When I was a little tacker (I’m getting on to middle-aged now!) my mum used to feed us spoonfuls of a product called Saunder’s Malt as some sort of dietary supplement.
Thick and gooey like molasses, it had a unique taste that was quite pleasant. However, I have no idea why we had to eat the stuff.
What are the benefits of malt in the diet? Do people still eat it, or was this a peculiarly 60’s phenomenon… (at least it wasn’t cod-liver oil…I should be thankful for small mercies I guess).
I’m not sure about Saunders (never heard of 'em) but malt extract is considered a good source of Vitamin B, amino acids, carbs and a fairly good amount of minerals.
I’ll second JuanitaTech’s thoughts on the subject. The stuff sounds rather like Vegemite, actually.
Nah, it was NOTHING like Vegemite Cap’n. It was quite sweet, and more the consistency of melted toffee. Vegemite is definitely savoury, and is quite firm (until you put it on hot toast when it does soften up a bit.)
But thanks for the info on the nutritional stuff Juanita. Maybe the old dear wasn’t so bad afterall.
Mind you, with the wads of Vegemite I swallowed in my childhood, combined with copious amounts of this malty stuff, it’s a bloody wonder I didn’t OD on Vit B etc
The benefit was not so much for you, but for industry. The making of beer produces truckloads of byproducts. These are sold, mostly to cattle farmers, but also to health food stores. Children fed this stuff later develop a fondness for beer that they can’t quite explain.
I’ve never heard of eating it–I’ve only ever heard of using malt extract to make beer. Sure, you can use real malt, but my friends and I found that when we made beer, that the extract was so much easier to use because it just melted into the boiling water. We never tried eating it.
Guess it didn’t do any harm to those who did, though. But that’s what I always thought malt extract was for: making beer.
is it ever used in making malted milk shakes?
Come on - nobody remembers their “Winnie the Pooh”?
“So THAT’s what Tiggers like …”
Kanga gives Roo a daily dose of malt extract. When A. A. Milne did the stories, it wasn’t an uncommon belief that it was beneficial.
There’s a product called Maltsoupex, that is exactly that, malt soup extract. It is, for some reason completely unknown to me, extremely expensive, but, it works like a charm, for severe constipation in a baby(or child, I would assume), when added to a bottle. It is also, apparently safer to use than karo syrup, as there is a botulism(sp?) risk with karo syrup in an infant, much like there is with honey.
So, besides the vitamins, and such, it may have just been an added way of making sure you, and your siblings were regular.
~V
VDarlin: With honey the risk is that honey may relax the cardiac or diaphragm muscles as it is a muscle relaxer.
Zen101, I have never heard that one, although I’ve been advised of the honey/botulism connection since my oldest was born 7 years ago.
Here’s what WebMD has to say about it, doing a google search will turn up more cites with the same information.
BTW, in my above post, I spelled the product wrong, it’s Maltsupex, no “o” in the “soup” part.
~V