Claim: The Keto-Chillicino Mocha is a good kickstarter for the morning, (also Fact Check: Metformin is based on a natural remedy.)
Keto-Chillicino Mocha
The Keto-Chillicino Mocha is a great kick-starter for the morning; it is not only linguistically interesting because it contains all four variations on the ‘c/k’ phoneme in English (that is, K, Ch pronounced ch, C pronounced ch, and Ch pronounced K) but also because it’s sugar free and startlingly tasty. (You might notice ç pronounced ‘s’ is missing, and so is sugar).
Metformin and the French lilac
To be honest, I found out recently that my sugar levels were on average too high and the Doctor prescribed Metformin. Being now completely obsessed with fact checking medical treatments after the past four year Covid debacle, I looked up Metformin.
Metformin is an interesting drug, which came out of research on a plant used in 18th-19th century folk medicine as a treatment for diabetes, the lovely plant French lilac, or goat's rue (Galega officinalis) pictured below. Basically Metformin was created in the 1920s by scientists looking at synthesising compounds similar to the active ingredient in the plant, but it was only in the 1950s, when Jean Sterne (1909–1997) started looking at which compound had the least side effects: that is how they discovered that Metformin was a safe and effective treatment for diabetes.
This free Springer article1 contains a good summary of the history of Metformin, and it has blood sugar lowering properties and also seems to have anti-viral properties. This is the French Lilac plant, upon which Metformin is based:
Keto-Chillicino Mocha recipe
Well the Keto diet means you avoid sugar and carbohydrates, essentially, but there are some unexpected ingredients that you can still eat:
Ingredients.
Coffee (2 shots)
Cocoa powder (2 teaspoons)
Chilli flakes
Cream (about 50mls)
Coconut milk (a tablespoon) (optional - )
Procedure
What is linguistically particularly interesting here, and quite neat and tidy really, is the fact that all the ingredients start with the letter “C”. This neatness makes it a much better drink, in fact, for anyone who might be slightly autistic, or obsessive compulsive, in personality.
You also need a proper Capuccino coffee maker machine.
First you make the 2 shots of coffee.
Then you add the cocoa powder. Add more to taste.
Add the coconut milk and stir it in (note that Coconut milk is about 10% carbohydrate, it is mostly fat like cream.)
Then stir in some Chilli flakes.
Then froth up the cream for the top: and believe it or not, you can use the cappuccino wand to froth up cream as well as milk, it just takes a little longer and you don’t get quite as much. But for taste you don’t need as much cream anyway, as milk, for cream is both more concentrated and more tasty.
And the thing about cream is that it contains very little lactose, so it’s perfectly safe for a carbohydrate-free diet.
You might want to top it off with a few more Chilli flakes (as pictured above), or sprinkle chocolate, or even simply make a happy face with the cream at the end.
My happy face is not much good unfortunately, it looks a bit Chagallish, the only advantage of which is that Chagall also starts with the letter C.
Bailey, C.J. Metformin: historical overview. Diabetologia 60, 1566–1576 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00125-017-4318-z
Cream is actually devine and not , just “ tasty “. 😇