You won’t find this ice cream at a cafe or supermarket.<\/p>\n
It’s been nutritionally fortified with medical-grade vitamin D3 and B12 and needs to be consumed under medical supervision.<\/p>\n
“It’s not to say a normal person couldn’t eat the ice cream, it wouldn’t harm them,” said dietician Stephen Hodgkinson.<\/p>\n
“But there are certain health conditions where we need to be mindful of limiting that protein. For younger children, especially.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Paul Amourgis and Carly Palmer sample their fortified vanilla bean ice cream at the Van Diemens Land Creamery factory at Elizabeth Town. (ABC Rural: Laurissa Smith)<\/p>\n
It’s a formula specifically designed for end-of-life patients in palliative care at Calvary’s four private hospitals in Tasmania.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The included vitamins help increase their immune function and strengthen bone density.<\/p>\n
The unique partnership with a Tasmanian ice cream business came about after Calvary hospital catering staff had asked: “Why are we feeding people food we wouldn’t eat ourselves?”.<\/p>\n
It is now a passion project for Van Diemens Land Creamery chief executive Carly Palmer.<\/p>\n
“From start to finish we wanted the ice cream to be made with the end user in mind,” Ms Palmer said.<\/p>\n
“Putting ourselves in the shoes of those people, in care or in hospital.”<\/p>\n
For the last two years, the company at Elizabeth Town, near Deloraine in the state’s north, has been working with Calvary on the project.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Small tubs of the fortified ice cream for palliative patients are filled by an automated rotary machine at the Elizabeth Town factory. (ABC Rural: Laurissa Smith)<\/p>\n
Calvary Launceston general manager Kate Pryde said many palliative care patients had difficulties swallowing and struggle to eat solid foods.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“When you do need supplementary feed, you want something that is normal,” she said.<\/p>\n
“Particularly when you’re talking about palliation.<\/p>\n
“For us, providing health care is about comfort, and who doesn’t think ice cream is a comfort food ?”<\/p>\n
The ice cream needed to hit clinical benchmarks before it was signed off.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Dietician Stephen Hodgkinson was involved with formulating the ice cream to hit clinical benchmarks. (ABC Rural: Laurissa Smith)<\/p>\n
Dietician Stephen Hodgkison was involved in this process.<\/p>\n
“So getting the protein high enough was the number one consideration we were looking at.<\/p>\n
“For people with some illnesses or older people, they have a higher need for protein.<\/p>\n
“If they’re not eating enough, their body will actually take it from other places.<\/p>\n
“Here in Tasmania, people are quite vitamin D deficient, targeting those is a real added bonus.”<\/p>\n
Paul Amourgis, managing director of Van Diemens Land Creamery, checks on the ice cream churn. (ABC Rural: Laurissa Smith)<\/p>\n
Tricky ice cream to make<\/p>\n
From leatherwood honey to lemon curd, Van Diemens Land Creamery is used to modifying ingredients to make different flavours.<\/p>\n
Making a high-protein ice cream though adds another level of complexity, according to the Creamery’s managing director, Paul Amourgis.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It needs more time to dissolve into the milk,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Then it needs to be managed carefully through the pasteurisation process to avoid heat shock.<\/p>\n
“If you don’t manage it correctly, it fails completely.”<\/p>\n
The powdered vitamins B12 and D3 are added to the ice cream post-pasteurisation.<\/p>\n
“The inclusions of vitamins in food are highly regulated under FSANZ,” said Ms Palmer.<\/p>\n
“We are approved to manufacture this product for special medical conditions.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Dairy farmer Mark Lambert chatting to Carly Palmer and Paul Amourgis from Van Diemens Land Creamery on his organic farm at Sunnyside. (ABC Rural: Laurissa Smith)<\/p>\n
Organic Jersey herd\u00a0<\/p>\n
Milk for the ice cream is sourced from a certified organic dairy farm on rolling, lush green paddocks at Sunnyside, about 20 kilometres up the road.<\/p>\n
Farmer Mark Lambert milks around 560 Jersey cows there, supplying 100,000 litres of milk to the factory.<\/p>\n
“It’s a breed known to produce high protein and more so a high fat milk,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Demand for fat and butter has really changed in the last five years.<\/p>\n
“It’s no longer demonised, it’s now recognised as a health food, rather than a food to make you sick.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
These Jersey dairy cows at Sunnyside in north-west Tasmania supply organic milk to Van Diemen’s Land Creamery.\u00a0 (ABC Rural : Laurissa Smith)<\/p>\n
Mr Lambert has adjusted his calving pattern to can supply milk year-round for ice cream production.<\/p>\n
“So we get milk every week,” Mr Amourgis said.<\/p>\n
“We have a bit of a peak through the summer with increased demand.<\/p>\n
“But generally we’re making ice cream every week of the year and we’re fortunate that we’ve got a supplier who can tap into that.”<\/p>\n
The latest ice cream innovation from Van Diemens Land Creamery. (ABC Rural: Laurissa Smith)<\/p>\n
Future product expansion\u00a0<\/p>\n
Paul and Jan Amourgis started their ice cream business more than 20 years ago, when they were running their own dairy farm in the Meander Valley.<\/p>\n
The farm has since been sold and expanding their ice cream production for the domestic and overseas market is their primary focus.<\/p>\n
Mr Amourgis said this project with Calvary was never driven by profit.<\/p>\n
“If people lose the will to eat, it’s great if in some small way [they get] to have some nutrients.<\/p>\n
“And if it’s in our ice cream, that’s even better. That was the appealing part, I think.”<\/p>\n
Carly Palmer was recently named a finalist in the 2025 Tasmanian Palliative Care Awards for Outstanding Achievement and Innovation in Palliative Care.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You won’t find this ice cream at a cafe or supermarket. It’s been nutritionally fortified with medical-grade vitamin…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40424,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[27121,64,63,35761,35759,137,500,35758,29560,35760,35757],"class_list":["post-40423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-aged-care","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-calvary","tag-carly-palmer","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-ice-cream","tag-palliative-care","tag-paul-armourgis","tag-van-diemens-land-creamery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40423\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}