Aliens And Strawberry Ice Cream

Aliens And Strawberry Ice Cream

Well, who doesn’t like strawberry Ice Cream?

I came a cross a story recently in which aliens are reported to be very fond of strawberry ice cream. It got me curious, are they? Where does the story come from?

Despite second hand, anecdotal claims of encounters involving strawberry ice cream going back as far as Roswell, I can find no evidence of any such claim being made prior to the airing of “UFO Cover-Up Live” from 1988, where James Oberg tells Mike Ferrell (B. J. Hunnicutt from Mash) that the way to get rid of aliens is to buy up all the strawberry ice cream.

Skip ahead to 1:20:48 for the comment by James Oberg

Where does Oberg get this reference? I am unable to determine a date for this video but listen closely.

I’m not certain which is the chicken and which the egg here, but go back and listen again. This man is making an analogy. He is NOT claiming anything about aliens or strawberry ice cream. Now, there will be people who claim there are stories that go back to Roswell, but none of those stories are being told until AFTER the airing of the 1988 UFO Cover-Up episode. Go ahead and do a search for Roswell and Strawberry Ice Cream, I’ll wait.

Did you find more references to Ice Cream parlors in Roswell, Georgia than anything to do with aliens just like I did?

One of the things I find useful in looking at a story like this is to find the first reference. The first thing that popped into my mind was the freeze dried ice cream that became popular for a brief period back in the late 1960’s and early 70’s for some unknowable reason. Despite advertising claims, even the astronauts didn’t  like it. But it seemed a possibility that here could be a source for the alien ice cream rumor.

Freeze-dried ice cream is ice cream that has had most of the water removed from it by a freeze-drying process, sealed in a pouch, and requires no refrigeration.

It is also known as astronaut ice cream or space ice cream, typically a slab of ready-to-eat dehydrated ice cream. Compared to regular ice cream, it can be kept at room temperature without melting and is more brittle and rigid but still soft when bitten into. It was developed by Whirlpool Corporation under contract to NASA for the Apollo missions. Freeze-dried foods were developed so that foods could be sent on long-duration spaceflights, as to the Moon, and to reduce the weight of the water and oxygen normally found in food.

Apollo 7 in 1968 was the first and only NASA mission on which freeze-dried ice cream flew in space. It was developed by U.S. Army Natick Laboratories, consisting of “coconut fat, milk solids, and sugar. The ice cream was homogenized, frozen, then freeze-dried, ground and compressed into cubes under high pressure. The cubes were then coated with an edible gelatin coating to prevent crumbs”. This was the ice cream flown on Apollo 7, which can differ from modern space ice cream. It was found to be impractical for space flight because of the tendency to crumble and create crumbs which can be dangerous to humans and equipment in a microgravity environment. Despite the modern images of space walking astronauts in shuttle era space suits, freeze dried ice cream was not included on any subsequent Apollo, Skylab, shuttle or International Space Station missions. According to one NASA food scientist, although freeze-dried ice cream was developed on request, “it wasn’t that popular.”

Alas, even researching that, I could find no reference to aliens and ice cream prior to 1988. So I am going to call that the source of the rumor, and assume people are widely influenced by what they hear and will fit it into any unsubstantiated lore they can in order to give details that might lend credibility.

I will be happy to investigate any reference anyone has that might shed more light on this or prove me wrong. Send that along to me:

[email protected]

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Stay tuned for Next Week’s episode, “Does Bigfoot Eat Avocados?”

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Henry Paterson
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