Ice Cream Invented to Cure Hangovers

24 May 2016 --- A South Korean ice cream claims to be the first ice cream hangover cure.

In South Korea, Asia’s largest per capita consumers of alcohol, the hangover cure industry is worth $125 million per year, with pills, cosmetic products to hide the effects of a night of boozing, as well as stomach-calming foods like hangover soup.

Now, a South Korean convenience store chain has introduced a hangover-curing ice cream bar.

The Gyeondyo-bar is a grapefruit flavored ice cream bar with a small amount (0.7%) of oriental raisin tree fruit juice. The raisin juice is the active ingredient, and has been considered a Korean hangover treatment since the 1600s, when it was listed in a medical book as a way to smooth away hangovers. More recent science also confirms this: A study from 2012 in The Journal of Neuroscience found that raisin tree extract could reduce effects of intoxication in rats.

The Gyeondyo-bar’s name translates to “hang in there,” which “expresses the hardships of employees who have to suffer a working day after heavy drinking, as well as to provide comfort to those who have to come to work early after frequent nights of drinking,” the convenience store chain Withme FS, which is releasing the bar, said in a press release.

South Koreans drank 12.3 liters of alcohol a year, leading to nearly $8 billion in lost productivity, medical costs, and early deaths in 2013 according to a study by South Korea's National Health Insurance Policy Institute.