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.
>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 you are on a calorie deficient diet due to a lack of money and feeling fatigued, of course an extra 500 calories of fizzy drink is going to pick you up. In westernised worlds this is no longer the case and we need to make a more informed decision about our diets.
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.
I think that Lucozade was originally actually made as a good way of giving people energy while they were sick. Whether that was actually a good idea, I have no idea.
My not-so-perfect heuristic for eating - if it's marketed and advertised at least in 2 forms of media, I don't eat it.
Malted beverages, sugary cereal, refined-flour cookies, take-away pizzas and of course, the great big marketing machine - the sodas. All of them meet this criteria and I don't consider any of these healthy.
> and of course, the great big marketing machine - the sodas.
I recently read a science fiction story that described a near-future society in which the space race is restarted following the discovery of an alien drone ship. It describes the situation [1]:
> With rumours abounding that several South American nations are in talks to form their own unified space agency, not to mention the fledgling private endeavours of Virgin, Red Bull, Mitsubishi, Google and BAE Systems, It seems that the second Space Race has begun in earnest.
Red Bull does seem a little out of place in that list, but not much. Why is it that an energy drink company spends SO MUCH on advertising that this isn't all that incongruous?
Yes, I think the Red Bull Air Races are awesome, and they're definitely pushing limits in an area of the human and aeronautic performance envelope that's been passed over by the military. But why and how is a fizzy drink company doing all this?
They're also attached as my sibling comment notes to Felix Baumgartner's space jump. Not to mention such diverse activites as snowboarding, mountain biking, freestyle motocross, ice cross downhill, skiing and BMX events. Cliff diving. Soapbox races. Flugtag. F1. E-sports. Stock Cars. Rallycross. Association football. Sailing. Being at the forefront of these industries is not normal for eg. Horlicks.
They manufacture energy drinks, but they're at home in the above industries. How weird is that?
Around here we see generic marketing from the various egg, chicken, diary, etc lobbies in tv, radio, and print form. It would be impossible to follow the parent poster's rules and eat anything (big time lettuce might not be into marketing, who knows).
Natural commodities like cabbage, potatoes, beans, peppers, etc are barely advertised. Generally, if it's something anyone can make and there's no good way to differentiate it, there's not much point doing much marketing. Can't speak for the OP but maybe this is what they meant?
Absolutely. These campaigns are all the products of Agriculture Marketing Boards[1] and are generally state-based. They're cooperative marketing agencies which growers and producers belong to to collectively promote their generic product. See also the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service[2].
are a few of the domestic ones I've worked with over the years.
EDIT:
Here's a list of all the official California Agricultural Marketing Programs[3]
Speaking of foreign avocados, in addition to Mexico, Chile grows and exports a lot to the US. Of of their interesting arguments is that being in the Southern Hemisphere, their crop is counter-seasonal to our domestic avos. http://avocadosfromchile.org
I've always wondered why avocados have so much marketing behind them ("Avocados from Mexico" commercials). Seems like they would be in the same boat as other natural foods. I guess it hasn't bothered me enough to do the research, though.
In Australia supermarkets certainly advertise fresh fruit and vegetables in multiple forms of media.
And not just "we sell vegetables", but "this week Australian grown XXXX are just $Y per kg!"
Australian readers can probably hear that Coles announcer voice in the heads right now.
Does this heuristic only apply if its a standalone advertisement?
That would cut out bananas, mangos, avocados, pistachios, every mainstream meat, eggs, dairy and water (both bottled and tap).
Right, supermarkets are necessarily not selling the product as much as their brand. The message here is - 'Come to our store, we have all these products at discounted prices'.
Lately my own heuristic is that if the label has more than two ingredients (not counting salt / natural spices) I don't eat it. That means if I want something unhealthy I have to make it myself from scratch, which puts a natural limitation on a big chunk of unhealthy eating possibilities. Of course it's still possible to eat unhealthily this way (the all-steak all-the-time diet comes to mind)
I have been seeing this. It was bad before but for the last couple of years it has become sickening. They even make ads where they talk about doing actual scientific experiment and proving that it actually makes kid taller, stronger, sharper. They are basically selling it as a miracle food. I think the whole product and the marketing group should be banned and jailed for such ads. I'm sure there are a lot of people who are buying this instead of better/cheaper food and as a result is actually getting sub-optimal nutrition.
I feel these are as bad or even worse than medical bribes that makes doctor give excess meds (and the companies get fined billions of dollars) given the sheer number of people affected.
In the UK Horlicks is largely marketed as a comfort drink (ie to relax and soothe you) and isn't advertised as having any 'special powers' - but then advertising rules in the UK can be pretty strict when compared to other places. It's interesting to see differences between markets (hence this article I guess).
There's a word-of-mouth thing that Horlicks is good for you at bedtime. My parents and grandparents certainly told me this. I guess it's a legacy from when advertising rules were less strict.
I think i have vague memories of advertising from the 80s implying as much, which if true would represent a good return on advertising, some three decades later!
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 older people.' [2]
British children are more likely to drink milk at bedtime, perhaps flavoured with chocolate or Nesquik powder.
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.
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.
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)
> 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.
My mom used to force me drink milk as a kid, simply because she believed the dairy industry marketing and wasn't educated enough to know that vitamin D and calcium could be gotten from many, many other sources.
I have been extremely lactose intolerant since childhood, so those forced milk-drinking episodes were traumatic.
These days I get my calcium from dark leafy greens, sardines, and tofu. I get my vitamin D from sunlight and an easily absorbable vitamin supplement.
I love milk. Left to my own devices, I go through between half a gallon and a gallon a day. With my family (1 daughter's lactose intolerant and drinks a lactose-free milk), I go through about a gallon a day on average of regular milk and maybe a quarter of that of the lactose-free stuff. I am aware that there are people who don't like milk, but I don't really get it, other than by analogy to foods I hate.
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.
> Horlicks for people that are sick and hospitalized in India
You'll be surprised how deep the rabbit hole goes. Horlicks is heavily marketed and distributed by its owner Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK). What is less well known about GSK is its kickback and corruption network throughout India and Asia. Doctors/nurses/hospital admins would get kickbacks in the form of lunches, dinners, entertainment, trips, conferences, gifts. In China, GSK was fined $500 mil for corrupting doctors. http://www.bbc.com/news/business-29274822
You make a fair point, yet overlook the fact that corruption is often how business works in these countries. You might not be aware that in a country like China it is common for foreign companies to be penalized for "corruption" that is widely known to be standard fare in local industry. It is how things get done.
> yet overlook the fact that corruption is often how business works in these countries
That seems interesting. I'd be interested to know whether that's true and for which specific countries. How much of it is powerful MNCs utilizing their power to put the right politician/legislator in place, similar to how lobbying works in the US.
I'm also surprised you use the strong words "overlook" and "fact". I wonder if you're perhaps confusing hollywood portrayal of Asia/Africa/developing countries for reality. I see that mistake made often by people who have not spent significant time overseas or have chosen to live purely in an expat bubble.
> You might not be aware that in a country like China it is common for foreign companies to be penalized for "corruption" that is widely known to be standard fare in local industry.
I'm quite familiar with China. What you're saying maybe partially true but just like the USA, it's lobbying, not direct corruption. Calling it "standard fare" "corruption" would be equivalent to calling American business/lobbying industry as the same. In much the same way that you wouldn't call Boeing/McDonald Douglas/steel industry/coal industry lobbying as corruption. If I'm mistaken, could you please give a specific instance with the facts you're referring to.
It's far more systematic and normal in developing countries. In the US you wouldn't have to bribe city officials to get a factory built, for instance. I've an acquaintance who is doing just that and construction has stopped because they refused to pay off the right people. Later on, if you do something that the authorities don't like, they take you down for corruption. I don't have a hollywood view of China; I've lived there for some time.
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.
Why feel stupid? Marketing of this sort is designed and implemented to catch as many people in its net as possible, no matter how smart they are otherwise. The best marketing (from their perspective) is when it reaches a point where people simply don't even consider questioning it because it's been so pervasive for so long (generations).
> they are drinking a high-calorie product because it is marketed as being good for you
Are they, and is it?
I tried it once and didn't like it, but I've always bucketed it with hot chocolate. I've certainly never had or heard it associated with improving health.
Absolutely that is how it is marketed. When you visit a sick relative, it often tradition to bring something to them. Often, people will show up with Horlicks or Complan bottles. It is fortified with vitamins so people conflate Horlicks with it being healthy. However, it is mostly carbs and sugar. I know a lot of Indians who insist that their children drink it as part of their breakfast.
Basically the same kind of thing gets marketed here as nutritional drinks, that basically end up being vitamin powders and glucose. While I'm not sold on the notion of something like Soylent as a dietary replacement, at least they're not just mixing sugar and chicory starch and calling it a day.
I have a few cases of Soylent that I keep around for days I have no appetite. The good thing about Soylent is that its CEO actually survives on it, and they really do care a lot about what goes into it. They're constantly improving their formula.
Yeah, I do respect the product for what it is, and while it's not something I'd use 24/7/365, I'd definitely turn to it in a pinch. I also agree with you about the care and the improvements, they seem to be willing to listen to feedback too.
I have reservations about people who think they should survive on it, but if they're going down that road anyway this seems like a safe choice.
I think Horlicks with milk is far better than a glass of OJ. Also considering milk has proteins which are otherwise not ample in Indian food, its not abad choice if it leads to higher milk consumption.
Though even as a kid my family pediatrician recommended coffee with milk over Horlicks/Complan, can't thank her enough for that :) .
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.
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 :)
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.
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.
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).
When my wife's parents come visit us from Moldova they usually bring over a box of Turkish Delight; it's always unveiled with cries of "Turkish Delight for the young prince! Ha ha ha!"
I have a strong memory of Harry being banished to his room and he only manages to get some stale bread and cheese. I can't remember which book it was, but thinking maybe Chamber of Secrets (or at least one of the first three). I remember at the time going and getting some stale bread and cheese. (it wasn't necessarily presented as a good thing in the book, but somehow I found it appealing).
Because Harry was forced into eating that by the Dursleys! Why would you want to eat something Harry didn't even want to eat? If you had an obsession with treacle or coffee cake or one of the many other delights Harry enjoyed at Hogwarts are at the Weasley's, I'd understand your motives better!
Now that science is backing benefits from fasting, and that bone soup are recommended for long fasts (> 48 hours), they should advertise towards that market!
As an aside, I strongly recommend Bovril as a "post" hangover and fasting aid. Add jalapeno and pepper or spicy sauce to it and it has a lot of filling properties and the salt restores what has been lost during drinking. Your milage may vary.
sorry to use this forum, but i don't know how to send a message to you directly. two days ago a discussion appeared [0] that quoted your JJ thomson quote from a previous comment [1], but the poster didn't know where the original quote comes from. I'm also curious about the source of the wonderful quote. Would you mind responding to the comment [2] with the attribution if you have time?
Home-made beef stock is actually INCREDIBLY nutritious, especially if it is made with the bones. There's a huge trend of bone broth suppliers cropping up in New York.
If it's some kind of mass produced stock though, it's probably not better than salt water.
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.
"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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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 :(
Interesting! I cannot recall any such marketing materials for Ovaltine. The only reference I can find regarding this strategy is from 2000[0]. Both the drink and the brand, in my experience at least, have always been associated with comfort, family, pajamas and bedtime. I seem to recall "Ovalteeney" being a mild pejoritve to describe those of a quiet/calm nature.
However it brings up a funny story: the original name is Ovomaltine, not Ovaltine, referring to the egg (ovum) and malt ingredients (I think there's no eggs inside anymore). But there was a typo in the trademark application for UK early on, and the name stood like that.
It's still Ovomaltine in Italy, for example.
Now, on Wikipedia there is no source for this story, and it might be possible that they decided to change the name for easier pronunciation in English, or because the connection ovum->egg was difficult anyway, or other unknown reasons, but I want to believe the first version anyway.
if you ever see Ovaltine cookies or biscuits, get them because they're delicious. there are 2 types - the normal kind and the sandwich type, both are equally good.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
