Peter Lind, Flavor Development Specialist
Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, Waterbury, Vermont

The man behind Chunky Monkey and Cherry Garcia is a former chef, baker, and caterer with sensitive taste buds and an enviable cholesterol count of 168. To keep it so low, he avoids eggs and has cut down on cheese and red meat. Still, his job requires him to taste ice cream, he said, and "some of it sticks." When we talked to Peter, he was trying to crack the problem of making Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough -- a hit in sample tastings -- in commercial quantities. "We can make it ten gallons at a time without difficulty, but the quality slips when we try to produce more," he said, before he headed back to the laboratory. The hardest part of his job is dealing with people who send him ideas for new flavors. "Someone recently suggested Chilly Chili -- vanilla ice cream with chili powder," he said. "The scary part is, I think she was serious."