As a kid, racing against the clock to eat your ice cream before it melted into a sticky mess over your fingers was kind of exhilarating. Inevitably, most of us lost the battle. As adults, we’ve gotten better at the art of elegant ice cream eating. Well, for the most part, anyway. Sometimes, the blazing mid-summer heat is too much for our vegan gelato. It’s just a fact of life.
But Mars, Incorporated wants to push back on the inevitability of melted ice cream. According to Jasper Sturtewagen, a consultant on strategy and commercialization for food CPG and ingredients, the candy giant has filed a patent for a plant-based ice cream that effectively resists melting for longer periods.
“Plant-based frozen desserts often struggle with a dense, icy texture. Mars fixed this using Urad bean (black gram lentil),” he explained on LinkedIn. The specific proteins and carbohydrates in urad beans help create stable structures that improve texture and slow down melting, allowing the product to retain its shape for up to two hours at room temperature.
Beyond resistance to melting, urad beans also give the ice cream a creamier texture and mouthfeel, too. Plus, their enhanced stability has undeniable benefits for cold-chain logistics.
But is melt-resistant vegan ice cream really what people want?
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Non-melting ice cream: innovation or turn-off?
In theory, sure, less mess is a win. But in reality, if ice cream didn’t respond to heat at all, many consumers might feel something wasn’t quite right.
Just look at the reactions to The Hershey Company’s seemingly new “unmeltable” chocolate. Recently, a viral video showed a TikTok creator holding up a Hershey’s chocolate bar to the camera. It was supposedly melted, but instead of turning into a puddle, it looked kind of rubbery. “Guys, I don’t think chocolate is supposed to look like this… Why is it so elastic-y?” they said.
sheba.xo | TikTok
Some commenters were horrified, while others speculated the chocolate may have simply been tempered. But it’s not an isolated reaction. People have also questioned whether Hershey’s Kisses have changed, noting they also seem slower to melt. “Hershey’s has always been subpar chocolate; now it’s just a brown mess of chemicals with a hint of cocoa in it,” wrote one Redditor.
The company has faced criticism in recent years for reformulating products, with some accusing it of prioritizing cutting costs over cocoa content. Even Brad Reese, the grandson of Reese’s inventor H.B. Reese, has publicly criticized formulation changes, and has accused the brand of “rewriting Reese’s identity.”
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The backlash underscores a simple truth: people expect chocolate to look and behave like chocolate. And they likely feel the same about ice cream. At a time when concerns about ultra-processed foods are rising, unfamiliar textures or unexpected performance can quickly trigger skepticism. And to be frank, plant-based products, whether fair or not, often bear the brunt of that scrutiny.
So, will melt-resistant vegan ice cream from Mars miss the mark? Possibly, but only time will tell. However, it’s worth emphasizing that the key ingredient here is urad beans, a nutrient-dense, protein-rich legume, not a synthetic additive. If Mars leans into that story, rather than the idea of “ice cream that doesn’t melt,” it could stand a better chance of winning people over.
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Charlotte is a VegNews editor and writer based in sunny Southsea on England's southern coast.
