The inside scoop
A diversification story that is making a BIG difference
“I’d never have thought there’d be health benefits to ice cream.”
NFU member and dairy farmer Josh Dakin
Mick and Josh Dakin with their ice cream
Mick and Josh Dakin with their ice cream
Surrounded by the rolling Derbyshire hills and situated in one of England’s first tourist towns lies Matlock Meadows dairy farm.
It is owned and run by third-generation dairy farmers, the Dakin family.
Mick’s grandfather took over the tenancy in the 1930s and the family bought the farm in the late 1990s. Their ice cream parlour opened in 2010.
Venturing into the ice cream industry was a relatively recent development for Mick and his wife, retired nurse specialist Mandy.
Of course, the Dakins are not the first dairy farmers to consider diversifying into ice cream to add value to their milk, but the way that side of the business took off is something none of them saw coming.
“When I was leaving school, it looked like there might not be a future for British dairy farming,” remembers Mick’s son, Josh. “That was when the cost of production was way higher than what we were getting.”
Selling direct to the customer
The family were first inspired to begin producing ice cream following a spontaneous four-day getaway to Lake Garda when Mick's wife Mandy had her first taste of gelato.
Since then, the business has grown substantially, with the farm supplying many local tourist attractions including the Chatsworth estate.
“I always wanted to produce a product to sell direct to the consumer rather than through the supermarkets, and ice cream seemed to tick that box,” says Mick.
Having successfully secured a reputation for producing quality ice cream, the family’s next innovation came in the form of an email to Mandy from the same hospital she had worked at as a nurse for 30 years.
Surrounded by the rolling Derbyshire hills and situated in one of England’s first tourist towns lies Matlock Meadows dairy farm.
It is owned and run by third-generation dairy farmers, the Dakin family.
Mick’s grandfather took over the tenancy in the 1930s and the family bought the farm in the late 1990s. Their ice cream parlour opened in 2010.
Venturing into the ice cream industry was a relatively recent development for Mick and his wife, retired nurse specialist Mandy.
Of course, the Dakins are not the first dairy farmers to consider diversifying into ice cream to add value to their milk, but the way that side of the business took off is something none of them saw coming.
“When I was leaving school, it looked like there might not be a future for British dairy farming,” remembers Mick’s son, Josh. “That was when the cost of production was way higher than what we were getting.”
Selling direct to the customer
The family were first inspired to begin producing ice cream following a spontaneous four-day getaway to Lake Garda when Mick's wife Mandy had her first taste of gelato.
Since then, the business has grown substantially, with the farm supplying many local tourist attractions including the Chatsworth estate.
“I always wanted to produce a product to sell direct to the consumer rather than through the supermarkets, and ice cream seemed to tick that box,” says Mick.
Having successfully secured a reputation for producing quality ice cream, the family’s next innovation came in the form of an email to Mandy from the same hospital she had worked at as a nurse for 30 years.
Professor Opinder Sahota
Professor Opinder Sahota
Meet Professor Opinder Sahota
Working as a consultant physician at Nottingham University Hospitals, Professor Opinder Sahota headed up a research team looking into developing an alternative to high protein ONS (oral nutritional supplement) drinks.
“It was never just a research project, it was about improving patient care,” Professor Sahota reflects on the development of his energy-dense high protein ice cream (N-ICE cream), so named to emphasise its local provenance in Nottingham.
While research has shown ONS drinks can improve clinical outcomes, in everyday practice the research team found less than a third of the drink was being consumed by patients, with reasons for this varying from the taste, texture and poor range of flavours explains the professor.
“It was quite horrific really. As part of our service evaluation we found that the median calorific intake on a hip fracture ward was only 600kcal per day, and when we weighed the food left over for a period of five days, and multiplied that by the number of patients on the ward and over the year, we estimated that four and a half tonnes of food from a single ward was being thrown away per year.
“We asked patients, what would you actually like to eat? Answers ranged from fish and chips to high-energy biscuits, and then a large group talked about ice cream and what’s interesting is that there is a lot of data which shows, nutritionally, ice cream may be a really good vehicle for older people generally. It has that soothing quality, and that really helps patients.”
Delicious and nutritious
After experimenting with existing ice creams and even attempting to convert nutritional supplement drinks into ice cream with varying levels of success, the professor set his sights on developing his own ice cream.
“We asked ourselves, if you were to have the optimal ice cream, what should it have in it? What we wanted was high protein, but the type of protein is quite important too.
“One amino acid in particular, leucine, is shown to be very effective at helping muscle, we combined this with whey protein and vitamin D which also has an independent effect on muscle too.
“We made that in the university kitchen and – lo and behold – it was actually palatable! The N-ICE cream was born.”
“We always wanted to maintain that link to local produce and local knowledge”
Initial trials found that four out of five patients preferred the ice cream to the drinks and the consumption of the whole ice cream was greater at nearly 80-90%.
But with the university kitchen only certified for research purposes, Professor Sahota knew he would need to enlist the help of a dairy farmer to scale up the project.
Meet Professor Opinder Sahota
Working as a consultant physician at Nottingham University Hospitals, Professor Opinder Sahota headed up a research team looking into developing an alternative to high protein ONS (oral nutritional supplement) drinks.
“It was never just a research project, it was about improving patient care,” Professor Sahota reflects on the development of his energy-dense high protein ice cream (N-ICE cream), so named to emphasise its local provenance in Nottingham.
While research has shown ONS drinks can improve clinical outcomes, in everyday practice the research team found less than a third of the drink was being consumed by patients, with reasons for this varying from the taste, texture and poor range of flavours explains the professor.
“It was quite horrific really. As part of our service evaluation we found that the median calorific intake on a hip fracture ward was only 600kcal per day, and when we weighed the food left over for a period of five days, and multiplied that by the number of patients on the ward and over the year, we estimated that four and a half tonnes of food from a single ward was being thrown away per year.
“We asked patients, what would you actually like to eat? Answers ranged from fish and chips and high energy biscuits, and then a large group talked about ice cream and what’s interesting is that there is a lot of data which shows, nutritionally, ice cream may be a really good vehicle for older people generally. It has that soothing quality, and that really helps patients.”
Delicious and nutritious
After experimenting with existing ice creams and even attempting to convert nutritional supplement drinks into ice cream with varying levels of success, the professor set his sights on developing his own ice cream.
“We asked ourselves, if you were to have the optimal ice cream, what should it have in it? What we wanted was high protein, but the type of protein is quite important too.
“One amino acid in particular, leucine, is shown to be very effective at helping muscle, we combined this with whey protein and vitamin D which also has an independent effect on muscle too.
“We made that in the university kitchen and – lo and behold – it was actually palatable! The N-ICE cream was born.”
“We always wanted to maintain that link to local produce and local knowledge”
Initial trials found that four out of five patients preferred the ice cream to the drinks and the consumption of the whole ice cream was greater at nearly 80-90%.
But with the university kitchen only certified for research purposes, Professor Sahota knew he would need to enlist the help of a dairy farmer to scale up the project.
Meet the dairy farmers
With both Josh’s mum and partner being nurses, they knew first-hand the good that this could do.
“Opinder wanted to work with a dairy farm rather than a big company – he visited us and liked what he saw, and that’s what started it all off,” says Mick.
“I just thought, we always wanted to maintain that link to local produce and local knowledge,” Professor Sahota agrees.
“It’s turned into a completely different thing now,” Josh continues.
“I’d never have thought there’d be health benefits to ice cream. The more I keep hearing people’s stories the more I think it’s such a good idea.
“Before it was all about getting our name out there – we’re not just dairy farmers, we make bloody good ice cream too! But the protein ice cream is something completely different.
“What with my mum and partner both being nurses we can see the good this could do in hospitals, so if it’s that much of a good thing we thought let’s just do it.”
As with all new food development projects, there was a period of trial and error. “The first batch tasted horrible!” Josh, recalls.
Eventually, the Dakins struck upon a winning formula. Their version of the N-ICE cream had 15-16 grams of protein per pot compared to 3-4 grams in your average ice cream.
“When you go onto a commercial scale it becomes more difficult to get the whey powder into the mix,” says Mick. “The product became too dry and so we came up with a product which would go through our machinery on a commercial scale. It’s very creamy and has a lot of body to it due to the high protein levels.”
Meet the dairy farmers
With both Josh’s mum and partner being nurses, they knew first-hand the good that this could do.
“Opinder wanted to work with a dairy farm rather than a big company – he visited us and liked what he saw, and that’s what started it all off,” says Mick.
“I just thought, we always wanted to maintain that link to local produce and local knowledge,” Professor Sahota agrees.
“It’s turned into a completely different thing now,” Josh continues.
“I’d never have thought there’d be health benefits to ice cream. The more I keep hearing people’s stories the more I think it’s such a good idea.
“Before it was all about getting our name out there – we’re not just dairy farmers, we make bloody good ice cream too! But the protein ice cream is something completely different.
“What with my mum and partner both being nurses we can see the good this could do in hospitals, so if it’s that much of a good thing we thought let’s just do it.”
As with all new food development projects, there was a period of trial and error. “The first batch tasted horrible!” Josh, recalls.
Eventually, the Dakins struck upon a winning formula. Their version of the N-ICE cream had 15-16 grams of protein per pot compared to 3-4 grams in your average ice cream.
“When you go onto a commercial scale it becomes more difficult to get the whey powder into the mix,” says Mick. “The product became too dry and so we came up with a product which would go through our machinery on a commercial scale. It’s very creamy and has a lot of body to it due to the high protein levels.”
“Matlock Meadows have been brilliant at helping us develop the work and using their own time to work on the final formulation.”
Professor Opinder Sahota from Nottingham University Hospitals
The feel-good factor
The obvious pleasure and pride the farmers have in both the good their ice cream is doing for patients combined with the potential they see for business growth is an inspiration.
“The more people you speak to in hospitals or care homes who’ve been given the nutritional supplement drinks say it’s something they had to have, they don’t actually like it,” Josh considers.
“I think that’s what makes the big difference, ice cream is a luxury.”
“A luxury, with a health benefit,” Mick adds. “It has that feel-good factor. Everyone we speak to about it seems to know someone who would have benefited from the ice cream if it had been available to them.”
The ice cream has even passed the taste test with MPs after the Dakins were invited by their then local MP Sarah Dines to the Houses of Parliament to showcase a ‘taste of the Derbyshire Dales’ along with other local food producers.
“The proof is in the pudding,” Josh wryly notes, as he presents me with a pot of freshly made salted caramel N-ICE cream which, this author can confirm, tastes absolutely delicious.
Next steps
The ice cream has recently scooped a number of awards including the Innovative Food Product and Best Health and Nutrition Product categories at the Business Awards UK earlier this year.
“The big challenge now is trying to engage the hospital authorities,” explains Professor Sahota. “We’re applying to the Department of Health for large-scale funding to roll this out across 50-60 hospitals.
“We want to add more science to this and to be able to say this is a scientifically-proven product.”
Professor Sahota sees the potential of the N-ICE cream spreading out far beyond the hospital wards to care homes, palliative care patients and even patients struggling to eat post-surgery.
“Matlock Meadows have been brilliant at helping us develop the work and using their own time to work on the final formulation and that’s what you often want,” Professor Sahota reflects, “people to invest their time – everyone has contributed to try and make this product work.”
The end result
At the heart of the project, it’s always been the people factor which really motivates the professor:
“To me, to see a patient – a frail person who’s malnourished, who’s got dementia, or who is recovering from hip surgery for example – eating the ice cream and it’s helping their nutritional needs, then I’ll feel we’ve achieved something.”
How are you diversifying?
Photograph: MBI/Alamy
Photograph: MBI/Alamy
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