Do ice cream and cold drinks cool us down?

All over the world summer is synonymous with water activities, cold beverages and, of course, ice cream. While most of us agree ice cream and cold beverages are refreshing summer treats, do they actually help cool us down? To test whether they do, we need to know a bit more about how the body controls temperature in different environments. The process of maintaining an optimal body temperature is called thermoregulation , which involves a delicate balance between producing and losing heat. Humans are warm-blooded or endotherms, which are scientific ways of saying we can control our body temperature independent of the environment. We can do this because our bodies are constantly producing heat as a by-product of internal chemical processes (metabolism). How it all works. Metabolism is necessary to keep our bodies functioning correctly. It includes digestive processes involved in breaking down nutrients in food, the absorption and transportation of those nutrients to the cells, and their conversion into building blocks or energy necessary for physical activity. The heat this generates is beneficial when it's cold, but when outside temperatures rise, we need to avoid overheating. While it may seem logical that introducing something cold, like ice cream, into the stomach should help reduce temperature, its initial cooling effect is rapidly replaced by heat generated by digestive processes needed to break down the nutrients in ice cream. Digesting calorie-rich food leads to an increase in body temperature. So ice cream is not the best option for cooling down, but what about cold beverages?