Ice Cream Could Get Even Better With Fancy Avalanche Research

As every ice cream lover knows, it's best to finish your carton off as soon as possible, before the frost and chewiness kicks in.

Luckily, Nestlé is teaming up with the Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research to figure out how to keep ice cream tasty and smooth. The Switzerland-based insitute has been looking at the size of ice crystals and air bubbles in snow, and Nestlé wants to use this power to figure out what exactly affects ice cream's texture.

The resulting study, published in the journal Soft Matters, found that ice cream gets ickier as ice crystals fuse together. Changes in temperature cause ice cream to melt and re-freeze, forming ice crystals that make ice cream more icy and less delicious.

Further research is necessary to figure out how to fix the problem, but this avalanche technology is a huge step toward figuring out how ice crystals are formed and how to avoid them. In the meantime, keep cleaning out those ice cream bins — just don't get addicted.