the ultimate recession-era symbol, an emblem of both decadence and restraint. And the time is ripe for its comeback.

First pitched as a health conscious alternative to ice cream, frozen yogurt shops began proliferating during the low-fat diet craze of the 1980s. Their ascent was swift; the main froyo trailblazer, TCBY, opened in 1981, and three years later it had already amassed more than 100 locations. Often overlooked is that this froyo market bubble began swelling at the same time as the Reagan recession, a year of high inflation and the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

THIS WEEK ON TASTELAND 👅

This week Daisy and Francis are joined by Matt Rodbard, a seasoned writer, editor and author in the food and culture space. Matt is the Editor-in-Chief of the award winning food publication TASTE and co-host of the TASTE podcast.