The Italian love affair with ice cream has moved into the home, a report by the Italian Ice-cream Institute (IGI) said on Tuesday.
Although licking a cone while walking through the city streets remains a national pastime, Italians now consume more ice cream at home as snacks or after-dinner treats, averaging four kilogrammes a year of the pre-packaged product, according to the report.
This has increased from 250 grammes a head in the 1950s, when commercially packaged ice cream was first launched in the country.
A total of 3.5 billion portions of tubs, cones and other ice-cream products for home freezers are sold annually, with a turnover of almost two billion euros.
Leading the market are family multipacks with a variety of flavours inside, while mini ice-cream cones now comprise around 5% of all sales, IGI said.
The report also highlighted a recent trend for 'healthy' ice cream, with lines without gluten, lactose, sugar or cholesterol, or enriched with fruit, cereals, vitamin C, calcium and milk enzymes.
Chocolate is the nation's favourite flavour (chosen by 27% of ice cream lovers), followed by hazelnut (20%), lemon (13%) and strawberry (12%).
