Does chocolate ice cream tend to have more salt than strawberry or vanilla?

Question

To the question Why does chocolate ice cream melt faster than others? I wrote an answer that suggests that it's not because of chocolate ice cream's dark color, but instead because of a lower melting point of chocolate ice cream due to more salt.

Salt depresses the melting point which is why it is put on roads and sidewalks in the winter in some cold parts of the world, and why salt is added to the ice water bath when making ice cream.

I'm wondering if there could be some truth to this theory, so I'd like to ask chocolate ice cream tend to have more salt than strawberry or vanilla?

Chris H · Answer

Not at the supermarket I'd buy mine from. I've checked a couple of chocolate and a couple of vanilla ice creams (one cheap and one mid range of each). They all have about 0.1% salt, and most of this will come from the cow's milk (that contains some naturally occurring salt). Only one has salt on the ingredients list. It's a chocolate one but has no more salt in the nutrition information than any of the others - probably because there's less milk in that one.

This is in the UK, and you may not be, so I suggest you check the brands available to you. I wouldn't be at all surprised if American ice cream, for example, was more likely to have added salt

Does chocolate ice cream tend to have more salt than strawberry or vanilla?

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