When will I be able to tweak my ice cream like my PC gaming graphics?

This week I found myself in the frozen section browsing for ice cream. I’m not even sure how I ended up there and why ice cream, but my subconscious was apparently way ahead of me. Once my conscious kicked in, the comparing started.

There’s, of course, plenty to choose from if you’re in the mood for flavors that put the ice cream in the running for world record of highest calorie density food. My personal favorite in this category: Ben & Jerry’s Half Baked Fudge Brownie & Cookie Dough. So good!

But alas, I try to limit my intake of said category. So this week I was going for sweet tooth meets practical. And this category is all over the place. It simply depends on what your trade off threshold is. Do you want sugar free? How ’bout fat free? One third less calories? Half the sugar? Half the fat? Or some combination of the above?

The trick is to get something made where the taste sacrifice is minimized while the health advantage is maximized (or more accurately, the health disadvantage is minimized: it’s not like ice cream, no matter how sugar/fat-free is ever really considered a health food). But there’s no one right answer to this formula. In fact, the answer almost completely depends on the unique criteria of any given person, which brings me to my question of the day:

When will I be able to tweak my ice cream like my PC gaming graphics?

While some consider it a disadvantage to PC gaming (when compared to console gaming), I actually like being able to customize my settings to my exact criteria. I’m in full control. I make trade offs when selecting the hardware (decision based on price). And then once I install a game, I make trade offs based on what’s important to me: frame rate / resolution / detail level / anti-aliasing / isotropic filtering, etc. In the end, my gaming experience is custom tailored to my criteria (though arguably more expensive, just like custom-made ice cream would likely be more expensive than the pre-made alternatives).

But I’d be willing to pay (within reason) for custom made ice cream that fits my criteria more exactly. The difference, though, is that with computer games, you can change your settings as many times as you wish and preview the results. With ice cream, however, tweaking the taste-to-health meter and previewing it several times before placing an order… not very practical.

Or is it? I’d love it and would find it to be very practical (from the consumer perspective). How the process would work in reality, though, escapes me. Any ideas?