It turns out that the Great Value ice cream sandwiches sold by WalMart don’t actually melt — at least not fully, in the way that something with “ice cream” in the name is supposed to.
WXYZ Detroit, the ABC affiliate there, actually tested Great Value ice cream sandwiches alongside Haagen Dazs and Klondike bars, to see if they’d melt. Haagen Daz melted immediately (no surprise there, considering Haagen Dazs is actual ice cream), the Klondike bar melted most of the way, and the Great Value bar kinda sorta partially melted, but was by far the most solid of the three.
The reason why is because of certain specific ingredients that, when taken together, have the net effect of creating un-cream. Calcium Sulfate is a firming agent. Guar Gum and Carrageenan are thickening agents. Hydrogenated oils (which show up in the ingredients list as “Mono-And Diglycerides”) act as emulsifiers. They’ll still partially-melt over time, but chunks of them will stay disturbingly solid even if left out overnight.
True story: I actually have a really weird hang-up about melted ice cream where it freaks me right the hell out. I get really uncomfortable around melted or partially-melted ice cream. I’m not actually making a joke, here; when people talk about how they love letting their ice cream melt and then eating it like soup, it activates my gag reflex. So in a weird way, I might actually PREFER ice cream that doesn’t melt. Well, if they weren’t made out of ingredients that WalMart had to go out of their way to stress were “deemed safe by the FDA.”
Image via Photology1971/Shutterstock.