Could Ben & Jerry's Be Created Today? (Your Radical Questions with Ben Cohen)

0:00Amol Rajan:This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. What do Beatles member Sir Paul McCartney, YouTube megastar Mr Beast and former Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg all have in common? They're all being discussed in the new season of Good Bad Billionaire, the podcast which explores the lives and fortunes of the world's super rich. That's Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Listen now, search for Good Bad Billionaire wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

0:36Amol Rajan:Hello and welcome to Your Radical Questions. This is where I put your questions to some of our magnificent, and if I may say inspirational, radical guests. It's your chance to engage very directly with them. They are always super smart, interesting, influential, and they've thought very hard about how to make the world a better place. And that is definitely true of our very distinguished guests this week, and indeed on last Thursday's episode. I hope you heard it. If you haven't, go back and listen to it. It is with one of the co-founders of Ben & Jerry's, Ben Cohen, who until he came into the studio, I hadn't thought, Cohen, you make ice cream cones.

1:13Amol Rajan:Nominative determinism. Go figure. Of course. Ben, it's wonderful to have you with us. Thank you so much. We've had a load of questions from our listeners, people who not only eat Ben & Jerry's ice cream, but are hugely inspired by your approach to capitalism. And actually, our first, I was really hoping for a question from her. Our first listener question is from a former guest on this podcast. There is a very, very successful British restaurant chain called Oaxaca, which does Mexican food. And the founder of Oaxaca, just to give you a little backstory, is a remarkable human being called Tomasina Myers.

1:48Amol Rajan:Tomasina Myers was, I think I'm right in saying, winner of a British program called MasterChef. And after she won MasterChef, she set up this restaurant chain and she came on Radical and talked to us about the huge challenges that restaurants face in this country with massively rising costs. But Oaxaca is a very, very ethical company. It tries to keep to an absolute minimum waste. It tries to hire people from tough backgrounds. It tries to give people very little ultra processed food. And it does so in a very, very ethical spirit, which is why it is such a pleasure to have this question from Tomasina Myers.

2:21Amol Rajan:Hi Ben, it's Tommy Myers here of Oaxaca. Here's a question for you. When we set up Oaxaca, we really focus on the bigger picture, an unusually high number of vegetarian dishes sourcing from great small suppliers and using tech to help with low energy consumption, food waste recycling, etc. but unless your food is delicious, none of that cuts the mustard. How much of your success is down to ethics? How much do your customers actually care about good practice? I'd love to know what you think. Can't wait to listen to the pod. Bye. Thomas Nita, thank you so much for that brilliant, brilliant question.

2:54Amol Rajan:So Thomas Nita's question, Ben, is how much of your success is down to ethics? How much do your customers actually care about good practice? You know, I think it's about 50-50. I think that the ice cream has to be great. People are really into the ice cream and they're really into the social causes and ethics. You know, sometimes in the past, I've said that it's kind of like 30, 30, 30, that 30 % really love the company because of its social stands. 30 % don't really care. They're indifferent. and 30 % don't really like the social stands, but the company continues to grow. What we've noticed is that as the company takes more and more stands on political issues and how it uses its power, you know, for economic, social, racial justice, we continue to sell more and more ice cream.

3:55Amol Rajan:And just if you were, because you've been very successful in business, you made money doing it and you know how businesses grow. If you're advising a new restaurant chain, for instance, or someone selling sneakers, trainers, as we call them here, would you say that it's important to have that ethical stance where you risk 30 % of people not liking your views? It's worth having that ethical stance right at the beginning. Or can you only afford to have that ethical stance where 30 % of people take against you once you've got a business that's really humming with the revenues coming in? No, I think you can do it at the very beginning.

4:32You know, that's what Ben and Jerry's did, and it seems to have worked. Actually, I think it's harder if you add it later on. If it was insincere or something. I don't know. It's not necessarily insincere, but the basis of your business, it's the idea of that thing about mission. that from the beginning, if your mission is about serving the needs of society along with serving great food, you don't have to change. It's the idea that you have a two-part mission and you need to do both of them from the beginning.

5:12Amol Rajan:Yeah. Tomasina, thank you so much for that. It's wonderful to have a question from a former guest in these special listener Q &As. So thank you for that, Tomasina. This is another one for you, Ben, And this is from Sophie Harvey. Sophie, thank you so much for sending this in. Sophie says, hi, Radical Team. I love your thought provoking podcast. Thank you, Sophie. You can come again. Does Ben think companies can be left to fulfil their corporate responsibilities to society, such as remediating effects of pollution, ensuring fair wages and treatment within their supply chain, or mitigating climate impacts and so on?

5:44Amol Rajan:Or does that require government regulation? If for governments, how and what hope is there for this to work? Well, I think it's both. I think the reality is that government is the biggest lever that we've got. And so I think that advocacy, that businesses advocating for the government to adopt policies that have those social benefits is a very important role for business to play. I mean, you know, the reality is that business is incredibly political. You know, it's business that pays for donations, campaign donations to politicians. It's business that pays for lobbyists that control our laws. It's business that controls the media.

6:37and we of the people that are looking to do ethical business need to use our voices to impact how the government addresses these things.

6:51Amol Rajan:Do you welcome regulation then? Just to pick up on Sophie's question, do you welcome regulation even if it's potentially harmful to your bottom line and would that be the case if you're a small company? The reason I ask that is that there's been a bit of a shift in public opinion in recent decades on matters of public health and a willingness of governments to regulate issues of public health. So, for instance, when I was growing up in this country, people smoked cigarettes in pubs. Now there's a smoking ban. When Mike Bloomberg was the mayor of New York, a city of your birth, he introduced quite aggressive public health interventions.

7:26Amol Rajan:In this country, we've got what's known as the sugar tax. Now, a sugar tax is pretty bad for Ben & Jerry's because Ben & Jerry's ice cream has got sugar in it. Do you welcome public health regulation, even if it's potentially harmful to Ben and Jerry's profits? Well, I think that, you know, government regulations create a level playing field. So, you know, if our company needs to pay a sugar tax and every other ice cream company or dessert company needs to pay a sugar tax, I don't think it hurts our business. Do you know the geniuses on the other side of the glass here, Ben, they are so high calibre.

8:06Amol Rajan:And Tom Smithard, who's producing today's, knows so much about British politics that he's just whispered in my ear, which is this is how this show works. This is how it works in the media, guys. He's just whispered in my ear, ice cream is not subject to sugar tax. And what I want to know is whether or not Tom Smithard, who is so smart and so bright, knew that or he looked it up. Educated guess. Well, so there's the issue of empty calories. Empty calories, yeah. So, I mean, as far as desserts go, I think ice cream is one of your more nutritious desserts. Said the founder of Ben & Jerry's. Sophie, thank you so much for that question.

8:48Amol Rajan:This next one is from Emile Richman or Richmond. Forgive me, I don't know the pronunciation whether you say it's a ch or k, but Emile Richman in Liverpool. Hi, Vadical. My question for Ben Cohen is, how do you square your business ethics with the fact that you produce products that are ultra processed foods which are linked to harms to health many thanks bye ah a provocative question from emil we like provocative questions how do you square your business ethics with the fact that you produce products that are upf's ultra processed foods i hope that the dear listener is not suggesting that we no longer have ice cream that that that we ban ice cream.

9:33You know, no, you're not supposed to replace three meals a day with ice cream. Only one meal a day. So what I'm saying is that you can eat it in moderation. You know, it's kind of the same thing as butter. I hope that we're not suggesting that we have a world without butter. So I don't see any conflict in it.

10:02Amol Rajan:But is it legitimate if, because it's a growing concern in this country. I mean, there's a lot of political conversation. It's a bit unfair way to ask you this because it's a UK conversation, but there was a guy, a very influential and brilliant public doctor called Chris Van Tullican wrote a book a few years ago called Ultra Processed People. And there was, I don't know if it was him that came up with this, but there were a few people who said, if there's something that you see on the ingredients and an eight-year-old couldn't say it, you know, monohydrosaturated, whatever, or it's this thing I always get confused about, xanthan gum, which you never heard of.

10:36Amol Rajan:Basically, you should try and avoid eating it. Although one takes your point that Ben & Jerry's is ice cream, ice cream is a treat. No one's saying have ice cream instead of your high-fibre diet. Ice cream is a treat that you have in moderation and rarely. Do you try to take measures at Ben & Jerry's, or have you done to try to minimize the presence of things which could be harmful, albeit in the context that in the end it's ice cream? Yeah, sure. You know, homemade ice cream is the way you'd make it at home, and they don't throw in those ingredients that you can't pronounce. Yeah, the things that make it a UPF, a naturoprocessed food, right?

11:12Right. So Ben and Jerry's never used any of those strange ingredients. I mean, the reality is that if you want to have really good ice cream and you want to do it all natural, it's pretty easy. There's a lot of cream and there's very little air and there's some egg yolks. If you want to make ice cream that tastes creamy, but it's not, it doesn't use much cream, then you need to pump it up with all these other artificial ingredients. It's a lot more difficult to make. You know, I guess that would be the ultra-processed food version of ice cream.

11:52Amol Rajan:I make one with condensed milk and whipped cream. Ooh, yeah. Strawberry one. I'm very, very into it. Strawberry. You get the strawberry, a little bit of sugar, and then condensed milk and whipped cream, and then you freeze it. But you have to keep going back to it while it's in the freezer and stir it so the icicles don't form. I've got three daughters, and they're very, very into that. In fact, we're strawberry season now. I should probably do that this weekend. Emil, thank you for that question. We like provocative questions. They're good. This final question is from Andrew Miller, who says, Hi, I'd like to know if Ben Cohen thinks a company like Ben and Jerry's could be founded today with outrage on social media, culture wars, the power of big supermarkets and cost pressures on us all, including business.

12:33Amol Rajan:Does he think a similar idea or mission to Ben and Jerry's might just in the modern day be killed off early? I think you could definitely do it today. I mean, I walk around, I run into some really great homemade ice cream parlors. I don't know if they have a social mission or not, but I mean, I think trying to help people in poverty, there aren't that many people that are against that. So if you open up a homemade ice cream shop and you're working to try to help people in poverty, you're working to try to change government policy and you're making great ice cream, I think you'll do pretty good.

13:17Amol Rajan:Ben, it's such a pleasure chatting to you. It really is. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time. I know you've got a lot of people who want a bit of your time in London. And I imagine most people, when they say thank you to you, end up with something trite like thank you for the ice cream. But actually, thank you more for teaching us something about the nature of capitalism, which I think is pretty radical and which it's been an enormous honor to sit through. So thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it. Well, great talking with you. Fantastic. And you pronounce my name correct, which is amazing.

13:45Amol Rajan:Thank you so much for all your questions. Thank you for answering them, Ben. I'll be back with another episode of Radical on Thursday. Thank you for your time. We'll talk soon. Goodbye.

13:55Amol Rajan:I'm Gemma Gander, and for BBC Radio 4 and Shadow World, this is Stolen Years. More than two decades ago, Andrew Malkinson was found guilty of a crime he didn't commit. There's a massive hole in your life, and it's been filled in with suffering. Now in 2026, another man has faced a jury of his peers. On trial for the very same crime Andrew spent years of his life imprisoned for. I'm 55. I was 37 when I went in. It's damaging. Driven by Andy's passion to see the system held to account, we follow him as he tries to build back a life. And we discover how Paul Quinn came to finally be convicted. Subscribe to Shadow World Stolen Years on BBC Sounds.

14:50Amol Rajan:have in common. They're all being discussed in the new season of Good Bad Billionaire, the podcast which explores the lives and fortunes of the world's super rich. That's Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Listen now, search for Good Bad Billionaire wherever you get your BBC podcasts.