Context and quality is key
If the ice cream is cheap and shitty, neither flavor will be good. But honestly I like vanilla and chocolate together. They're nice complimentary flavors.
well, since taste is subjective and you're looking for an objective measure, I'm just going to judge on other grounds! I suspect that the vanilla industry is less bad for the environment and has a better track record with labor violations, so vanilla is better.
Now, I didn't research that first, and I could definitely be wrong... but at least it's something one can actually be wrong about.
When you say objectively, do you mean closer to the platonic ideal of ice cream? Closer to THE ice cream, by which all other ice cream is known?
In that case consider: what of what makes ice cream ice cream is present in vanilla and chocolate versions? Moose tracks is a great ice cream, and it shares it's base with vanilla. But rocky road is also stellar, and it has a chocolate base. But in general, more ice cream types share the base with vanilla than chocolate. That would indicate vanilla is closer to the shared idea of all ice cream.
Further more, chocolate is a separate ideal of itself. No one desires the ideal vanilla extract, it is nothing on its own. So the ideal ice cream, totally disconnected from the material world and other ideals, would be closer to the blank slate vanilla than the specialized chocolate. Vanilla the word is even short hand for unaltered.
So in conclusion, from a deep examination of the platonic forms and ideals of ice cream, vanilla is objectively superior.
That being said, in my opinion chocolate is objectively superior in every way.
platonic ideal of ice cream
OP never even specified ice cream.
So this leaves a lot of interpretation what kind of objective rating we should apply. For example if it's about the underlying material used (vanilla beans vs cocoa beans) we could also be looking at economics and availability.
The best one is obectively the one you like the most.
It has been scientifically proven chocolate is the better flavour. My source? Don’t worry about it.
I dislike drinking/eating vanilla on it's own. I like drinking/eating chocolate.
Comparison of excellent quality vanilla vs excellent quality chocolate should leave you with the takeaway that both are excellent. you may have a preference for one over the other but that’s hardly objective
My personal preference shifts based on mood and (more so) based on quality. Excellent chocolate bar vs budget ice cream that uses vanillin instead of actual vanilla beans? Probably the chocolate unless I’m searching for that nostalgic artificial vanilla flavor. A shitty chocolate snack cake with like 2% actual chocolate and 98% palm oil vs a well made panna cotta? Going vanilla.
vanilla is a lot more versatile in my day to day life. Of the two id say chocolate would be less jarring if it disappeared from my life.
I don't know why this was downvoted so much. It's an honest question. But anyways, I'll go for chocolate because chocolate can go with mint.
I don’t know why this was downvoted so much.
It's a silly question that's impossible to answer. For subjective preferences like flavors, none are "objectively better". They also could have posted this in "no stupid questions" which at least invites questions that are apparently dumb, but they didn't.
I didn't downvote it personally, but why it got downvoted certainly isn't a mystery.
True, though I took the “objectively” part as a humorous hyperbole. I don’t know if nostupidquestions would’ve accepted the question (they tend to reject questions aimed at viewer experience) but the Lemmy site has had many of us improvising with where we post because a side effect of being federated are having the site not work in random places at any given time.
I'm gonna go chocolate. Certain things I prefer vanilla though. Like vanilla fudge is the shit. But ice cream I'm going chocolate.
