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fc2 | 12 years ago

Older products like Ensure weren't good enough to go "all in" on liquid food because they don't have 100% of everything we know we need.

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jgrahamc|12 years ago

I've heard that claim repeatedly, but Abbott disagrees with you and everyone else who says it. Look at Ensure Complete: http://ensure.com/products/ensure-complete-shakes

"Ensure Complete, one simple choice for 4-in-1 nutrition. Each delicious shake provides balanced nutrition and targeted muscle, heart, immune, and bone health benefits. It’s a simple choice to get the right nutrients in the right amounts to help you stay strong. Take charge of your health and your nutrition with Ensure Complete!"

From their FAQ: http://ensure.ca/en/faq/

"For how long can I use Ensure? Ensure products deliver complete and balanced nutrition that is always beneficial. There is no time limit to using Ensure products. In fact, long-term use is encouraged if you’re at a nutritional risk (for example, if you’re an older adult)."

"Can Ensure replace a meal? Yes. Ensure products are complete and balanced, when used in appropriate amounts they can be used to replace meals."

fc2|12 years ago

Didn't know about Ensure Complete and it seems that you are right, it looks pretty complete. The problem though is the variance in the DV% of different nutrients. For instance, if I wanted to get 100% of sodium from Ensure then I would have to intake 3500 calories and 260% protein, and I haven't heard too many great things about having too much protein. The DV% of most micros is not listed so there may be a lot of problems like this.

beagle3|12 years ago

Do you know how Abbott (or others) deal with nutrients that block each other's absorption? e.g. Iron and some vitamins, copper and zinc?

thewordis|12 years ago

I tried using a week's worth of Ensure Complete as a meal replacement. It didn't provide satiation.

asdasf|12 years ago

No, they don't disagree at all. They say you can replace A MEAL with ensure. Not all of your food consumption period. There is a big difference. They only ever talk about using ensure as a supplement to your diet, not a replacement for it. If you want to live on ensure you need to drink 5 ensure completes per day, plus consume some extra calories, possibly some extra protein, some salt and a few vitamins. But they explicitly recommend that you do not exceed four servings per day: http://ensure.com/nutrition-faq

Avshalom|12 years ago

Soylent only probably has 100% of what it's testers know they need and who knows how much of what they don't know they need. Ensure is good enough that people live on it, they don't loudly trumpet it as a complete replacement because 1) the market for that is small and it makes you look like a quack 2) people have a variety of nutritional needs based on life style, genetics. Hell ALTITUDE will change your nutritional needs.

fingerprinter|12 years ago

The looks like a quack part is strong with soylent, imo. I'm getting a very big snake oil salesman vibe from this whole thing.

asdasf|12 years ago

Why are people so hypocritical that they claim soylent is not nutritionally complete but ensure is, despite the obvious fact that nutritional labelling laws allow us to see that soylent contains everything ensure does and more?