Nearly 90% of us have ice cream in our freezers right now. Here are 6 more surprising facts about everyone’s favorite summer treat.
One of the best parts about summer is the chance to have ice cream whenever and wherever you want it. But while seasons aren’t a determinant for a large percentage of ice cream eaters (in fact, 87% of Americans have ice cream in their freezer at any given time), there’s something special about having your favorite ice cream as you’re taking a walk under the hot sun.
Ice cream just might be the world’s favorite and most malleable dessert. Here are five random ice cream facts that will have you running towards your nearest ice cream shop.
Vanilla is the top selling flavor
Predictably, the best selling ice cream flavor in the U.S. is vanilla, followed by chocolate, cookies and cream, mint chocolate, and chocolate chip cookie dough. It’s likely vanilla and chocolate, the King and Queen of ice cream flavors, will ever fall out of flavor. They’re just too versatile. Not many flavors work in both root beer floats and atop a slice of pie.
You can fix a brain freeze…fast!
Brain freeze, or that awful moment when the ice cream touches the roof of your mouth, is a weird phenomenon. The feeling of your brain “freezing” only happens occasionally, more likely when the weather is very hot and when you consume something cold very fast! When brain freeze hits, press your tongue to the roof of your mouth or drink something warm. Both will normalize the temperature in your mouth and the pain will dissipate. (Here are 6 Things You Never Knew About Brain Freeze).
There’s national ice cream day and month
While this shouldn’t be surprising because there’s a national day and month for everything, national ice cream month takes place in July, with national ice cream day held on the third Sunday of the month. This date was selected by President Ronald Reagan in 1984, when he said Americans should celebrate the day with the “appropriate ceremonies and activities.”
RELATED: 20 Insane Ice Cream Flavors From Around The World
Non-dairy ice cream is on the rise
As more people eschew animal products in favor of plant-based foods, coconut milk ice cream is projected to experience a more than 14% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2018 to 2024, according to MarketWatch.
Clint Eastwood really loves it!
Clint Eastwood loves ice cream so much that he served as mayor of the city of Carmel, California for a term in order to protect it. He nominated himself to oppose a weird law that would ban selling and eating ice cream on public streets. “Eastwood campaigned in part on a platform that promised to do away with the old city hierarchy’s ‘kill-joy mentality’,“ reported the LA Times.
…So do most other politicians!
Ice cream seems to be the one thing that unites both sides of the aisle. So much so, eating the stuff in front of cameras appears to be a critical chapter in the Campaign Trailing 101 handbook. Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, John F. Kennedy, George W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan are just some of the presidents (and presidential hopefuls) who’ve been snapped eating the cold treat.
