Japan Is Selling Ice Cream That Doesn't Melt | Hacker News Reader

Japan Is Selling Ice Cream That Doesn't Melt

cntraveler.com

163 pointssndean110 comments

You can prevent melting with a bunch of stabilisers but it's not a better product. Part of the fun of ice cream is the fact it melts.

> Part of the fun of ice cream is the fact it melts.

Are there other foods that you think would be improved by adding a melting feature?

In other words, if ice cream didn't melt as you held it would you improve it by adding melting?

Because "part of the fun" to me sounds like a knee-jerk justification rather than a real evaluation of whether it's a good thing.

> Are there other foods that you think would be improved by adding a melting feature?

Butter and chocolate are solid at room temperature; likewise ice cream is served frozen. Part of what makes all of them so pleasant to eat is that they melt rapidly in the mouth, pleasantly coating the tongue.

Many foods become "not quite right" when butter is replaced with another fat, and lack of melt-in-the-mouth is one of the reasons.

I'm talking about melting on your plate or as you hold its container, like ice cream.

You don't like licking the liquid as it melts off and starts dropping down the side? Or putting your lips on the top and sucking the dessert as it melts?

I don't think that you can say that melting is objectively better, but I think it's an intrinsic property of the food.

> You don't like licking the liquid as it melts off and starts dropping down the side? Or putting your lips on the top and sucking the dessert as it melts?

It's definitely a subjective preference.

I dislike everything about the fact that ice cream melts rapidly under most conditions. To me it's inconvenient and destroys the original structure of the thing I want to consume, forcing me to accelerate the speed at which I consume it (or end up with a milk drink). I think I'd ideally reduce the melting speed by between 1/2 and 3/4.

Not really, no.

Hm. Well, to each their own. That's one of the aspects of eating ice cream that I enjoy, and I'd miss it eating a product that didn't melt the same way. Kind of like eating barbecue ribs without getting your fingers all covered in sauce; along with the taste, the experience is part of why I eat the food.

I tend to avoid ribs, as good as they taste, because it's a pain to get my fingers all covered in sauce. To each their own I guess.

Interesting question, strangely enough I kind of wish waffles melted when I give thought to it!

Texture and unevenness is part of many dishes. And many dishes have a liquid component, or different textures and layers.

And there are frozen, custard-y desserts which don't melt. Yet ice cream is #1.

Yup. It ain't ice cream if it doesn't melt. It's something else.

I don't think you live in a tropical country where it is usual to have 40ºC in summer:-). I'd really enjoy 10 minutes more enjoying my ice cream.

Yup, melting is part of fun of having an ice cream

The ice cream, with strawberry polyphenol added to it, does melt eventually. It just takes prolongs its structure longer than ice cream without it. I also like the fact that the ingredient used is natural and not some man made chemical.

Asbestos is also natural, but you wouldn't want it in your ice cream.

Guar gum is also natural. It's extracted from guar beans. And it's widely used (and overused) in lots of US ice cream brands.

You know that plutonium is naturally occurring too, right?

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/natures-nucl...

This is much like the Great Value brand ice cream sandwiches that did not melt for hours when left in the sun. The more cream in an ice cream product the faster it melts.

In some cases slow melting may not be a good thing.

You got that backwards.

> Ice cream melts based on the ingredients including cream. Ice cream with more cream will generally melt at a slower rate, which is the case with our Great Value ice cream sandwiches.

http://www.snopes.com/food/ingredient/walmarticecream.asp

You are Corerect. I knew what I wanted to say then turned around and said it completely backwards. Thank you for correcting my error.

"Why didn’t it melt? According to Sean O’Keefe, a professor and food chemist at Virginia Tech, the more cream—meaning fat—ice cream has in it, the faster it melts. Nonfat ice cream takes longer to melt than fatty ice cream because it has more water in it.

“More water means the ice cream will have to absorb more energy before it can melt. Also, low-fat ice creams tend to have more air whipped into them, which allows them to keep their shape longer,” according to an article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette summarizing O’Keefe’s explanation.

When asked about its ice cream sandwich’s stubborn refusal to melt, Walmart gave a different, slightly less profound explanation: “Ice cream melts based on the ingredients including cream. Ice cream with more cream will generally melt at a slower rate, which is the case with our Great Value ice cream sandwiches.”

Walmart’s Great Value ice cream sandwiches contain corn syrup, guar gum, and cellulose gum—all ingredients that could also contribute to their failure to melt. Häagen-Dazs ice cream doesn’t have any corn syrup or “gums of any type,” said WCPO.

For the record, according to the FDA, it’s safe to eat ice cream with corn syrup and those “gums”—though maybe not after it has spent 12 hours in the sun."

They use seaweed to keep the shape. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrageenan#Production

True. The wallpaper paste "ice creams" just get skin on the outside...

It's surprising that people doesn't recognize quality. Eg Ben & Jerry's seems to be popular but I never found one that wasn't made of too much low quality candy in cheap ice cream.

The reason Ben and Jerry's became popular is because they were one of the first mass market ice creams that came in a bunch of unique flavors and add-ins.

They were popular before they were mass market.

Define 'quality.' The point of food is to enjoy it. Others seem to enjoy Ben and jerrys even though you don't. It isn't a 'shame,' it's just circumstance.

Exactly. It's all about taste.

I think that comment was a little condescending. Personally I love Ben & Jerry's, and it's a little offensive that you think I "don't recognize quality" and I "only like it because it was first to market".

Allow that, it tastes God damned brilliant, and you can't take away from that.

I can give you an example: Hershey's chocolate. For some reason people in US and Mexico seem to enjoy it.

Hershey's is a category all by itself. The first time I tasted their products I couldn't believe that they sold at all, leave alone in volumes.

But if you've never tasted Lindt, you'd never know what you're missing.

Look if people still eat fermented shark some of us can enjoy an occasional Hershey bar. Also, while good, Lindt typically contains soy products. There are a lot of very good milk and dark chocolates out there these days. Alter Eco 85% is my stand by. I know Hershey's doesn't have a local of cocoa content, but food tastes are as much culture as quality for some things.

Fermented shark? TIL.

I don't personally know what's wrong with soy, but an excess of anything is bad in the long run.

Phytoestrogens. There are enough issues around them that I just avoid soy. I know the small amount in soy leichitin is not a really a big deal, but I try to be consistent and just keep it eliminated.

Hershey's chocolate contains milk, which comes from a pregnant cow, which produces actual estrogen in massive quantities. It also contains isoflavones (aka phytoestrogens) from the cacao. If you're eating dairy and chocolate while avoiding soy, you're probably paying too much attention to FUD.

The writer likely has chosen an ingredient to focus on, I'm sure there are a laundry list of items that may expose an inadequacy of focusing on a specific item, however, his effort can be understood and he should not be called a hypocrite

They contrasted two products, Hershey chocolate and Lindt chocolate, and said Lindt chocolate was worse because it contains isoflavones, when in fact both do. I'm not saying anyone's a hypocrite — I'm pointing out that the concern over "phytoestrogens" in soy is largely the result of pop-nutrition FUD, and in other foods (known by their more common name of "isoflavones"), they are commonly considered to have some health benefits.

You are totally right, btw. It is very difficult to eat food based on any sort of nutritional principles. Start from a simple place: I want to limit my consumption of phytoestrogen compounds (isoflavones). Some of them are much stronger than others. Some foods you consume in much larger amounts than others. And, save for extreme cases, phytoestrogen hasn't been shown to cause any real problems in male hormones. Still, they seem worth avoiding.

I guess the point was, it really depends. If you are already getting isoflavones from particular sources and you are controlling for that, then it might make sense to avoid other sources as strenuously as you can (avoid Soy). Which, for me, the only real source of them in my diet is chocolate. Plus not all isoflavones are created equally. Some have stronger estrogen-like effects than others.

In moderation some health benefits. Anyway, I was just pointing out if one of your dietary rules is to "avoid soy" then use a different chocolate bar. It is very difficult to use scientific evidence to build a diet as there is a lot of contradictory evidence the studies available for a given nutritional topic are often of dubious quality. For example, try and take something like the book from T. Colin Campbell, The China Study, and make an evidence based opinion on if he is correct or not. Then look at the work by folks like Ray Peat. You can find endless supporting and non-supporting evidence for virtually any food or compound in food and it becomes a real mess to develop any sort of evidence based diet that isn't "controversial" to some large chunk of reasonably well educated people.

I'd say there are subjective and objective indicators of quality, and that just because a lot of people like it doesn't make it a quality product, at least from a certain standpoint. Bud light is not a quality product from a flavor or obedient standpoint, but in terms of price, consistency, and marketing it's great.

But as someone who knows something about ice cream, I'd say B&J is a relatively high quality product. They use mostly good ingredients and that used to be very rare of nationally distributed ice cream.

> Bud light is not a quality product from a flavor ... standpoint

Says who? Who can tell everyone else what their preferred flavours should be?

Nobody is doing that. I, for example, like plenty of things that I recognize as low quality.

I'm not entirely sure that aesthetic realism isn't true.

Which, that's not to say that if someone were to have a different taste than the "objectively correct one" (assuming that one did exist) that they would be wrong to have it, but I consider it to plausible that someone's tastes (e.g. mine) could be in some proper sense, "incorrect".

There are a number of topics where I feel like, if aesthetic realism is true, my personal tastes probably do not really match up with the true taste.

I'm not convinced any of the national premium brands are all that great. I tend to agree on Ben and Jerry's. To my taste, most of their flavors are way too gimmicky.

I have a local ice cream place near where I live. I rarely buy ice cream from the supermarket any longer.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeni%27s_Splendid_Ice_Creams

Check out Jeni's for a premium brand that has some national distribution, as well as direct to consumer shipping from their website. It's $$$, but I used to be an ice cream connoisseur of sorts, and I think it lives up to the hype.

It's local to me. Great ice cream but she doesn't use eggs and to my taste a good ice cream with eggs just has a richness Jeni's lacks. Her Uganda vanilla ice cream loses hands down to just a classic vanilla ice cream, made lovingly, with egg yolks, even though her beans cost 10x as much.

Good point, but I thought traditionally 'Ice Cream' was w/o eggs, with eggs was 'Frozen Custard'. I prefer vanilla w/o eggs, but chocolatey flavors I prefer custard.

I'm not sure there's any consistent nomenclature. With eggs vs. without is sometimes called French Vanilla vs. just Vanilla. But you'll find plenty of Vanilla recipes with yolks just called Vanilla. And for other flavors, you'll find tons of recipes with yolks still called ice cream. You're technically correct but I'm not sure how widely used "frozen custard" is.

there is even a third option! besides ice cream with no eggs and ice cream with cooked eggs, there is ice cream with uncooked eggs. i often hear the latter two options as "custard" vs "straight method".

Not sure I've ever noticed them but will keep my eyes open. Thanks.

Are you referring to Walmart store brand ice cream sandwiches?

Yes, Great Value is the WalMart store brand.

I know this is going to be unpopular, but my family spends more on the Haagen Dazs because it's one of the only actual real ice creams without the guar gum and other fillers. I looked at the ingredients of so many brands in the grocery store before realizing.

In support: I'd rather have no ice cream than anything with guaran. That stuff tastes like plastic and gives me an upset stomach.

Guar gum is just a thickener. What's the actual filler material?

Breyers Vanilla Frozen Dessert (because they legally cannot call it icecream).

MODIFIED MILK INGREDIENTS, SUGAR, WATER, GLUCOSE, COCONUT OIL, NATURAL VANILLA FLAVOUR, MONO AND DIGLYCERIDES, VEGETABLE GUMS (GUAR, CAROB BEAN), CARRAGEENAN, NATURAL COLOUR.

Haagen-Dazs Vanilla

ingredients: cream, skim milk, cane sugar, egg yolks, vanilla extract.

Personally (ignoring sugars) the 'MONO AND DIGLYCERIDES' is the bit I try to avoid, not worrying so much about the gums.

Mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono-_and_diglycerides_of_fatt...

Seems like this replaces hydrogenated oils across a whole range of products, and I'm suspicious that it's just a way to avoid public concerns about hydrogenated oils by replacing them with something similar just without the same stigma.

Quick search found this article, which states some more specific concerns, if in a rather extreme way: https://foodbabe.com/2015/07/31/theres-no-safe-level-ingredi... (but of course you can search and find similar concerns about many things, doesn't make them true).

Well those searches sure lead to a bunch of stupid hyperbole. "no safe level" doesn't exactly mean much...

So the issue is that the monoglycerides and diglycerides might be constructed with trans-fatty acids, and the label won't let you know.

But given that this is an ingredient behind vanilla you're not looking at very large amounts in the first place.

Foodbabe.com is not credible. The site and the woman behind it have been criticized and debunked up and down. They are pseudoscience and should not be cited.

They can't call it ice cream because it doesn't have enough fat, so that's probably neutral on the health scale.

I wouldn't really consider anything in there to be a filler, it's just favoring sugars over fats.

And that ingredient list is still pretty small. 9 vs. 5 when you combine the two sugar entries.

I use guar gum at home in my ice cream as it helps guarantee a good mouth feel, you use less than 1/2 a teaspoon for a couple of litres. Why do you not like it?

I happen not to like the mouth feel of guar gum. It tastes "empty" and, well, "gummy" where I am looking for that creamy, fat sensation.

Same here - wife shops for us and reads labels closely. She/we won't buy the cheap stuff because of the ingredients.

My brother did a science experiment in 5th grade to see which ice cream melted the fastest, and I remember staring at one of them (I think it was Turkey Hill) because it never seemed to melt. It just turned into a white foam.

My chemistry is very rusty but, there seems to be a short road from polyphenols to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs - the stuff you might use in a laboratory to produce cancers (!!!) in order to study them)... or am I wrong?

I won't be so keen of increased usage of food additive that get easily transformed into proven carcinogen compounds when some stupid cook or food producer decides to "deep fry the ice-cream cookies" or some other stupid shit like that sounds unhealthy but harmless... Even if the compound itself is healthy in its natural combination, I imagine the percent in strawberries is low, and humans' propensity to fry, prolonged bake, or grill & smoke a strawberry concentrate is low, whereas if you start using this additive on a wide scale and it ends up in all sorts of other products...

FUD

Reminds me of Ali G's ice cream glove: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48TR0vUPQCs

Yeah my first thought was I believe Donald Trump was the person who came up with the idea for drip proof icecream (when talking to Ali G)

The time-lapse they link shows the ice-cream almost immediately starting to melt.

It is pretty incredible, and the ice-cream seems to keep its shape for hours despite melting, and apparently melts slower than regular ice cream. No need to ruin it by vastly over-hyping it in the title.

Walmart also sells ice cream that doesn't melt.

Snopes: http://www.snopes.com/food/ingredient/walmarticecream.asp

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SozZHZAWS64

You beat me on this comment with exactly the same youtube link!

By "doesn't melt" they mean it doesn't liquefy. It goes from a solid when frozen, to something that looks whipped/gelatinous when room temperature.

Which frankly seems super gross to me.

I think the idea is that it just doesn't make a mess, but it might also have advantages refreezing from a semi-thawed state. Might have positive implications for shipping/distribution where a crate of ice cream sits at a loading dock for just a wee bit too much time before making it into freezers.

It also has commercial disadvantages though, such as the fact that even if it never gets warm, I'll be too grossed out just by the thought of what it's like when it warms up that I'll never buy any.

"but it might also have advantages refreezing from a semi-thawed state"

If that is a concern, you are eating ice cream the wrong way!!

This adds a whole new twist to the phrase "vanilla ice cream".

"But the Kanazawa Ice retained its original shape even after five minutes. It also tasted cool."

video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sA-lc6ZnWLo

Unless that secret ingredient has some insulating properties, the "tasting cool" is almost certainly a visual effect. I'd love to see a triangle test where blindfolded people tried to pick out the warm one. I'd bet they'd be damn near 100%.

It's likely still cool after sitting for a while, just not ice cold. If you take melted ice cream and eat/drink it, it's still cool, although probably less pleasant.

It could be a menthol / eucalyptus type of thing.

But does it melt in your mouth?

This is the essential property of ice and choclate, I also wondered.

Too bad slightly melt ice cream tastes a lot better. I usually wait 10 minutes in warm weather before eating the ice cream.

I guess they were going for the other 99.999% of the market.

Is American ice cream different from other countries when it comes to melting?

When I carry ice cream in warm weather(Germany) it melts to a puddle in about ~4 minutes.

Having seen Americans discuss food online for years i can't help but think that their processed food make European processed food seem almost farm fresh.

That's somewhat accurate.

But the preference for "melted ice-cream" is clearly an outlier opinion, regardless.

I think that Europeans often have a skewed idea of American food, comparing modern European food to what American food was like 30 years ago. Every major brand of food in the US has been on a continuous cycle of improvement, reducing artificial ingredients and processing, and restaurants have done the same. And it's not like American fast food isn't extremely popular in Europe too.

Something well-frozen will take longer to warm to melting temperature than something that's just below freezing. Maybe that's the difference? Having lived both places (although my time in Germany was almost 20 years ago), I don't remember there being a drastic difference in melting times.

My siblings and I grew up in Las Vegas. We'd always wait until the ice cream turned to "soup" not fully melted, but enough liquidity to easily spoon it into our mouths.

My friend actually microwaves his for a few seconds to get it really creamy. Having it not melt in your mouth is definitely a downside.

I had non melting ice cream in Shanghai, at a relatively overpriced/ touristy, outdoor seating restaurant. It felt like I was eating some weird synthesized product from a lab. It didn't taste very good either. There is no reason for us to go in this direction.

Edit - whelp, after insulting religious institutions on the Muzzmatch thread, I have been defaulted to the bottom of comment threads, despite upvotes. That's happened to all my comments since then, when they used to be defaulted at top and usually hung around there. Hopefully it's temporary? May be in for a karma winter.

Sometimes the mods will revoke those things if you talk to them about it. Still bloody annoying that they use adversarial stealth tactics on people who are arguing in good faith, but there you go.

In any case, I remember the Muzzmatch thread, and taking any excuse to preach at people is no more appealing in atheists than it is in theists.

a little offtopic but i find it weird we say "japan" when we really mean some company within japan.

Now if they could figure out how to keep it cold without refrigeration.

If this keeps water and oil bound together, how can this not affect taste and especially smell? The whole point of taste and especially smell is being triggered by specific molecules upon dissociation.

I just got a craving for astronaut ice cream

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeze-dried_ice_cream

That's not ice cream and it melts.

Ok I did not read the article but if Japan has invented ice 9 (as seems to be the case from the title), run for the hills, we are all screwed.

What is ice 9?

They mention Polyphenol

It's a plot device from Kurt Vonnegut's book "Cat's Cradle". It's a good read if you're looking for a recommendation

Reminds me of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLHRjaUBb3o

I’d like to see some scientific studies with decent citation (and potentially well sized sample sizes) around the health impacts of eating / digesting said compound. IMO there is a huge difference in taste between ‘simple’ ice cream recipes vs complex highly manufactured ice cream, I’m weary of adding another state controlling compound to the mix.

Is it snow skin mooncake with ice cream appearance? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_skin_mooncake

The worst (for my taste) is Mister Softee, common among New York ice cream trucks. It tastes like plastic foam and does not melt well. I'll prefer the cream-based five ingredients any day.

My first thought was: Dippin' Dots, the ice cream of the future.

I wouldn't let the fact that many polyphenols are known to be carcinogenic, mutagenic and genotoxic get in the way of enjoying so Mr Softee, now would I?

Could you post the research that implicates polyphenols in cancer? I could not find any in-vivo studies linking polyphenols to cancer in a quick search. A review article from 2017 states the opposite in fact:

"...polyphenols in particular have gained considerable attention as chemopreventive agents against different types of cancer."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28807562

These polyphenols are from strawberries. Tannic acid (like one is exposed to when drinking tea), and grapes also contain polyphenols. If polyphenols as a whole were really dangerous, it seems like it would be pretty obvious by now.

Which polyphenols in particular are you referring to out of interest?

As far as I understand there's plenty present in hops:

"although added in 100 times lesser quantity than malt, it can account for 30% of total beer polyphenols"

https://cdn.uclouvain.be/public/Exports%20reddot/inbr/docume...

And I've never heard of any issues with those with respect to cancer.

That's what my first thought was when reading about the “miracle ingredient”, and I am confused why no other comments here mention this.

"When heat from a dryer was applied in an air-conditioned room, a vanilla popsicle that was purchased from a regular shop began melting around the edges almost instantly," according to the intrepid reporter. "But the Kanazawa Ice retained its original shape even after five minutes. It also tasted cool."

Am I the only one that thought of the LOTR scene with Gandalf holding out the ring to Frodo after putting it in the fire and telling him "it's quite cool"?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com