Max for Milk - Minimum for Flavour (Ovaltine Max for Milk Strawberry)

Member Name: collingwood21

Product:	Ovaltine Max for Milk Strawberry
Date:	11/03/07 (277 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Added vitamins and minerals, Low in fat

Disadvantages: Added sugar and salt, Artificial flavourings, Tastes horrible, Dissolves poorly

Ovaltine has long been a popular brand in the UK, and I am sure that most people reading this will be familiar with their hot malty beverages. The success of Ovaltine has been based on exploiting the nutritional value of malt combined with eggs to produce what started out as the world’s first nutritional drink; it was initially marketed as a milk fortifier to provide easily prepared and sustaining hot drinks for under-nourished children, pregnant women, the elderly and infirm. In fact, it even began to be prescribed by doctors once the substantial nutritional value of this drink was realised. It wasn’t until 1906 that this drink first arrived in Britain from Switzerland, where it was invented two years previously. This was something I found rather surprising, as we tend to think of Ovaltine as being a peculiarly British eccentricity rather than an imported product. Ovaltine continued to be happily consumed as a filling and virtuous drink until 1997, when it was decided that the brand was seen as rather old-fashioned and dull, thus commencing a major re-branding project to bring Ovaltine up to date. It was during this re-branding phase (in 2005) that a new range of products was launched to make Ovaltine appeal to kids, the Max for Milk drinks.

Ovaltine Max for Milk is a range of milk shake powders that have “malted powder” as their largest base ingredient (36% of the mix). In other words, these are milkshakes made with Ovaltine and flavourings that are intended to bring the nutritional value of the original hot drinks into cold milk drinks. Max for Milk drinks are marketed primarily at kids by appealing to parents who want to provide healthy drinks for their children, intending them to be seen as “wholesome and tasty”. As a fan of the hot drinks, I came to try the Max for Milk powders last summer, when it was far too hot to want Ovaltine, but I still liked to have something to drink at bedtime. I browsed the milky drink section of my local Tesco looking for a hot weather alternative to my usual cuppa, and settled on trying a Max for Milk drink because it was promoted as being healthy, something a lot of milk drinks blatantly are not. Max for Milk is available in three flavours – chocolate, strawberry and banana – of which my first choice would always be the chocolate variety. With this sold out, however, I decided to give the strawberry flavour a go, as I quite like strawberry milkshakes. The jars come in one size (300g, which is stated as being equivalent to 15 drinks), and I paid £1.88 for mine (a reasonable 12.5p per serving, then).

The biggest nutritional plus of Max for Milk is that the malt extract provides 11 vitamins (A, E, C, B1, B2, niacin, B6, B12, folic acid, biotin and panothenic acid) and 4 minerals (calcium, phosphorus, magnesium and zinc). Quantities vary, but a serving of 20g powder in 200ml of semi skimmed milk will provide at least 20% of the recommended daily allowance of each of the listed vitamins and minerals (although nowhere can I find out whether that is 20% of an adult’s or a child’s daily allowance, which of course differ). A glass of Max for Milk also provides more calcium than a glass of milk alone could offer, is low in fat (a glass of the shake has 3.5% fat) and contains no artificial colours or sweeteners. For those of you that are calorie conscious, this same glass of shake will register 173kcal; a 200ml quantity of milk without the powder is just 96kcal. An additional 77 calories is quite a large amount for such a small serving, and the reason for this is that the list of ingredients has sugar and glucose syrup quite high up, making them a substantial proportion of the mix. Other downers are that Max for Milk also has added salt and “flavouring”. There is nothing to clarify what these artificial flavours are, but I think we can safely say that it has never seen a real strawberry in its life!

To make up a glass of your Max for Milk, we are instructed to mix 3 heaped teaspoons of the powder into a little cold semi skimmed milk to form a smooth paste, then add the rest of your 200ml milk and stir well. The powder itself looks identical to original Ovaltine – it is a creamy white colour and fine in texture – the noticeable difference being that Max for Milk smells strongly of artificial strawberry flavouring, a very sweet smell with just the faintest hint of malt underlying it. The smell actually reminds me of those cheap strawberry chews I used to eat when I was a kid; it is not an entirely unpleasant smell, but neither does it scream out quality to me. Adding the mix to your powder in the glass causes the mixture to suddenly take on a lurid pink complexion (just what the hell to they put in it to make such a virulent colour?) and the powder rapidly becomes a thick paste – try as I might though, I cannot make it “smooth” as I am instructed. I add the rest of the milk. The colour fades to a slightly more appetising shade of pink and I continue to stir thoroughly for a couple of minutes. The powder does not completely dissolve (in fact, if you lift up the glass you can see the undissolved powder clinging wilfully to the bottom of the glass) and in the end I give up and decide to just drink it as it is.

The milk has become slightly thickened for the addition of the powder, although the texture is still that of flavoured milk rather than a thick milkshake: more Nesquick than Frijj. The taste is as sweet and cheap as the smell had suggested, although the malt is much more prominent in the flavour, and you can easily tell that this has Ovaltine as the base ingredient. The strawberry flavour is indeed the same artificial variety that you might expect in sweets and other over-sweetened things aimed at children. The thing is, as much as I like the flavours of malt and strawberry on their own, when combined the result is such a sickly and unpleasant concoction that makes a McDonalds milkshake suddenly look like a good alternative. To make matter worse, if you venture as far as the bottom quarter of the glass, the drink acquires a gritty texture because of all the powder that didn’t dissolve. My glass also has a thick covering of what looks like wet pink sugar across the base of it that I know from past experience will be awful to wash off again. Since buying my jar last summer, I have drunk only 3 or 4 glasses (including the one I made up just now to make this review accurate) and the rest will be thrown out. I hate wasting food (which is why I drank more than my initial glass – I just hated the thought of wasting something I had paid good money for!) but this stuff defeats me. I will not be buying it again, and I can’t even bring myself to try the chocolate flavour.

A nice idea, Ovaltine…but not recommended.


http://www.ovaltine.co.uk/

Summary: A poor attempt at creating a healthy milk drink