Few can resist a cheeky scoop of ice cream—but in some cases, it might be better to throw the frozen confection away. One imparter of that advice is Akilah McCray (@obviously_akilah), in a TikTok that has amassed 410,400 views.
“Do you know that eating refrozen ice cream that has thawed out can give you food poisoning?” She asks a man off-screen. “Yeah,” he replies. “Yes,” she reinforces, looking meaningfully at the camera.
The clip is accompanied by on-screen text reinforcing this point. “Do NOT eat ice cream that has been thawed and re-frozen,” McCray wrote.
In the video description, McCray seems surprised that this isn’t common knowledge, as she writes: “I thought everyone knew this.”
McCray didn’t immediately respond to the Daily Dot’s request for comment via TikTok comment and email.
Viewers were mostly unbothered
For the most part, commenters didn’t seem too bothered by the revelation. One commenter noted that they were “literally lactose intolerant,” so “was gonna get [sick] anyway.”
Another added that their mother does this everyday, and even microwaves the ice cream for a few seconds.
“I used to eat cookie dough as a kid,” a third added. “I’ll be fine.”
“I figured,” a fourth admitted, “but idc.”
While a fifth didn’t want to hear the truth, writing: “Please leave me alone. I’m already having a bad day.”
Meanwhile, a sixth commenter admitted they regularly ate thawed ice cream. “Thank God nothing happened,” they added.
However, some viewers got confused, leaving it to fellow viewers to provide some clarifications.
“That’s only if you left it out after 2 hours and if you left it out overnight,” one viewer notes. “You’ll be fine if it thaws out a little bit or put it in the microwave.”
While a second pointed out: “She’s not talking about where it gets soft and some is thawed, she’s talking about melted down been sitting out.”
Will eating ice cream once it’s thawed make you sick?
The short answer is yes. In an article in the Conversation, Amreen Bashir, a lecturer in Biomedical Science at Aston University, said that we shouldn’t underestimate the health risks of eating thawed ice cream.
“Ice cream can […] pose a danger after purchase if it has melted and then been refrozen,” he wrote. “This often happens when it is taken from the freezer, left out to thaw, and then returned to the freezer before being taken out again to eat later. Ice cream melts fairly rapidly at room temperature and the milky, sugary, liquid concoction is a perfect petri dish for bacteria like Listeria, essentially the second time you dig into the tub.”
He added: “Your best defense from a brain freeze-stomach ache combo is to avoid leaving the tub out and to put it back in the freezer once you’ve scooped out the amount you want.”
@obviously_akilah I thought everyone knew this 😭 #fyp ♬ original sound – Akilah
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