No matter whether the recipe is lowfat or not, people have always hungered for sweet treats like ice cream. No one can say for certain where ice cream started. Some ice cream historians say that as early as A.D. 54, the Roman Emperor Nero Claudius Caesar would send his slaves to the mountaintops to gather snow. The slaves would then hurry back down to the city before the snow melted and mix the snow with juice, honey, or wine. These sweet ices were savored only by Nero and the ruling class, who hoarded this delicacy from the masses.

It seems that ice cream continued to be a privilege of the elite for centuries due to the difficulty in obtaining both ice and sugar. In 1271, the famous explorer Marco Polo traveled to China, where he discovered desserts made of milk and ice, similar to the sherbets of today. He recorded the recipes in his journal and brought them back to his homeland of Italy, where they continued to be served only to the wealthy. Stories say that the Italian Catherine de Medici brought ice cream to France when she married Henry II in 1553. And ice cream appeared regularly at the table of England's Charles I during the 1600s

Not long thereafter, ice cream reached the New World. Historical records show that ice cream was served to a guest of Maryland's governor in the year 1700. In 1777, an advertisement appeared in the New York Gazette announcing that a New York confections shop would be serving ice cream "almost every day." During the summer of 1790, President George Washington spent $200 on his ice cream.

Nancy Johnson helped relieve people's arm muscles somewhat by inventing the hand-cranked ice cream freezer in 1846. Her invention, which is still in use, features a crank that turns a paddle inside the pail so that the ice cream mix is stirred evenly while it freezes.

Once ice cream had become a bit easier to make, people began getting more creative with flavors. During the 1800s, ice cream was primarily chocolate or fruit flavored. Other early experiments led to concoctions such as root beer and ginger-flavored ice creams.

By the early 1900s, ice cream was no longer made by hand. Thanks to steam power and electricity, ice cream began to be produced — and eaten — in mass quantities. Today, Americans are by far the greatest consumers of the sweet treat, rivaled only by New Zealand. On average, Americans eat 5.7 gallons of ice cream every year.

Of course, new ice cream flavors are being developed all the time. Riverdeep spoke with John Shaffer, a flavor developer at Ben & Jerry's in Waterbury, Vermont.