This South Korean Ice Cream Is Meant To Cure Hangovers
A night of overindulging in adult beverages with friends can lead to a morning of regret, coping with a pounding headache, cottonmouth, the overwhelming need to hurl, and an overall sense of yuckiness simply from drinking too much alcohol. Welcome to the dreaded hangover and the fun that wreaks havoc over your mind and body. Translation: A hangover is anything but fun. But hangovers are also nothing new. They have been around as long as people have been drinking, and there are plenty of homemade hangover remedies you can try in order to take the edge off.
Per Healthline, 11% of drinkers say that have tried hair of the dog, which is just a fun way of saying they drink more alcohol to get rid of a hangover. Others try knocking back Gatorade or Pedialyte (via Yahoo), and still others settle for taking a couple of teaspoons of olive oil before they even start drinking (via Hangover Cure). Well, South Korea is throwing another resource for curing your hangover into the mix, and if you don't currently have a hangover and queasy stomach, it sounds delightful. Per Atlas Obscura, the country definitely has its own DIY hangover cures that include soups and jellies, but nothing quite compares to the frozen ice cream treat called Gyeondyo-bar.
It's grapefruit flavored
Atlas Obscura explains that the Gyeondyo-bar is a grapefruit-flavored ice cream on a stick marketed as a hangover cure. Its name translates in English to the "hang-in-there" bar. What's in this ice pop that can ease your head-splitting hangover? Once you get past its hot pink color, you will find that the Gyeondyo-bar contains juice of the Oriental raisin tree fruit, which is the magical, silver bullet ingredient that Koreans have been using since the 17th century to help aid with the aftershock of this drinking nuisance, per ABC News.
But on to the $120 million question, which also happens to be the amount people in South Korea spend on hangover cures: Does it work? Dr. Lee Byeong Sam, who works at the KyungHee Korean Medical Clinic in Seoul, told ABC News, "Mixing such ingredients with cold ice cream could be an effective way to lower body temperature for people whose body temperature has risen from drinking. But, it is not recommended for people with naturally low body temperatures." Still, the Gyeondyo-bar does sound way better than the dried bull penis Sicilians are said to recommend or the tomato juice and pickled sheep's eyes that Mongolians swear by, according to Scientific American.