アイスは8種類！！??? ALL500円です•:*+:.\( °▽° )/.:+*:•#溶けないアイス #金座和アイス #japan #tokyo #harajuku pic.twitter.com/Kt7qPuf6uh
— 金座和アイス原宿店 (@kanazawaice) July 5, 2017
If you hate eating ice cream bars, or Popsicles that melt all over your hand and create a sticky mess, Japan just changed the game for you.
The Biotherapy Development Research Center Co. in Kanazawa invented pops known as the "not melting Popsicles," and are now sold under the name Kanazawa Ice.
If it sounds to you like a science company made an accidental discovery and invented an ingenious product as a result, well, that's literally what happened here.
Scientists at the Research Center were experimenting with strawberries in efforts to help farmers affected by the Great East Japan Tsunami and Earthquake of 2011 sell their product. The berries weren't visually appealing enough to go to market, but a local pastry chef wanted to try to use polyphenols, chemicals naturally present in the fruit, to make a dessert. A test discovered that the polyphenols solidified cream almost instantly, leading to experimentation of adding the strawberry extract into frozen desserts to create the unmelting ice cream.
The Popsicles are apparently incredibly heat-resistant, and can even stand up to an air dryer for at least five minutes without melting at all. They're sold for about 500 yen ($4.50 US) each, and can be found in Osaka, Tokyo, and other outlets.
If you're interested in getting hold of this ice cream ASAP, head to Japan and try them out for yourself. Otherwise, it's probably only a matter of time before somebody here in the US does the same thing, so you can always wait around for a while for these Popsicles to make their way to the U.S.
