The Nestlé company which manufactured MILO is headquartered in Vevey, Vaud, Switzerland.
It’s a multinational food and drink processing conglomerate which was established in 1866.
They are the largest publicly held food company in the world, measured by revenue and other metrics, since 2014.
MILO
In 1934, during the Great Depression, Nestle Australia wanted to develop a tonic drink that tasted good enough that children would eat it, whilst giving them the vitamins and minerals they needed, without costing families too much.
The drink also had to be made from local ingredients such as malted barley, dried milk and cocoa.
The task fell to young trainee chemical engineer, Thomas Mayne who spent four years developing what we now know as MILO®.
He wanted to create a mix with vitamins and minerals that would dissolve when stirred, not just fall to the bottom of the glass.
He couldn’t quite get there.
One day, Mayne walked into his kitchen to discover his daughter, Margaret and her brother scooping the crunchy bits of MILO® powder off the top of their drinks.
It was then he realised that the crunch was not a problem, but a feature!
And so MILO® as we know it today was born—named after MILO® of Croton, a Greek wrestler who lived in the 6th Century BC and possessed legendary strength.
It was originally name MILO® Tonic Food and was introduced to the public at the 1934 Sydney Royal Easter Show. (88 years ago)
Thomas Mayne drank a cup of Milo every day until he died aged 93.
Since then, Over 2 million cans of MILO are produced every year — that’s 480 million cups, which is enough to fill 480 Olympic swimming pools!!
Australian MILO is still made in the same factory in Smithtown, NSW, where it was first produced in 1934.
Australian MILO still tastes the same as it always has — the recipe has remained unchanged in Australia since its creation.
Around the world, however, the recipe is slightly different — for example, Kiwis have their very own MILO recipe, designed for their taste preferences.
A glass of MILO gives you 50 per cent of your recommended daily calcium, iron and vitamin C intake.
If it wasn’t for MILO creator Thomas Mayne’s children, the iconic MILO crunch might never have been.
Thomas spent hours trying to make MILO dissolve more into milk, but on hearing that his children loved eating the crunchy top layer, he gave up.
Thomas’ wife was the original guinea pig for the MILO recipe, as he brought it home for years to perfect the MILO taste before releasing it to the public.
When the Health Star Rating system was introduced in Australia in 2014, Nestlé initially labelled Milo with 4.5 stars.
They argued that this reflected the recommendation that three teaspoons of the product be dissolved in a cup of skim milk.
There was outrage from public health groups, who pointed out that in a regular serving of Milo powder, 46 per cent is sugar and that it was unlikely that children would be consuming it in skim milk.
In 2018 Nestlé gave in to the pressure and removed the star rating from the packaging.
In 2019, a revised formulation was released with 30% less sugar.
Who was Milo The Wrestler?
Milo of Croton reportedly ate 20 pounds of meat and drank 18 pints of wine a day to maintain his muscular physique!
He was born in the 6th Century B.C. in the city of Croton, which was located in the area of Ancient Greece known as Magna Graecia.
Although he also had a military career, he was best known for his athletic abilities in the sport of wresting.
The exact dates of his birth and death are unknown, but historians believe that he was definitely alive in the 6th Century B.C. based on the fact that he has been referenced in several other sources, namely the fact that his Olympic victories in wresting were carefully recorded.
Growing up in Greece, Milo had always admired the Greco-wrestlers training in Croton.
They were universally admired by the townspeople, possessed unbelievable strength and had bodies carved out of granite.
Milo’s admiration for such men was so strong that from a young age he made the decision to become just like them.
In achieving his dream Milo ‘discovered’ progressive weight training.
Legend goes that one day, Milo stumbled upon a newborn calf near his household.
Rather than walk past the calf and continue his daily business, Milo hoisted the calf onto his shoulders and carried the small animal on his shoulders.
The next day, Milo did the exact same thing. And the next day…. and the next!
While lesser men would have grown bored of such an activity, Milo flourished.
Each day the calf grew bigger and each day Milo carried incrementally more weight!
After four years of carrying the calf to and fro, Milo was capable of lifting a heavy bull on his shoulders with ease!
He showed physical prowess from a young age.
He won six victories at the Olympic Games in the sport of wresting.
He first won it around 540 B.C.
He won five more titles in the Olympics in wrestling when he was an adult, and each of these victories took place anywhere between 536 B.C. to 520 B.C.
However, he wasn’t just an athlete in the Olympic games.
He also won seven total victories in the Pythian games, ten victories at the Isthmian games, and nine victories at the Nemean games.
He is considered to have been one of the most decorated athletes in Ancient Greek history.
As a follower of the famous philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras, Milo once saved his friends.
It happened that the roof of the hall where the Pythagoreans were meeting began to collapse.
Milo stood and supported the central pillar until the others escaped to safety and then dashed out, saving himself.
In the end, however, all of this fame and strength did not save Milo from a less than glorious death.
Milo was wandering through the forest when he found an old tree trunk with wedges inserted into it.
In an attempt to test his strength, Milo placed his hands and, perhaps his feet, into the cleft of the trunk and tried to split apart the wood.
He succeeded in loosening the wedges, which fell out, but the trunk closed on his hands, trapping him.
There, according to the tale, he fell prey to wild beasts.
