I have never understood the appeal of Neapolitan ice cream. I never liked it. Neapolitan ice cream is that 3 color ice cream that you frequently see at children’s birthday parties. It’s 1/3 chocolate, 1/3 vanilla, and 1/3 strawberry.  It usually comes in a square or rectangular brick and is sold in nearly every supermarket in the United States. Neapolitan ice cream is one of America’s top selling ice cream products, and it has been that way all my life. But – why do people buy it? It always tastes lousy. The chocolate is usually OK, the vanilla is bland, and nobody likes the strawberry. The strawberry ice cream in Neapolitan usually gets eaten last or not at all. It seems that every time someone opens up a container of Neapolitan ice cream in their freezer, the chocolate and vanilla are gone, but the strawberry is all still there and covered with frost because it’s been in the freezer so long. I think the only reason that people buy Neapolitan ice cream is because it is colorful.

BEAVER URINE. Why don’t people eat the strawberry section of Neapolitan ice cream? Maybe it’s the beaver urine. None of the mass market brands of Neapolitan ice cream are made with real strawberries. The strawberry section of Neapolitan ice cream is usually flavored with beaver urine. Yes – you read that right – beaver urine. To be technical, imitation strawberry ice cream is flavored with castoreum, a chemical produced by beavers to scent mark their territory. It is extracted from beaver urine. Castoreum is used to create a number of different artificial flavors besides strawberry. A lot of raspberry ice cream and sorbet are also made from beaver urine. I wonder how much Neapolitan ice cream they would sell if they had to put on the label ‘flavored with beaver urine.’ I suppose that for most people it wouldn’t make any difference. After all, most people never read ingredients labels.

NATURAL STRAWBERRY FLAVOR. Don’t be fooled by the words ‘natural flavor’ or ‘natural strawberry flavor’ on the ingredients label on Neapolitan ice cream. ‘Natural strawberry flavor’ does not mean the flavor came from strawberries. It means that the flavor came from a natural or organic source, and beaver urine is natural and organic.