DCHP-2

creamo Creamo DCHP-2 (October 2016)

• n. — British Columbia and occasionally Alberta, Food & Drink

  a blend of cream and milk with 10% fat content (see Image 1).

  Type: 1. Origin — The term creamo is derived from a British Columbia dairy brand name (hence the capitalized variant Creamo). Creamo has been in use in BC since the early 1920s as a generic term for coffee cream, as the 1923 quotation from a UBC Yearbook and the 1920s advertisement in Image 2 show. In the latter, Creamo is presented without explanation, indicating that consumers were familiar with the term. Creamo was also the brand name of a breakfast cereal produced in post-WWI Alberta (see Image 3). Today, creamo competes with cream, coffee cream, half and half, and cereal cream among other terms, and shows some decline in use, though about 40 percent of Vancouverites still report using the term. Among the immigrant and working class population, creamo is used more frequently (see Dollinger 2012a). While the term is most popular in BC, it is much less frequently used than coffee cream today. Coffee cream is the preferred term in all Canadian provinces except Prince Edward Island, where table cream prevails, and Manitoba, where cereal cream is ahead by a slight margin (see Chart 2).

  See also: cereal cream  coffee cream  table cream