One in five of the vanilla ice creams examined by Which? contained none of the three ingredients consumers might reasonably expect to find in them, the watchdog reported.

Just half of the 24 ice creams in the survey contained all three ingredients traditionally included, with the remaining 12 containing either some or none.Of the five products containing no vanilla, cream or fresh milk, four were supermarket own brand products – Soft Scoop Vanilla Ice Cream from Asda, Morrisons and Tesco, and Ms Molly’s, exclusively sold at Tesco – and one was the branded Wall’s Soft Scoop Vanilla Ice Cream.

Vanilla ice cream is traditionally made from fresh milk, cream, egg yolks, sugar and vanilla, which are frozen and aerated to produce the final product.

However, Which? found a number of the products in its survey substituted cream and milk with partially reconstituted dried skimmed milk and in some cases whey protein, while vanilla was often replaced with a general flavouring.

Extra non-dairy ingredients in some of the ice creams included palm oil, coconut oil, palm kernel oil, and water.

A product labelled ice cream in the UK had to contain at least five per cent dairy fat and 2.5 per cent milk protein until 2015, when the introduction of the Food Information Regulations meant the rules no longer applied.The removal of the criteria was to enable more flexibility with reformulation and product innovation, and has allowed for vegan products and reduced fat options to be sold as ice cream.

Which? said the changes had allowed for new products to suit a broader range of tastes but had also allowed for cheaper ingredients to replace those used in traditional recipes.

Currently only products labelled as dairy ice cream must contain at least five per cent dairy fat, some protein from a dairy source and no vegetable fats.Which? said: “Shoppers may be surprised to find out that the vanilla ice creams available to buy in supermarkets can vary wildly in terms of the ingredients they contain.

“For those looking for a more authentic ice cream or trying to avoid controversial ingredients such as palm oil, our advice is to check the ingredients list, and look for these three key ingredients – natural vanilla, dairy cream, and fresh milk.”

When you can’t be bothered to spend ages in the kitchen making yourself dinner, reheating some leftovers that you’ve been keeping in the fridge may seem like a logical thing to do.

However, if the leftovers that you’ve been storing in the fridge are made from rice, then reheating them in the microwave may not be a wise course of action.

It’s commonly believed that reheating rice can be detrimental for your health, as it can lead to a bout of food poisoning.However, has this claim been verified, or is it a culinary myth?

According to the NHS, rice can be reheated after it’s been cooked, but only during a short window of time.

The NHS states that rice should be eaten promptly after it’s been cooked.

However, if you’re not able to eat your rice right away, you should make sure that it cools down within the space of an hour.Once rice that’s been cooked has been kept in the fridge, the NHS then recommends not waiting longer than a day before reheating it.

It also advises never reheating rice more than once, and making sure that the rice is steaming hot all the way through before consumption.

If you do experience food poisoning following the consumption of reheated rice, then this is likely to have been caused by the presence of the bacterium Bacillus cereus.Bacillus cereus is a bacterium that’s often found in soil and various types of food, including rice.

Cooking rice doesn’t necessarily kill the bacterium, so when rice is then left to cool at room temperature, the Bacillus cereus can then multiply and become harmful if consumed.

If you become ill after eating reheated rice, symptoms will usually start to appear after a period of one to five hours.

These symptoms may include nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea and will usually last for around a day.