Viewers have seen plenty of social media content of Audrey Roloff without her kids.
But a lot of fans are there to watch the little ones grow up.
Unfortunately, as we saw very recently, sometimes these home videos cause fans to react with alarm.
The latest incident involves Audrey food full of dangerous raw ingredients. Better alternatives have existed for nearly 200 years.
“Um making ice cream!” Audrey Roloff’s short and sweet little Instagram Story video announces.
She and her children — Ember, Bode, and Radley — were making strawberry ice cream. Not preparing strawberry ice cream, by scooping it into bowls.
They were making it at home, and showing fans and followers a glimpse of the process.
Almost everyone knows how to prepare at least some foods. The idea of homemake ice cream, however, has become an impracticality.
Between most people simply not having the time or the tools and the convenience of getting professional ice cream, it’s a rarity. It’s not like baking a cake or making your own lemonade.
But this was surely a treat for her kids to get to do. There is a certain wonder to making foods for yourself as a child. (That sense of wonder usually goes away as you get tired of cleanup and doing the resulting dishes)
Here’s where things become a little bit dicey.
“Hold on, I’m gonna taste it,” Audrey tells her kids, before tasting the ice cream as they make it.
We’re sure that it tastes absolutely delicious. But that is not the issue. Audrey then feeds tastes of the strawberry concoction to her kids.
However, Audrey also shared her recipe with fans and followers.
The recipe for this homemade treat includes cream, eggs, and raw milk.
Ice cream recipes can very widely. But it’s the raw milk that drew people’s attention — and concern.
We don’t know where Audrey and Jeremy source their eggs. Most eggs, however, are pasteurized and thus reasonably safe. (The thing that makes a lot of cookie dough unsafe isn’t the eggs, but the flour)
But raw milk? It’s right there in the name — it’s raw. No pasteurization process.
It has live enzymes and live bacteria. Sometimes, those bacteria are deadly. Resulting illnesses can lead to hospitalization or even death.
Fans and critics alike discussed Audrey’s needless dietary risks.
“This is a recipe for food poisoning!” one person quipped. For the record, food poisoning is a phrase that comes up often when one is discussing raw milk.
“She is going to poison her kids!” another worried. That is not guaranteed — but it is always a risk. That’s why pasteurization was such a game-changer nearly 200 years ago.
“Did she add raw egg to ice cream?” another asked. “How does that taste good?”
(Egg yolks are an optional ingredient in ice cream but a standard part of making custard. There are benefits to including them. And eggs can, and should, undergo pasteurization)
“Drinking raw milk makes me nervous,” another admitted. That is very smart!
If you’ve ever sat in a hospital room holding the hand of a loved one who has just lost their life to a battle with a deadly bacterial infection, you’re not going to want to take extra risks.
Not with handling animals, not with where you swim, and not with food preparation.
We could give Audrey the benefit of the doubt. Maybe this was safer than it looks. But given Audrey and Jeremy’s history of poor choices, not everyone believes that.