The year was 1978 and the world was undergoing a serious vanilla shortage. Reacting to the escalating vanilla bean prices, David Michael & Co., faced the shortage head-on and developed Vanguard[r].
Vanguard is an all natural, non-characterizing flavor designed for use in ice cream mix. A forerunner of today's masking flavor technologies, Vanguard provides the same functionality in ice cream mix as a masking agent would in a soy beverage, covering the undesirable tastes of such things as soy, vitamins and minerals. Ingredients have a flavor of their own, which can often conflict with the specific vanilla flavor being used. The use of Vanguard enables the vanilla flavor to come through in ice cream mix. Accordingly, significant reductions can be achieved in the usage level of vanilla since there is no longer a need to over-compensate for the mix ingredients.