Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff. I'm more in vogel Bomb and today's episode
Speaker 1: is a classic from our archives. I was thinking about
Speaker 1: this one after we had a particularly warm weekend here
Speaker 1: in Atlanta. A team of researchers and chefs in Japan
Speaker 1: developed an ice cream that doesn't melt. Here's how it works,
Speaker 1: Hey brain Stuff, Lauren vogel Bomb. Here admit it. Even
Speaker 1: the most open minded among us have preconceived notions about
Speaker 1: ice cream by virtue of the fact that it's basically
Speaker 1: flavored sweetened milk that's frozen. Certain properties are necessarily associated
Speaker 1: with it. For instance, it melts when you're eating it
Speaker 1: on a hot day. It's also very difficult to light
Speaker 1: on fire. But the days of such predictable, old fashioned
Speaker 1: frozen treats are over. A team of Japanese scientists has
Speaker 1: developed a soft serve ice cream that won't turn to
Speaker 1: milk soup, even after hours in the heat. And it's
Speaker 1: not because it contains the usual thickening suspects like diglycerides,
Speaker 1: kara gene in or polyscorbit eighty. It's basically just regular
Speaker 1: ice cream with one small modification. The story of how
Speaker 1: we got to flammable ice cream is pretty good. It
Speaker 1: starts with a strawberry accident. After the earthquake and tsunami
Speaker 1: ravage Japan. It's the one that caused the meltdown of
Speaker 1: the reactors at the Hookushima Nuclear Power Plant. A Japanese
Speaker 1: chef was tasked with figuring out what to do with
Speaker 1: strawberry polyphenol, a compound extracted from strawberries. It all started
Speaker 1: when nobody was buying a whole bunch of deformed strawberries
Speaker 1: grown in an area affected by the earthquake because they
Speaker 1: just weren't shaped quite right. Researchers at Japan's Biotherapy Development
Speaker 1: Research Center wondered if instead of wasting all that fruit,
Speaker 1: something could be done with the polyphenol inside of it.
Speaker 1: They asked a pastry chef to create a dessert with it.
Speaker 1: The experiment went okay, but the problem was every time
Speaker 1: he added the compound to cream, it hardened right up.
Speaker 1: Baha lightbulb invent to, a professor emeritus of pharmacy at
Speaker 1: Kanazawa University, told Japanese newspaper The Asahi Shimbun. Polypheno liquid
Speaker 1: has properties to make it difficult for water and oil
Speaker 1: to separate so that a popsicle containing it will be
Speaker 1: able to retain the original shape of the cream for
Speaker 1: a longer time than usual and be hard to melt.
Speaker 1: With this realization, Odah and his research team developed Kanazawa
Speaker 1: Ice popsicles, which hits stores in Japan last summer. They
Speaker 1: hold their shape through all sorts of treatment that traditional
Speaker 1: popsicles can't withstand, from hot sun to hair dryers. Now,
Speaker 1: Kanazawa Ice offers soft serve ice cream, which can reportedly
Speaker 1: be caught on fire without melting, and can keep its
Speaker 1: shape at temperatures of a hundred and four degrees fahrenheit,
Speaker 1: which is forty degrees celsius. I want to get your
Speaker 1: paws on some flammable ice cream, Well, you're just going
Speaker 1: to have to travel to Japan if you're not already there.
Speaker 1: Japan has no plans to export it just yet. Today's
Speaker 1: episode was written by Jesslin Shields and produced by Tristan
Speaker 1: McNeil and Eiler Klaang. For more on this lots of
Speaker 1: other topics, visit how stuffworks dot com. Brain Stuff is
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. Or more podcasts my heart
Speaker 1: Radio visit the i heart Radio app. Apple Podcasts or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.