specimens of the literature of sweden - oatly

Despite the English name, this small multinational is essentially Swedish, operating from its factory at Landskrona, a small place on the west coast of Skåne, facing Denmark across the narrow Öresund channel, and about 25km north of Lund. It was at the University of Lund that the process of making a milk-like product out of oats was first worked out: it removes some of the insoluble fibre but retains the water-soluble beta-glucan fibre. (Beta-glucan is the component that is supposed to reduce cholesterol.)

The range of lactose-free milks is ever-growing, which is on the whole a very good thing for the world's health, happiness and environment.

The most established of these drinks (apparently you shouldn't use the word "milk") is soya. I always enjoy soya when I'm out at Costa or Nero's, but I don't usually buy it for home use, because it has the strange property that the tea won't percolate through it. Logical people, of course, tell you that when you make tea using the teabag-in-the-mug method, you mustn't put the milk in first anyway. I urge you to go against logic; you will be surprised. But you can't do it with soya. With Oatly, hemp milk, almond milk, hazelnut milk or dairy milks you can.

Anyway I always come back to organic Oatly because of the extreme simplicity of the ingredients list (oats, water, salt). For the sake of this I'm quite happy to live without the dazzling whiteness of e.g. Good Hemp, which is my second fave.

[The images show British packaging, of course (but it seems the Swedish isn't really all that different). My excuse is that there's just been a makeover (the new look is the one on the right, above). So I wanted to record the old-style carton, with its wiggy editorial on the back, before it disappears into our recycling for ever.]

All the above is about the organic version.  Here, since I found it lying around, is the Oatly chocolate drink - I've never tried it, but it's enthused over by people I trust: