The Great Value Ice Cream Sandwiches from Walmart are said to not melt, a claim that has been made for years.
One mother discovered that after being left outside all night, her son’s ice cream sandwich simply refused to melt.
Christie Watson said her kid left a Walmart ice cream sandwich outside for a full day, as reported by the Cincinnati television station WCPO. The sandwich of ice cream never melted, even if the temperature reached eighty.
Initially, one might question what material these objects are constructed of that prevents them from melting—at least not as quickly as one would expect an ice cream product to.
The full list of ingredients is available on the Walmart website and looks like this:
Ingredients: 2% or less of natural flavors; milk, cream, buttermilk, sugar, whey, corn syrup, skim milk; carrageenan, cellulose gum, gum from carob beans, mono and diglycerides; colorant: annatto extract.
Despite having all those elements, I, a layperson, wasn’t entirely sure, so I kept looking.
Walmart provided WCPO with an explanation in response. According to the contents, which include cream, “ice cream melts,” a Walmart employee stated. “In general, ice cream that has more cream will melt more slowly; this is also true of our Great Value ice cream sandwiches.”
Professor and food chemist Sean O’Keefe of Virginia Tech described in a Washington Post story how fat can impact how quickly an ice cream product melts. O’Keefe asserts that ice cream’s fat content affects how quickly it melts. He clarified that the slower ice cream melts, the less fat and more water it contains. Since it needs to absorb more heat before the melting reaction can occur, ice cream manufactured with less fat will actually melt more slowly. Food science is it!
A study conducted by the Ohio State University Department of Food Science Technology on the impact of emulsifiers and stabilizers on ice cream melting resistance found that the more stabilizers added to an ice cream, the slower it will melt. Gum stabilizers are employed in the Great Value Ice Cream Sandwiches to help the dessert maintain its shape.
This video that I found on YouTube shows that these delectable sandwiches will melt when the time and temperature are right—they just don’t get in a rush about it.
