Almost everyone loves a refreshing bowl of ice cream on a hot day, but not every part of the United States loves ice cream equally. While many of us wouldn’t turn down a scoop of ice cream, some states eat far more ice cream than others.

The ice cream industry is a giant in the United States — it’s worth $10.6 billion. With 126,462 people employed in the industry as of 2021, America clearly enjoys the frozen treat. American consumers scoop ice cream by the pound — the average American scarfs down 20 pounds of ice cream each year. 

But which states are on the high end of that average, and which aren’t as ice cream-centric as the rest? It turns out, the states that eat the most and least ice cream are pretty geographically far from each other, which might explain the differences in how often they eat this frozen treat.