Goat milk not only makes for great cheese, it has long been recommended to asthmatics and is sometimes described as more easily digested than cow milk.
According to a team of Australia-based scientists, there’s another source that could in ways offer an even healthier alternative to cow milk: the camel.
Camel milk has “more native and tryptic bioactive peptides than cow milk” and is “potentially less allergenic” as it “lacks beta-lactoglobulin”, according to the researchers, whose findings were published by the journal Food Chemistry.
These peptides have antimicrobial and anti-hypertensive properties, according to the team from Edith Cowan University, the University of Sydney, the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Innovations in Peptide and Protein Science, and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.
According to Edith Cowan University, not only is camel milk hypoallergenic, it “could potentially protect the gut from harmful enzymes and create healthier digestion”.
But even if camel milk has unique health benefits, proponents of cow milk need not get the hump: after all, camel milk “showed significant overlap with cow milk” when examined by the researchers.
And the camel only accounts for around 0.4% of global milk supply – the fifth most – with buffalo, sheep and goats making up the top four behind the dominant dairy cow.
And even if other sources of milk “are gaining attention”, in part because of “perceived superior health benefits”, as the researchers put it, cow milk dominates, making up around 80% global production and consumption.
A well-fed healthy cow can churn out over 25l of milk in a day – five times as much as a camel and up to ten times what a goat can provide. – dpa
