…of ice cream! Yes, those horrible moments of melting ice cream dripping down the outside of the cone and all over your hands (or more likely your child’s) could become a thing of the past or at least be reduced thanks to bacteria.
Reported widely in the press (the link below is from the English newspaper the Guardian) a group of scientists led by Prof Cait MacPhee of the University of Edinburgh have been studying a protein from the bacteria Bacillus that has water repellent properties.
On closer inspection they saw that the protein can tightly bind things together. Ice cream usually requires a binder such as egg, cellulose or gum to help bind all the components together. So the scientists tried out using this protein as the binder instead and Voilà! You get ice cream in which the components are held tightly together and this helps slow the melting process.
Apparently this could also help against the formation of large ice crystals in the ice cream and could also allow for more fat reduced versions.