Food design studio Bompas & Parr has created luminescent ice cream so cinema-goers can see their snacks in the dark.
To make the ice cream glow, the designers impregnated it with riboflavin – or vitamin B2 – which luminesces under certain wavelengths of light. UV light was shone into the cinema to illuminate the ice cream without impairing the view of the screen.Riboflavin has a bitter taste, but this was masked by the amount of sugar and fat in the mint chocolate-chip ice cream.
The team has since taken the idea further and created a series of dessert sauces that are infused with glowing luciferin enzymes from genetically modified bacteria.
