Apologies for the blunt and tactless title, but there’s really not a lot of room for interpretation and I wanted to drive the point home as efficiently as possible.

For the uninitiated, Ensure is a drink marketed to people of retirement age and above as a sort of “health drink.” From their website:

Ensure was introduced into the market in 1973 and has been providing people with complete, balanced nutrition ever since… Our formulas have been developed with leading scientists and several clinical studies. We hold ourselves to a high standard when it comes to nutrition..

What I’m about to write isn’t an effort to put down the product, or its parent company, Abbot Laboratories. It’s an effort to hopefully get a decision-maker at the company to re-evaluate their recipe in light of new evidence. What we know to be healthy has changed since 1973. Furthermore, the environmental, industrial and political conditions surrounding the American food industry and food supply has changed since 1973. If Ensure truly holds themselves to a high standard when it comes to nutrition, they will most certainly be interested in what follows.

Ensure: What’s in it?

Under “Core” ingredients listed:

1. Water – Great, no worries there (although it’s likely city water full of flouride, chlorine, heavy metals, etc. but I won’t count this against them as it’s purely speculation).
2. Carbohydrates (corn-sourced maltodextrin) – This complex carbohydrate is effectively treated as sugar by your body. It spikes your blood sugar and unless there are immediate energy needs in the body when you consume maltodextrin (such as during a marathon), your body will almost certainly store it as fat almost immediately.
3. Fats (Canola and Corn Oils) – Fats are a great addition. Good fats are something sorely deficient in the Standard American Diet (SAD). Unfortunately, these are not good fats. In fact, they are basically the worst fats. Both of these types of processed vegetable oils (which also includes generic “vegetable oil,” sunflower oil, soybean oil, cottonseed oil and safflower oil) have been shown to cause systemic inflammation, throw off the balance of omega fatty acids in the body and cause weight gain. They are associated with cardiovascular disease, diabetes, thyroid conditions and a whole lot more. This is sort of the biggest problem I have with Ensure. If the makers of Ensure could do one thing to dramatically make their product healthier, it would be to simply use coconut oil instead.
4. Protein (milk and soy protein) – Milk protein is loaded with sugar in the form of lactose and soy is full of xenoestrogens. The problem with xenoestrogens is that they mimic the hormone estrogen, leading to all sorts of gender-bending effects in men and the magnification of certain features in women. Plus, the potential impact it has on humanity’s ability to reproduce is a bit scary. It’s becoming a real problem in our modern society where nearly every processed food has soy in it these days.
5. Sugar – very simple, Ensure contains sugar “for additional energy.” Why not just eat a Snickers bar? Come on. It’s hard for me to fathom that so many people don’t seem to know JUST HOW BAD SUGAR IS.

Further down the ingredients page, you get to added vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. That’s all in good faith. No issues there. There are 9 different B Vitamins, a few good antioxidants, Vitamin A, Vitamin K and 9 minerals. That’s helpful.

But even further down, you get to vagaries like “natural and artificial flavors,” “stabilizers” and “balancing agents.” That’s a sure sign that we’re dealing with processed foods with highly questionable synthetic ingredients.

I certainly hope Ensure makes some key changes and starts offering our older generations something that is actually beneficial to them. They are in a GREAT position, considering their share of the health drink for retired-age demographic is large and well-established. Companies like this could do a HUGE service to public health if they wanted to.

In the meantime…

An Ensure replacement recipe

One-third of a medium banana (for flavor, potassium, Vitamin B6, Vitamin C, Fiber, Magnesium, Folate, Manganese)
2 Tbsp hemp seeds (for Omega 3 fatty acids, plant protein, fiber, GLA)
1 cup coconut milk (for fats, fiber, Vitamins C, E, B1, B3, B5, B6 and minerals)
1/2 cup mixed berries (for antioxidants, flavor)
1/4 cup walnuts (for good fats and plant protein)
1/2 cup green peas (for plant protein)

Mix it together and drink it!