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Horlicks, a drink Brits go to bed with and Indians wake up with

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Re: Horlicks, a drink Brits go to bed with and Indians wake up with

#111
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Kids in the U.K. ... really don't need to be drinking milk fortified with wheat and barley. Old attitudes from when food was scarce will pervade for a few years to come until populations come to terms with food security. In times past many food items like Guinness and Lucozade were recommended for health benefits. I suspect they were more of a justification for people to spend money on extra food items because if yo…

I can understand Guinness being recommended (at the time), now Lucozade seems just a modern marketing gimmick

Pints of Guinness were served to blood donors at Pelican house in Dublin and as evidenced by the way the droplet sank ball-bearing-like during this particular very occasional consumer's pre-letting anemia test must have proved a very high source of iron - and apparently to the extent that pregnant women were often recommended a daily dose also. Furthermore another pint the next day rather than a fizzy orange drink was more effective in quelling nauseau caused by its own enthusiastic over-consumption. A veritable panacea therefore.

Re: Horlicks, a drink Brits go to bed with and Indians wake up with

#113
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Kids in the U.K. ... really don't need to be drinking milk fortified with wheat and barley. Old attitudes from when food was scarce will pervade for a few years to come until populations come to terms with food security. In times past many food items like Guinness and Lucozade were recommended for health benefits. I suspect they were more of a justification for people to spend money on extra food items because if yo…

I can understand Guinness being recommended (at the time), now Lucozade seems just a modern marketing gimmick

It's got electrolytes.

Re: Horlicks, a drink Brits go to bed with and Indians wake up with

#114

In Hong Kong, Horlicks is usually on the menu at traditional Hong Kong restaurants along with milk tea, iced tea, coffee/milk tea, Coke & Coke with lemon. It's served through out the day and boy is it tasty.

It's on the menu at Hong Kong style cafes here in Toronto, along with Ovaltine. It is usually included in the meal price, whereas cold drinks are extra money.

Re: Horlicks, a drink Brits go to bed with and Indians wake up with

#116
post #43

Not the same drink at all, but : As a child i read the James Herriot memoirs (all things bright and beautiful, etc..), in which he waxes rhapsodic about the restorative powers and deliciousness of Bovril. I had no idea what it was, so I was free to invent my own idea of what it might taste like, or be, or consist of. When i discovered he was so happy about diluted beef stock, i was more than a little let down.

The bovril name is interesting. It's a mix of Bos (ox) and a super intelligent alien race from science fiction stories. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovril Beef tea isn't to everyone's taste. I wonder how they'd react if given the chevril variant? Also, Bovril is one of the only products to have the Pope in its marketing.

"One of the only" ... sneaky!

Re: Horlicks, a drink Brits go to bed with and Indians wake up with

#117
post #8

We used to drink Horlicks in Bangladesh, where it was - like in India - a breakfast drink. Of course, Horlicks has no special powers to do anything, certainly not any of the things it is marketed as doing. It's a potent example of the insidiousness of marketing: pretty much everywhere in the U.K. and the former British Empire people associate this product with qualities it simply does not possess. Not only that, they…

I feel stupid for all the time we have bought Horlicks for people that are sick and hospitalized in India. I wish they called out marketing in India like they do in the US.

When my dad had a heart issue in 2003, his doctor strictly told him to stay away from Horlicks (whilst saying our regular cup of coffee in the morning was fine. It's a South Indian cup, much much smaller than the American version). But every well-wishing visitor would bring a pack of horlicks, and we had some 25-30 packs lying around in the house.

Still better than one of the nurses who eventually showed up at our house with a bunch of Amway products.

Re: Horlicks, a drink Brits go to bed with and Indians wake up with

#118
post #8

We used to drink Horlicks in Bangladesh, where it was - like in India - a breakfast drink. Of course, Horlicks has no special powers to do anything, certainly not any of the things it is marketed as doing. It's a potent example of the insidiousness of marketing: pretty much everywhere in the U.K. and the former British Empire people associate this product with qualities it simply does not possess. Not only that, they…

I don't think kids in the UK drink Horlicks, except perhaps if they're staying the night at grandma's. '"Horlicks is a brand with a huge heritage," says Steve Davies, its marketing director in the UK. "But the product had quite an ageing profile - the core of our drinkers were over 60 years old - so the market was very slowly declining."' [1] (from 2005) 'Horlicks and Ovaltine tick along, but are generally sold to ol…

I was wondering why Ovaltine seemed to have basically disappeared from shelves during my college years (late 2000s)

Re: Horlicks, a drink Brits go to bed with and Indians wake up with

#119
post #76
post #8

We used to drink Horlicks in Bangladesh, where it was - like in India - a breakfast drink. Of course, Horlicks has no special powers to do anything, certainly not any of the things it is marketed as doing. It's a potent example of the insidiousness of marketing: pretty much everywhere in the U.K. and the former British Empire people associate this product with qualities it simply does not possess. Not only that, they…

Quite honestly, I question the need to drink milk. I think it's another marketing gimmick that pushes parents to feed kids with milk. I'm yet to come across a toddler/kid who actually loves drinking milk. Most of them hate it and that's possibly for a reason. When our daughter was born, we spoke to a lactation consultant who explained how infants wean away from breast milk naturally. She explained that it's not cow's…

> I'm yet to come across a toddler/kid who actually loves drinking milk.

You haven't looked very hard, then. My 2 year old loves milk and requests it so much that we're actively trying to get her to drink less (and more water). All my friends who have kids in the same rough age bracket report that their kids ask for milk, too.

Re: Horlicks, a drink Brits go to bed with and Indians wake up with

#120

"From Germany to the United Arab Emirates to China you can visit the same shops, buy the same furniture, eat the same food, watch the same programmes and listen to the same music." A few years back I was on a geology expedition in western Tibet, and we left the unpopulated valley we'd been in for several weeks and headed a few hours farther west for supplies, where our Dongfeng driver thought there was a town. There…

Red Bull and other Thai energy drinks are popular because they're cheaper than coffee in Thailand. That said, Thai Red Bull is a pretty different beast from what you'll find abroad -- it's thick, sweet, and flat, like cough syrup. When you drink it in the quantity that I do, it's easy to forget coffee tastes terrible, and that we acquire a taste for it over time because caffeine is addictive. To enter new markets, it…

Coffee doesn't taste terrible to me, even as a kid I liked coffee's flavor but more as an ingredient. Pure chocolate is similar. Too much for me but mixed with other things both are delicious. Lots of things in their pure form alone would be considered terrible tasting. Lemons for example few people can eat straight up
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