FOR HAPPY GIRLS AND BOYS! (Ovaltine Original Light)

Member Name: Skyedame

Product:	Ovaltine Original Light
Date:	23/10/07 (161 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fewer calories and fat than the Original Ovaltine

Disadvantages: Not as tasty - but not unpleasant

From the website of Ovaltine:

‘Ovaltine was launched as the first convenient and complete milk fortifier to provide hot nutritional drinks to strengthen under-nourished children, breastfeeding women, the weak, and the infirm’.

In the early ‘50s when I was but a tiny lass, I would often hear a cheery song on the radio (or radiogramme to be absolutely correct) sung by a choir of cheery children who sang ‘We are the Ovaltineys (we’re happy girls and boys)’ in cut-glass upper crust accents. There was even a League of Ovaltineys and, at the height of its popularity, there were five million members. I’d like to say I was one of them but that was a bit too posh for our house. But, hey ho, it was a golden age of innocence where little children were popped into bed at 6pm after a bath, bedtime story and a wholesome cup of warming, soothing Ovaltine.

If you go to the Ovaltine website, and click on their history tab you can hear a recording of the song

Quote: ‘The original Ovaltine was first launched as a convenient and complete milk fortifier to provide hot nutritional drinks to strengthen under-nourished children, breastfeeding women, the weak and the infirm….. Ovaltine was first marketed in the UK with advertising that reflected its healthy ingredients “builds up body, brain and nerves to the highest efficiency”. Ovaltine was included in soldier’s ration packs and recommended for pilots during the WW2…. the RAF was a large consumer of Ovaltine Tablets…’

That kind of wording in advertising wouldn’t be allowed these days, but it’s still a ‘nourishing’ food drink because of the malt.

I do remember when my grandmother made it, she made it with warmed milk (full fat, we didn’t do skimmed in those days) and a couple of teaspoons of sugar. It came in a tin, which had to be prised off with a spoon handle and the original Ovaltine was very tasty. Malty and sweet.

Modern times:

Like a lot of the adult population, I have difficulty getting to sleep. A friend of mine said she swore by a nightly mug of another well-known malted bedtime drink. This ‘other’ malted drink also came in the ‘light’ variety and although extremely tasty it was also very, very sweet (full of sugar – which makes a mockery of the whole low cal/light illusion they are using as a selling point) and as I noticed I was putting on weight, I had to put it down to that product because my general food consumption hadn’t really changed in any way.

Step up the new Ovaltine Original Light bedtime drink. Obviously, you could drink it anytime you like but I prefer to drink it at bedtime – and anyway, despite the word ‘light’ this product still contains 9.9g of sugars which, although isn’t too sweet, is enough to tip the scales in the wrong direction if I’m not careful.

Defining ‘Light’:

Hmm, difficult one this. I really think the manufacturers of these so-called ‘light’ drinks are pulling the wool over our eyes. Light, to me, means low-calorie and virtually fat-free. On checking the ingredients on both the packaging and the Ovaltine website I came up with the following differences between the Ovaltine Original and the Light version. I have put the figures for Ovaltine Light first with the comparable Original Ovaltine in brackets afterwards.

In a 25g serving (four heaped teaspoons) and the percentages making up the whole:

Light: Original:
Calories: 99 = 5% (191 cals = 10%)
Sugar: 9.6 = 11% (22.5 = 25%)
Fat: 2.3 = 3% (3.8 = 5%)
Saturates: 1.4 = 7% (2.2 = 11%)
Salt: 0.48 = 8% (0.3 = 5%)

Why the light version has such a high salt content when the stuff is supposed to be bad for us, I don’t know. But whilst I concede that the Light version contains very much lower sugar and fat content, they are still higher than I had originally thought.

Luckily, I’m a tight-wad and usually only pop in three teaspoons of the powder because although I am not exactly a calorie-counting fanatic, I am aware that piling up the calories just before bedtime is a recipe for tight jeans – with bulges in the wrong places.

Taste:

To be perfectly honest, I did prefer the taste of the other well-known malted drink I tried first, but then that did contain an awful lot of sugar which, although I don’t particularly have a sweet tooth, made for a tastier drink. Ovaltine Light is pleasant enough but not memorable. I don’t take the first sip and say: “Aaah! Lovely” I just drink up and pop the light off a while later in the hope that the warm drink will soothe me enough for sleep. Made with hot water (not boiling) rather than milk, this also helps keep the calorie content down.

What makes up Ovaltine:

Barley and malt extracts make up 45% of the ingredients and the rest comprise skimmed milk concentrate, whole and skimmed milk powder, fat reduced cocoa powder, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, yeast, glucose syrup, salt, lactose, calcium phosphate. In addition, there’s a whole raft of ‘essential’ vitamins (I counted eleven) and minerals (three).

Finally, it’s been many years since I tasted the original full-fat, made with milk Ovaltine but I do recall that I liked it very much. It was full-bodied and very much a food supplement and a great treat for a child who didn’t get treats like chocolate (far too expensive). Ovaltine Light is it’s pilly-wally cousin; tries hard to emulate the original but never will.

To sum up, the Light version whilst not exactly a disappointment is, for obvious reasons, not as full-bodied as the original flavoured product and therefore not quite as tasty – but it’ll do until I find something tastier but just as ‘light’.

Price & availability: Available from most supermarkets and chemists at a price of approximately £3.50 for 300g.

Further info:
www.ovaltine.co.uk


Thank you for reading!

© Louise Saunders – 2007

Summary: A light, pleasant malted cocoa flavoured drink containing fewer calories & fat