Backstory: Ice cream by the numbers

July is National Ice Cream Month – it's also just an excuse to delve into the sweet details of everyone's year-round favorite indulgence.

98 percent of American households buy ice cream at least once a year.

$21.4 billion worth of ice cream and frozen desserts were licked, scooped, and gobbled up by Americans in 2004.

1.6 billion gallons of ice cream and frozen desserts were produced in the US in 2004.

9 percent of total US milk production went to making frozen dairy products in 2005.

1. Vanilla, 29%

2. Chocolate, 8.9%

3. Butter Pecan, 5.3%

4. Strawberry, 5.3%

5. Neopolitan, 4.2%

21 seconds: Average length of an ice cream brain freeze, which typically strikes 12.5 seconds after eating ice cream too quickly.

In England, bacon and egg ice cream was a key reason Restaurant magazine dubbed The Fat Duck – with a menu full of quirky items – the "World's Best Restaurant" in 2005.

Brazil's ice cream parlors often sell "by the kilo." This self-serve system lets buyers pack any flavor they want into small cups or hugebuckets to take home.

Madagascar produces 80 percent of the vanilla used to flavor ice cream in the US.

Mexico's creameries jazz up ice cream with the same spices that give all Mexican food its pizazz: chili, tamarind, and lime.

In China, dairy scarcely registered in anyone's diet 10 years ago, but it's now a status symbol. Häagen-Dazs, for example, is a big date destination for wealthy college students, who'll plop down $30 for an "ice cream hot pot" – a platter of different flavors dipped in a heated pot of chocolate fondue.

Venezuela's Heladería Coromoto ice cream parlor boasts more than 830 flavors – among them, tuna, chili, and rose petal.

In Israel, if you run into someone twice on the street by accident, it's customary to say "Pa'am shlishit glida" – "Third time ice cream," meaning if there's a third random run-in you will just have to sit for sundaes.

4.55 miles: Length of the longest banana split, which ran down Market Street, Selinsgrove, Pa. on April 30, 1988. The 24,000 bananas, 2,500 gallons of ice cream, 600 pounds of chopped nuts, and 24,000 cherries amounted to 12.9 million calories.

8,959 pounds: Weight of the largest ice cream cake (7 feet tall and 53 feet long), served by Baskin Robbins in Dubai, United Arab Emirates on July 14, 1999.

9.3 ounces: The most ice cream eaten in 30 seconds, set by American Diego Siu, in Orlando, Fla. on March 2, 2003. He used a teaspoon.

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