Cafe launches camel milk cappuccinos to raise money for female traders in Kenya
It contains 10 times more iron and three times more vitamin C than cow’s milk
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Your support makes all the difference.A Scottish café is selling camel milk cappuccinos in aid of a project helping Kenyan traders.
From lactose-free to soy, almond and even pea, we now have a huge array of milk options available to us but the selection of non-dairy milk products doesn’t stop there.
Today, a Glasgow-based café is adding a new drink to its menu – one made using camel milk.
The Willow Tea Rooms has launched the aptly named "camelccinos" as part of an initiative that is helping camel milk traders in Kenya.
The drink costs £2.40 and 10 per cent of the profits will be donated to the project.
Mercy Corps, based in Edinburgh, launched the scheme to enable 141 female camel milk traders near Wajir, in the northeast of Kenya, to boost the shelf life of their product.
So far, the workers have been given solar-powered milk coolers, refrigerated transport and vending machines to help preserve the milk in the average 40C heat – temperatures which previously led to around a quarter of the milk spoiling.
The project is being funded by the UK government’s Department for International Development (DfID).
Mercy Corps executive director Simon O’Connell said: “We are delighted to be partnering with DfID to bring you camelccinos for the first time ever in Scotland.
“We hope this fun initiative will help highlight the importance of supporting communities on the front lines of climate change to find ways to adapt and improve their livelihoods.”
Willow Tea Rooms owner Anne Mulhern said the novel drinks have proved popular in tests and will be on offer at the cafe throughout June.
“We’ve road-tested it and our customers loved it. Camel milk cappuccinos could become a permanent feature on our menus,” Mulhern said.
Camel milk is popular across Africa and the Middle East and is hailed by scientists as the closest alternative to human breast milk, containing 10 times more iron and three times more vitamin C than cow’s milk.
A recent study even found that camel milk could be used to reduce inflammation in people with type 2 diabetes.
Cardiff Metropolitan University scientists explored the health benefits of the milk and found that lipids (blood fats) in the drink were able to prevent macrophages – the primary mediators of inflammation – developing in abdominal fat.
People with type 2 diabetes who have inflamed abdominal fat located around the waist face an increased risk of complications including heart disease and stroke, and macrophages play a significant part in the progression of this inflammation.
The findings have been published online in Functional Foods in Health & Disease.
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