Ensure Drinks and Your Health

Ensure drinks cause death. This was the title of a video that I stumbled upon recently, and I really feel the need to address it. With a claim that Ensure drinks will truly cause you to die, we need to take a look at the honest truth behind this statement. Are they terrible for your health? Are they perfectly okay? Video titles like this make it hard to know. And if you aren’t sure what Ensure drinks are and who they are typically designed for, this article will detail that. Make sure to read until the end, because I will also answer the question “do ensure drinks cause death?”

First Things First

One of the first major issues in the video, was that the individual talked about the fact that there was monounsaturated fat, polyunsaturated fat, and 23 grams of sugar in the bottle. For starters, mono and poly unsaturated fats are considered the “healthy fats” that keep our good cholesterol in check. So these are actually a good thing to have in a nutritional drink. When it comes to the sugar content, 23 grams of sugar in an 8 ounce bottle of ensure actually is a decent amount. The problem with using this as an argument against it, is that it does not address who these types of drinks are for.

Who Should Drink Them

There is actually a very small set of the population who I would recommend drinking ensure drinks. This people fall under the category of being extremely underweight. Most elderly individuals who do drink ensure drinks are exactly in this demographic, which is the main reason why they use these types of drinks. The extra sugar in the drink is actually a good thing for them to have, because they are so underweight and malnourished. Of course I would much rather have them eat some fruit and lean meats, but a lot of older adults don’t taste well when they get older. So although sugar comprises a decent amount of the carbohydrates, the added protein, micronutrients, overall calories, and taste is the lesser of two evils.

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The Ingredient Rabbit Hole

In addition to complaining about the sugar content, the maker of the video started to list out all of the ingredients one by one. Some of the ingredients in the ingredient list aren’t the “healthiest” for you, but this wasn’t really the goal. The maker of the video just simply stated the ingredient and then laughed, not offering any reason into why they weren’t good for you. As mentioned previously, these drinks are designed for extremely underweight individuals to gain weight quickly to reduce the chances of death. Having a few “processed” items in the ensure drink, making it more palatable, will help to keep that person alive.

Last But Not Least

The icing on the cake in the video is when he says that doctors should recommend multivitamins instead of ensure drinks as this would offer much more benefit compared to ensure drinks. The problem with this statement, is that it simply isn’t addressing the purpose of the ensure drinks, once again. Ensure drinks are for people severely underweight who need to consume calories quickly so they have strength to simply get out of a chair, walk around, and not die.

Do They Cause Death

Any time you claim that a certain product will do a certain thing to your body, we look for evidence of what was said. In the example of the video shown, there wasn’t really much of this. Some of the ingredients in the ensure drinks aren’t particularly the best, not be the best for longevity. Unless there is a study done where someone drinks only ensure drinks a certain period of time, with blood values taken, and it is shown to increase bad health outcomes, it is impossible to say that ensure drinks cause death.

Before You Go

Hopefully this gave you a little bit of guidance on the original ensure drink and who it really is for. The awesome thing about ensure, is that they also have many other nutritional drinks NOT for individuals who are underweight, and simply want to be healthier. I made a great article detailing this, below!

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