Cream consumption booms: 30 million Italians eat it

A new lease of life for cream, which in recent years seems to have become one of the products most appreciated by Italians, to the point that, according to estimates carried out by Assolatte, the number of cream consumers in Italy is said to have risen by 2.3% from 2006 to today, going from 67.4% to 69.7% and thus surpassing 30 million Italians.

The data show that 40% of Italians are moderate fans of cream, 18% are strong supporters and 6% are unstoppable enthusiasts, while 35% are hostile or have an ambivalent attitude toward this dairy product.

Consumption varies and breaks down into many brackets: it ranges from the 6.8 million Italians who say they use it weekly (1-6 times a week) to 700,000 die-hards who claim to use it several times a day, mostly concentrated across Liguria, Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany, Umbria and Marche, in small municipalities, among women, the self-employed and homemakers, married people and cohabiting couples, and among those who live with under-17s at home.

Cream "brings cheer," according to the findings of the research carried out by Astra Ricerche for Assolatte: over 44% of those interviewed say in fact that they experience a pleasant oral and palatal pleasure in consuming cream, a further 28% cite its pleasant flavor and a good 33% affirm its positive value from the consumer's psychological standpoint.

Oral hedonism — the pleasure felt in consuming the product in question — would therefore be the basis of the broad approval that cream enjoys among Italians. 11.6 million claim to greatly or enormously enjoy eating cream as it is or using it for cooking.
Consuming cream, especially when done with a certain frequency, is linked to high psycho-physical well-being (+9% compared with the average), to existential balance (+13%) and to the happiness tied to living a fully satisfying life (+12%).