27/05/2026
Why Dairy-Free Ice Cream? (And Why Most Dairy-Free Ice Cream Is Still a Problem)
Well, the ones who can chug down a glass of cold pasteurised cow’s milk, a tub of passionfruit yogurt with granola for breakfast, a side of full-cream milk, creamy mushroom pasta sauce, a triple-cheese pizza with extra cheese, followed by a strawberry thick shake and a triple choc Magnum ice cream, this is absolutely not about you.
Nor do I expect you to read on.
Let’s agree, dairy people, you lovely humans, you’re all good. As you were.
Thanks.
For the rest of us out there who bloat, burp, and fart at the sight of cow’s milk, cheese, cream, or anything dairy for that matter you, my dears, deserve a little taste of what’s possible.
And I mean actually possible.
Not “possible if you’re okay with eating a list of ingredients you can’t pronounce, suspended in refined coconut oil and thickened with four different gums.”
Because that’s what most dairy free ice cream actually is.
You check the label thinking you’ve made the right choice, and what you’re really holding is a science experiment in a shiny wrapper.
Processed fats, synthetic emulsifiers, and enough stabilisers to survive a nuclear winter just without the milk. Yuck.
We’re not interested in that.
At Jhoii, the brief was simple, each ice-cream has to taste like you’re not missing out on anything.
No compromise.
No “well, it’s pretty good for a dairy-free one.” Full stop.
And the second rule every ingredient has to be something your body actually knows what to do with.
Real food.
Whole ingredients.
Nothing that needs a chemistry degree to decode.
So why does dairy mess so many of us up anyway?
Let’s talk about lactase. Not a person, sadly though Lactase does sound like someone’s cool aunt.
Lactase is actually an enzyme.
Your enzyme.
The one your body makes to break down lactose, which is the natural sugar found in milk.
Here’s the fun part, most humans are born making plenty of it. Babies, obviously, milk is literally their entire personality for the first year of life.
But somewhere between childhood and adulthood, a large portion of the human population quietly stops producing it in meaningful amounts.
Your body essentially goes, “We’re done with that phase, thanks,” and moves on.
This is called lactose intolerance and it affects roughly 65–70% of the global adult population.
Not a niche condition.
Not a trend.
The majority.
Which means if you’ve ever felt a dairy-free menu option was a “special request,” you’ve had it backwards the whole time.
But wait there’s more. Even for people who produce enough lactase, cow’s milk contains a protein called A1 casein, and A1 casein is a bit of a troublemaker.
When it’s digested, it breaks down into a compound called BCM-7, which some research suggests can trigger inflammation and digestive discomfort even in people who aren’t technically lactose intolerant.
So you might be sitting there thinking you’re fine with dairy, quietly inflamed, blaming stress, gluten, or Mercury in retrograde, when it might just be the magnum ice-cream you unwrapped and devoured.
Not to alarm anyone. Just… worth knowing.
The point is, your body isn’t broken if dairy doesn’t work for you. It’s actually doing exactly what evolution intended.
You outgrew it.
You’re basically a wellness success story and you didn’t even have to pay for a retreat.
So what’s actually in ours?
No mystery.
No paragraph of ingredients that reads like a chemistry textbook.
Just real things, doing what real things do.
The base of our magnums is coconut milk the full-fat, properly rich kind that doesn’t apologise for itself.
Sweetened with coconut sugar or lontar nectar, or rice malt syrup which your body processes slowly and gently instead of the white sugar spike-and-crash situation most ice creams are built on.
The chocolate shell is made with real cacao not “chocolate flavoured coating,” not “compound chocolate,” actual cacao.
And the whole thing is built around the idea that indulgence and integrity don’t have to be opposites.
That’s it.
That’s the brief we give ourselves every time something new comes out of this kitchen.
You’re not missing out. You never were. You were just waiting for someone to make the right version.
We have heaps of flavours. Come into Jhoii.
Dairy free. White sugar free. Made from things that grew in the ground. Magnums.
Rp 65,000.