Eating ice cream isn’t always something you can take your sweet time with, particularly if it’s a blazing hot day. Now — thanks to U of G researchers — there is a way to slow your ice cream’s melting.

The research originally appeared in Science Daily and has been picked up by Huffington Post, CTV News and MSN.

U of G Prof. Douglas Goff and his research team found that cellulose nanofibrils (CNFs) extracted from ground-up banana rachis and mixed into ice cream at varying concentrations caused the ice cream to melt much more slowly than traditional ice cream. They also found that CNFs increased the shelf life of ice cream and gave low-fat ice creams a creamier texture.

A professor in the Department of Food Science at U of G, Goff studies ice cream, food freezing and dairy products.