Do all ice creams and frozen desserts melt? Our Scientists conducted a myth-busting experiment to determine whether the following internet rumour was true: “Breyer’s Frozen Dessert does not melt. I left the ice cream out for over 70 hours without any melting or change. What is in this product that keeps it from melting?” (taken from a YouTube video with over 600,000 views).
Our class tested 4 frozen sweet treats including: a popsicle, rainbow sherbet, Breyer’s frozen dessert, and Chapman’s ice cream. We left the frozen desserts out for 5 hours, checking in every so often to see any changes. Our results are below:
Above left: rainbow shebert after 4 hours
Above right: Chapman’s vanilla ice cream after 4 hours
Above left: the Breyer’s frozen dessert (the focus of the internet rumour) after 4 hours.
Above right: the grape popsicle after 4 hours
What do you notice in our results? We found that all of the desserts had noticeable changes, however the Breyer’s frozen dessert maintained the shape/size. We think this might be due to the high concentration of gum products (ex: guar gum) and lower percentage of milk/dairy fats in this frozen dessert.
Feel free to watch the time-lapse video below of different frozen treats melting!