New Edible Antifreeze for Ice Cream Developed

It's ironic how the biggest nightmare of ice cream companies around the world is in fact ice. To prevent the formation of large ice crystals, most of them resort to adding edible antifreeze to the cream mix, thus keeping the texture of the ice cream smooth and silky no matter how many times it has been refrozen. However, certain types of edible antifreeze, such as the one made of proteins extracted from animals, may never become acceptable in Europe where genetically engineered compounds are not as popular as on the American continent.

This little problem might have been already solved by food science professor Srinivasan Damodaran of the University of Wisconsin-Madison who created a new type of edible antifreeze made with the help of gelatin derived from animal collagen, thus containing the same protein used in most types of gelatin-based desserts. Additionally, not only does the new edible antifreeze comply with the European standards, but it is also colorless and tasteless, leaving the basic properties of the ice cream roughly unchanged.

"A lot of people study antifreeze proteins because they have so much technological value. They are very appropriate for meat, too. So much texture is lost due to ice crystal damage in meat tissues," said Damodaran. According to him, edible antifreeze proteins don't have to be limited only to ice creams; they can also be used in a large variety of other frozen foods, especially desserts.

The newly developed edible antifreeze is obtained by mixing gelatin and papain. The papain itself helps shorten the length of gelatin proteins. Damodaran realized that even after multiple temperature variations, similar to those experienced by a typical refrigerator, the ice cream mixed with the edible antifreeze he had designed continued to be smooth and maintained its texture, as in the case of genetically engineered antifreeze.

"We used ice cream as the model to show that this antifreeze works. Now it's up to the companies, manufacturers and the consumers to decide if they want to have it in their products," says Damodaran.