Is Ensure Good for You?

The Truth About Ensure

In the fight for weight loss and fitness, people will try just about anything.

Over the years, as both a health coach and sport nutrition specialist, I’ve come across a lot of people who use Ensure Meal Replacement shakes as part of their health and fitness programs.

So what’s the deal with this popular product? Is Ensure good for you? Or is it a bad choice?

Nutritional Value of Ensure

First, let’s look at the basic nutritional value of Ensure. The basic Ensure brand is low in saturated fat, very low in cholesterol, and high in a number of important vitamins and minerals. It comes out at only 6 grams of fat and includes a healthy 9 grams of protein. All in all, not bad at 250 calories.

The Plus & Active options are a bit higher in fat, protein, and even calories and are intended for people who have trouble maintaining a healthy weight. And finally, the High Protein option has the same fat content as the basic option, but comes in with 3 extra grams of protein (unless you are looking at the Active High Protein which has 16 more grams).

Ensure Ingredients

Nutritional value is one thing, but it’s sort of meaningless without understanding the source of those nutrients. No matter which type of Ensure drink you’re looking for, sugar comes out as the 2nd or 3rd ingredient (the first being water). And this isn’t good sugar – this is refined white sugar, which means it’s great at causing blood glucose spikes that will leave you feeling hungry and craving more sugar shortly thereafter.

It’s also packed full of chemicals and corn derivatives that aren’t so great for your bod, such as corn syrup, corn maltdextrin, short-chain fructooligosaccharides, and other corn and soy oils. The rest of the ingredients are primarily vitamins that have been artificially added to the shakes. What we’re left with is something that is not at all natural and contains little in terms of “real food.”