Does eating ice cream fast give you brain freeze?
Ice cream evoked headaches (ICE-H) study: randomised trial of accelerated versus cautious ice cream eating regimen
A 13-year-old and her dad ran a proper trial showing that gobbling ice cream doubles your chance of brain freeze.
Maya Kaczorowski, a grade 8 student, and her father randomly assigned 145 classmates to eat 100 ml of ice cream either in under 5 seconds or slowly over more than 30 seconds. They did it in winter, to test the idea that brain freeze only happens in hot weather.
Speedy eaters got ice cream headaches about twice as often (27% versus 13%), and most headaches were over in under ten seconds. The study was funded by “an unrestricted grant from mum and dad”, which is the best funding statement ever printed.
Mum was right. Slow down.