
Horlicks, a drink Brits go to bed with and Indians wake up with - sonabinu
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-39448013
======
rayiner
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 are drinking a high-calorie product
because it is marketed as being good for you. Kids in the U.K. (and, as
development happens across the subcontinent, increasingly kids in India and
Bangladesh too) really don't need to be drinking milk fortified with wheat and
barley - either for breakfast or before bed.

~~~
deepGem
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 milk that has a similar taste to breast milk, but it's bananas.

We also get bombarded with ads "If kids need to get sufficient calcium and
Vitamin D, they need to drink cow's milk". I'm not sure how valid this
argument this is.

~~~
andy_boot
It is true that milk is a good source of vitamin D and calcium. It helps
prevent things like Rickets which was why it was mandatory in schools when I
was young.

It is also one of the few non-sugary examples of a kids drink so I'm quite
keen on it.

I liked it when I was young.

~~~
oh_sigh
Milk has ~26g sugar per 16oz serving. It is about 33% less sugar than an
equivalent coke, but that doesn't mean it is non-sugary or anywhere close
(unless you meant non-sugary in terms of it doesn't taste very sweet,
regardless of actual sugar content)

~~~
Blaiz0r
The sugar is Lactose though not sucrose, it's a massively important
distinction

------
hprotagonist
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.

~~~
smacktoward
Not even a drink, but: reading _The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe_ as a
child led me down a similar path with regard to Turkish Delight.

~~~
smcl
That's such a common one! It's even worse that there's a chocolate bar in the
UK called "Turkish Delight" which is nothing like the proper "Lokum". It's not
very pleasant :)

~~~
OJFord
Turkish delight (not Cadbury's chocolate bar) is delicious.

The chocolate bar is just crap mass-produced Turkish delight wrapped in
chocolate. I agree it's not very pleasant, but I don't know what else one
could expect.

~~~
smacktoward
It's not that real-world Turkish delight is _bad_ , per se, so much as that
Lewis makes it sound so life-changingly _incredible_ that the real-world
version is bound to disappoint by comparison.

~~~
manarth
On the one hand, it was mind-numbingly delicious because of the White Witch's
magic making it incredibly addictive, rather than simply the virtue of being
Turkish delight.

But why the choice of Turkish delight? A combination of status-signalling and
unavailability [1] (post-WW2 sugar-rationing was still in effect when the book
was written).

[1] [http://www.tor.com/2016/08/08/why-was-turkish-delight-the-
ul...](http://www.tor.com/2016/08/08/why-was-turkish-delight-the-ultimate-
temptation-in-c-s-lewis-narnia/)

------
dluan
Great article - the drink backstory is just a good segue into the discussion
about globalization and how it's changing with China and India.

> "In fact, many of the areas that will generate the most growth in future are
> currently unfamiliar in the West, according to management consultancy
> McKinsey."

Given that more and more of the co's in YC's recent batches are exclusively
India focused, I am definitely on board with the next big unicorn being born
in India and China right now.

------
cossatot
"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 was, sort of, so we went to the little store to get some coffee and any
other nonperishables.

At the market, they had never heard of coffee. But they had Redbull, so we got
that instead.

~~~
peteretep
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 needs to be the only caffeine source or
needs to have fashionable connotations. Red Bull tastes like candy, and has
universal appeal.

~~~
halestock
That coffee is an acquired taste only because of its caffeine content sounds
pretty specious to me. Do you have a source for that claim? I'm willing to bet
you could still come to appreciate the taste of coffee only drinking decaf.

~~~
peteretep

        > Do you have a source for that claim
    

No. :-)

I am going off the basis that people come to enjoy the taste of specific
brands of cigarettes they smoke a lot, as a result of nicotine addiction. I
also don't have a source for that, but when I read it ... somewhere ... it was
presented as well-sourced.

    
    
        > I'm willing to bet you could
        > still come to appreciate the
        > taste of coffee only drinking
        > decaf
    

Perhaps. I'd be just as willing to bet that most people _don 't_ because they
never drink enough of it to get to that point, on account of it not having
psychoactive chemicals in it.

------
robert_tweed
Some random facts I learned about Horlicks recently, totally unrelated to the
article:

\- Horlicks is a form of gruel, but they don't use the term in their marketing
because of the negative connotations from Dickens.

\- Horlicks was supposedly invented to make milk easier to digest for the
lactose intolerant. I have no idea if there is a sound scientific basis for
that, but the fact it's no longer marketed that way suggests not.

Also, the uses mentioned in TFA both make sense. Horlicks is just milk with
added malt, both of which are full of calories (good in the morning[1]) and
caffeine free (good in the evening). Milk also contains small amounts of
melatonin and tryptophan, both of which promote sleep, but the amounts are so
small the effect is negligible.

[1] There seems to be some evidence that a high carbohydrate breakfast is not
a good thing at all, so don't take this as a recommendation.

Edit: typo

------
fcbrooklyn
When I read the title, my first thought was "Indians wake up and drink a pint
of beer?"

~~~
dTal
I guessed hot chocolate. Not too bad! But the real answer is even more
interesting.

The title has changed now, to remove the "clickbait" I guess. Bit of a shame,
I enjoyed the guessing game...

------
maverick_iceman
Huh, I always assumed Horlicks (and Complan) were health drinks. Because of
the pervasive advertising I didn't even question this claim. Now I feel pretty
stupid.

~~~
praneshp
I'm a Complan boy!

My mother, to this day, insists that the reason I'm slightly taller than my
parents and my sister is not, is having Complan as a kid.

------
gideonparanoid
In the UK, from my experience, the drink is usually associated with more
elderly people (my grandparents & older uncle are the only people who drink
it), interesting to see it here aimed more for children.

~~~
arethuza
I was definitely fed it by my parents when I was a kid in the 1970s - pretty
sure the marketing targeted kids (or more likely targeted parents to feed it
to their kids).

Ovaltine used to have a radio kids club - though that was before my time...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovaltineys](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovaltineys)

 _" At games and sports we're more than keen, Mo merrier children could be
seen, Because we all drink Ovaltine,"_

------
sealjam
There is an extremely similar drink in the UK (and probably elsewhere) called
Ovaltine which is marketed as an energy drink.

I always thought it was odd that two such similar drinks were marketed in such
contrary ways. Horlicks to make your sleep and Ovaltine to give you energy.
Perhaps that was the point at which I realised marketeers weren't always
scientific in their advice :(

~~~
JauntTrooper
Interesting, Ovaltine is marketed as an energy drink in the U.K.?

Growing up in the US in the 1990s it was marketed as chocolate milk with
vitamins (so therefore good for your kids).

~~~
sealjam
Had to double check but seems so!

(link to image of ovaltine jar) [https://www.catchthedeal.com.au/wp-
content/uploads/2017/02/2...](https://www.catchthedeal.com.au/wp-
content/uploads/2017/02/2-x-Ovaltine-energy-drink-300x300.jpg)

~~~
lumisota
This appears to be an Australian version.

UK: [http://www.ovaltine.co.uk/media/22661/ovaltine-original-
addm...](http://www.ovaltine.co.uk/media/22661/ovaltine-original-addmilk-
product-small.png)

~~~
sealjam
There was similar marketing in the UK too.

[http://www.just-drinks.com/news/ovaltine-reinvents-itself-
wi...](http://www.just-drinks.com/news/ovaltine-reinvents-itself-with-energy-
tag_id77071.aspx)

------
_delirium
The article doesn't mention this, but some relevant backstory for the quasi-
medical claims is that Horlicks originated in the US in the late 19th century,
at the height of the "patent medicine" craze. The same one that gave us Coca
Cola, along with various other less remembered quack cures. The company was
started in Chicago in the 1870s by two brothers who had immigrated from
England. One of them moved back to the UK about 20 years later, where he began
importing the product, and later opened a UK subsidiary (the 1906 date the
company quotes in UK marketing is the opening date of the UK subsidiary's
first factory). It subsequently lost market share in the US, disappearing
entirely by the 1930s, so is now hardly remembered by any Americans still
alive. But it found more enduring success in the UK, which also spread it to
its colonies.

------
golemotron
> The fact that the same liquid can be perceived in two such different ways is
> a great example of the "crazy nonsense and beauty of marketing", says Andrew
> Welch.

The third way is to recognize that it is essentially milk, and milk has been
consumed both before bed and upon waking millennia before modern marketing.

------
larrysalibra
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.

~~~
KSS42
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.

------
slurry
The occult writer Arthur Edward Waite - of Rider-Waite-Smith tarot fame - used
to work for Horlick's, a fact for which he was much mocked by Aleister
Crowley.

~~~
d-crane
That's interesting! As a former occult-type guy this was news to me. I can
definitely see AC ribbing Waite over this endlessly.

------
cs02rm0
Strikes an odd chime when an article appears about marketing differences in a
brand I'd managed to completely forget about despite having been one of those
in the UK who'd enjoyed it before bed. I'm not sure I've heard it mentioned in
20 years.

Seems to me they could do with more marketing, any marketing.

------
torrent-of-ions
It is pretty odd that a drink of concentrated simple carbohydrates/sugar would
be taken before going to bed.

~~~
draw_down
In my experience ingesting calories before bed is never a wise idea, but
especially so if milk is involved.

~~~
pasquinelli
What happens, in your experience?

------
vacri
This dichotomy reminds me of scones/biscuits. Here in Australia (and UK/NZ),
scones are dainty things associated with middle-aged women and afternoon tea.
In the US south, biscuits (same thing) are manly things to eat with a hearty
breakfast.

~~~
rodgerd
> scones are dainty things associated with middle-aged women

Nothing dainty about what happens when you put scones, cream, and jam in front
of a bunch of kids.

------
BoorishBears
In Ghana it's linked to sleep

------
markdown
Never heard of Horlicks, but we have Milo and Ovaltine in Fiji that seem to be
similar.

------
sidcool
Isn't this lying then? They call it innovative marketing.

------
zem
interesting. as an indian growing up in the 70s/80s, i had horlicks as a
teatime drink when it was cold outside.

