For generations, people in Central Asia have sworn by the supposed health benefits of mare’s milk.
Now researchers in Poland believe it should even be used in ice cream.
Because this sweet treat not only tastes delicious, it can also be good for your intestines.
They developed four different types of ice cream and discovered that the ice creams with fermented horse milk had a good probiotic effect. They helped prevent harmful bacteria from settling in the intestines.
When these proteins are digested, they have antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory effects.
By developing four separate ice creams, they found that the ice creams containing fermented mare’s milk were good probiotic treatments, helping to prevent harmful bacteria from establishing themselves in the gut
In the study, scientists from the West Pomeranian University of Technology in Szczecin developed four types of ice cream based on horse milk.
The first contained yoghurt bacteria, the second yoghurt bacteria and the probiotic inulin.
A third included the bacterium lacticaseibacillus rhamnosus and the fourth the bacterium lactiplantibacillus.
The mare’s milk was first pasteurised at 65 degrees Celsius (comparable to cow’s milk) for half an hour before 60 samples of the ice cream were prepared.
When they tested the products a day later, they found that “all samples did not differ significantly in the values of exceedance and melting rate.”
There was no difference in the amount of protein and fat between the ice creams tested.
The “creamy white” color of all samples was also “natural and attractive,” the researchers said.
The texture was also rated as ‘soft, quite creamy and slightly coarse’, with a ‘pleasant and creamy taste’.
Only one sample – which contained inulin and the bacterium lactiplantibacillus plantarum – had a ‘noticeably more sour taste than other samples’.
Writing in the diary PLoS ONEaccording to the scientists: ‘Horse milk is a good environment for probiotics.
‘It could have to do with high lactose content, which is a substrate for probiotic bacteria.’
While acknowledging that ‘the literature on horse milk ice cream is very limited’, they added: ‘Horse milk can be considered as a useful raw material for the production of frozen yoghurt and synbiotic ice cream.’
Separate research into horse milk has long shown that it can be used to treat tuberculosis, stomach ulcers and even chronic hepatitis.
In the UK, more and more people are choosing plant-based alternatives and no longer switching to cow’s milk.
In recent years, the number of allergy-related diseases in children has increased. The World Health Organization predicts that half of the world’s population will suffer from allergies by 2025.
The latest government figures show that around 2.4 million adults in the UK are living with a food allergy, with hospital admissions for serious reactions having more than tripled in the past 20 years.
The number of allergies in children is increasing, including in children who cannot drink cow’s milk.
However, children who reacted severely to cow’s milk could drink mare’s milk as a substitute.