Chubby Bunny

Ovaltine, revisited.

After watching Food Network this weekend, I have learned that malted milk, like Horlicks, has a lot of calcium. On serving, when prepared with milk, gives me 88% of the calcium I need on a daily basis. That’s 880 mg, more or less.

So I did a little more research and the big three drink mixes with much fortification are: Nestle’s Milo, Ovaltine and Horlicks.

I went to a supermarket on my way home today, craving something different in my milk. Initially, I wanted Horlicks, since the calcium is insane. This is not surprising, because ingredients are dried whey, and a lot of other desiccated milk products.

But they only had two jars left.
And they were sticky.

To make matters worse, it was hard to compare Milo, Ovaltine and Horlicks, since the nutrition facts were listed in the European/Asian style– just a huge list based on a standard of 100 g. Let me tell you, 100 g is not necessarily a serving size, but that’s how they do it for all food products outside of the US from my understanding. (Also, this made it difficult to know how many calories I was eating in Bucaneve, Abbracci and other foods in Italy.

I ultimately decided to shell out $1.75 for 200 g of Ovaltine.

I was skeptical for a while, because I did not like Ovaltine as a kid. But after reading about how it’s actually good for you, I decided to give it a try. And it’s also very popular in Asian countries. As Ian pointed out to me, he was practically raised on this stuff.

It needs some warm/hot water to dissolve completely (and quickly.) Then you add hot or cold milk. It’s pretty good– I like it more than chocolate syrup or hot chocolate, surprisingly. It’s got some bitterness to it, which is something I look for in chocolate and chocolate desserts or drinks.

So yay, I’ve overcome my dislike for Ovaltine and now it’s something I look forward to having.

If only Asian packaging (I think this was packaged for the Philippines or somewhere South Eastern Pacific) were easier to read though.