You might think a video of a Walmart ice cream sandwich baking in the sun on a summer Iowa afternoon and not melting! would provide the kind of viral horror show that gets people to think about what they are eating.
You’d probably be wrong.
Sure, the video is scary enough in a sort of mad food scientist way. More than 5 million YouTube viewers have watched Sioux Falls country radio jock Dan Collins patiently waiting an hour and 15 minutes for the ice cream sandwich to melt before giving up. Consumer Reports put Walmart’s ice cream slab up against four other brands in their video (Nestle melted fastest!) with the Walmart product still intact after an hour on the patio at 100 degrees.
The videos, and the idea of kids eating heat-resistant ice cream, might make us cringe but that doesn’t make it a wake-up call.
And wake-up calls often go to voice mail anyway.
Photos of a 2-year-old McDonald’s Happy Meal looking about as good as it does right out of the bag didn’t slow down the drive-through lane at the ultimate fast-food chain. Stock prices went up after the photos went viral in February. Activists trying to get people to listen to warnings about pesticide residue in conventionally grown produce, chemical ingredients in processed foods and the environmental and health issues of GMOs, might want to think about that Happy Meal, and that ice cream sandwich.
We’re doubting ice cream sandwich sales dropped significantly.
It's summer. Go outside. You can probably hear an ice cream truck down the street.
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