When I'm out shopping for groceries, I see lots of people purchasing
bottles of Ensure. Typically they are older people, and they are buying
it by the cartload, it seems. The front label of the product says
'Complete, balanced nutrition to help stay healthy, active and
energetic.' And a large label claims, 'No. 1 Doctor-recommended.'

That all sounds good so far, doesn't it? The front label even has a
claim that says 'Lutein to help support eye health.' But what's really
inside this product? And is it a product that really should be
recommended by doctors? Is it a product that's healthy for consumers to
drink on a regular basis?

To find the answers to this question we have to turn to the ingredients
label where we find that the top four ingredients are:

water
sugar
corn syrup
maltodextrin

Let's examine these top four ingredients (which make up the vast
majority of this product) and determine if this a healthy combination
of ingredients for consumers and elderly people.
First, we have water. There's nothing wrong with the water, except for
the fact that you're paying an extremely high price for it in the
Ensure product. So we'll skip water and move on to the next ingredient.

The next ingredient is sugar, also known as sucrose. Sugar is, of
course, a refined carbohydrate. Sugar has been strongly linked to the
promotion of diabetes, clinical depression, weight gain, obesity and
various nutritional deficiencies. It's also an acidic ingredient that
promotes osteoporosis by forcing the body to leach minerals out of its
bones in order to buffer the acidity of the sugar.

Sugar puts extra stress on the pancreas and liver, and if consumed in
large quantities over time, sugar can result in decreased insulin
sensitivity, which is one of the preconditions for adult onset
diabetes. There's a lot more bad news about sugar, including mental
problems such as mood swings, clinical depression, and even violence,
especially in males. But for this review, I'm not going to go into all
of the details of what's wrong with sugar. Read "Sugar Blues" by
William Duffy if you want the whole story. You can also look up some of
the literature yourself with the Google Scholar search engine, which
has 17,300 citations for research about sugar and diabetes: click here
to read it yourself.

So far then, for this Ensure product, we have water and sugar, also
known as sugar-water. That means that the top two ingredients in Ensure
are almost identical to the top two ingredients in soft drinks! And yet
the front label claims, 'No.1 Doctor-recommended!' which of course,
makes you wonder about the nutritional knowledge of these doctors.

It wasn't too long ago that doctors were actually being paid to promote
cigarettes in advertisements that appeared in magazines like Time. So
perhaps, with enough money, you can get doctors to recommend just about
anything, no matter how bad it is for your health. Maybe even sugar
water.

But moving on, the next ingredient is none other than corn syrup! Corn
syrup is also a refined carbohydrate with an extremely high glycemic
index value. Corn syrup (and especially high-fructose corn syrup) has
been linked to diabetes, obesity, problems with blood sugar control and
insulin sensitivity. Corn syrup is frequently used as a sweetener. It
is the primary sweetener in soft drinks, which is one of the reasons
why soft drinks so strongly promote obesity. Click here to read more
research on corn syrup at Google Scholar.

By the way, these top three ingredients so far -- water, sugar, and
corn syrup -- offer virtually nothing in terms of vitamins, minerals
and similar nutrition (see related ebook on nutrition). These are
basically empty calories and they have nothing of nutritive value to
offer to the consumer. Maybe we'll find better nutrition further down
the ingredients list, so let's keep looking.

The next thing we find is maltodextrin, derived from corn. Maltodextrin
is yet another refined carbohydrate that's high on the glycemic index
list. So now we have the top four ingredients: water, sugar, corn syrup
and maltodextrin. That's basically three sweeteners and water. So if
you were trying to be funny, you could call this product
'sugar-sugar-sugar-water,' because that is primarily what it's made of,
according to the ingredients label. Click here to read up on
maltodextrin and diabetes.

After the first four ingredients, you're getting to ingredients of some
substance. The next one is calcium caseinate, which is basically a milk
protein. After that you have safflower oil and canola oil, which of
course are sources of dietary oils. After that we have soy protein,
whey protein, corn oil and so on. Then we have a list of vitamins and
minerals that are added to the product. It doesn't say what the source
of these are, but chances are, these are not plant-sourced vitamins and
minerals. These are probably the least expensive commercially produced
vitamins and minerals available on the market.

So essentially, what you have here with Ensure, is a predominantly
sugar-water product that has been fortified with a few vitamins and
minerals. With that in mind, let's go back to the front label and take
a look at all of the claims. It says, 'Complete, balanced nutrition to
help stay healthy, active, and energetic.'

Well, perhaps the only word that's true here is 'energetic' because in
the food industry, energy is typically associated with sugar. For
example, when you buy a so-called 'energy bar,' it's typically a candy
bar, even though it may have a name like a granola bar or a sports bar,
it's typically loaded with sugars and is often marketed as an 'energy
bar.'

The phrase, 'Complete, balanced, nutrition,' in my personal opinion, is
an outright lie. This product has nothing resembling complete, balanced
nutrition. In fact, it is not only lacking outstanding nutrition, it
also contains ingredients that are known to deplete nutrients from the
human body: sugar and corn syrup. So these are ingredients that, when
consumed, will tend to deplete certain vitamins and minerals from the
body. You can read some of the studies on that at Google Scholar.

Put another way, you could get practically the same nutrition by
drinking a can of soda and taking a tiny, low-grade multivitamin. That
would be almost identical to this product, in my opinion. Not exactly
the same, but very similar. And yet here for 32 oz, this product sells
for around $5. You can get 32 oz of soft drinks for a fraction of that
price and it gives you much of the same ingredients.

So the bottom line in my opinion, and once again, this is my opinion
only, I believe that the Ensure product is mislabeled: it is misleading
to consumers, and it should be removed from the market by the FDA as a
protection of public health. This product implies that it offers
complete, balanced nutrition, but I believe it does not deliver on that
promise. And thus, I believe it is making unjustified and illegal
health claims on the label and therefore is a threat to the health of
consumers.

What's especially shocking about this product is that the side label
contains instructions, and one of the instruction points literally
says, 'To use as your only source of nutrition, see your doctor.' This
statement is horrifying, because it is implying that people could live
off of nothing but Ensure. I can state with great confidence that any
person attempting to live off of nothing but Ensure would not be very
healthy.

For example, this product apparently lacks trace minerals. It has no
live food enzymes, there are no whole foods in here, there are no
high-density superfood sources, there are no vegetables from the sea,
there are no health-supporting herbs, and even the vitamins and
minerals that it does offer are not in their optimum form for maximum
bioavailability.

Interestingly, Ensure is a product that typifies what's for sale at
places like Walgreen's and Wal-Mart. This is one of a line of products
that includes items like Slimfast and other meal replacement products
that are primarily nothing but sugar-water and yet are promoted as
healthy products that either provide optimum nutrition or promote
weight loss. The Ensure product label even implies that a person might
live off of this product -- an idea that is utterly ridiculous!

These are products purchased by obese, diseased Americans who simply
don't know anything about nutrition. They actually believe the labels
and trust doctors! And they don't read ingredients lists, either.

Products like Ensure or SlimFast seem to imply that they are serious
products for optimum nutrition, but in fact, an honest analysis of
these products reveals that they offer extremely poor nutrition and
they probably do far more harm than good to people who choose to
consume them on a regular basis, as any good nutritionist will tell
you.

Now for legal clarification, I'm not willing to directly state that
Ensure causes diabetes or that Ensure causes weight gain or cancer or
osteoporosis. I can only explain that Ensure is primarily made with
ingredients that are strongly correlated with such diseases. Refined
white sugar, corn syrup, maltodextrin all have very high glycemic index
values and are ingredients that are well correlated with such diseases.
You'll have to figure the rest out for yourself.

Perhaps there could be some miraculous warping of reality where a
product is made from sugar water but has none of the negative health
effects of sugar water. And I am sure that that is what will be claimed
by the legal team of Ross Products, the manufacturer of Ensure, if they
were to see this article and disagree with the educated opinions I have
expressed here.

Personally, I wouldn't drink a bottle of Ensure for any amount of
money. You couldn't PAY me to put this stuff into my body.
_________________

http://www.newstarget.com/002698.html

When I'm out shopping for groceries, I see lots of people purchasing
bottles of Ensure. Typically they are older people, and they are buying
it by the cartload, it seems. The front label of the product says
'Complete, balanced nutrition to help stay healthy, active and
energetic.' And a large label claims, 'No. 1 Doctor-recommended.'

That all sounds good so far, doesn't it? The front label even has a
claim that says 'Lutein to help support eye health.' But what's really
inside this product? And is it a product that really should be
recommended by doctors? Is it a product that's healthy for consumers to
drink on a regular basis?

To find the answers to this question we have to turn to the ingredients
label where we find that the top four ingredients are:

water
sugar
corn syrup
maltodextrin

Let's examine these top four ingredients (which make up the vast
majority of this product) and determine if this a healthy combination
of ingredients for consumers and elderly people.
First, we have water. There's nothing wrong with the water, except for
the fact that you're paying an extremely high price for it in the
Ensure product. So we'll skip water and move on to the next ingredient.

The next ingredient is sugar, also known as sucrose. Sugar is, of
course, a refined carbohydrate. Sugar has been strongly linked to the
promotion of diabetes, clinical depression, weight gain, obesity and
various nutritional deficiencies. It's also an acidic ingredient that
promotes osteoporosis by forcing the body to leach minerals out of its
bones in order to buffer the acidity of the sugar.

Sugar puts extra stress on the pancreas and liver, and if consumed in
large quantities over time, sugar can result in decreased insulin
sensitivity, which is one of the preconditions for adult onset
diabetes. There's a lot more bad news about sugar, including mental
problems such as mood swings, clinical depression, and even violence,
especially in males. But for this review, I'm not going to go into all
of the details of what's wrong with sugar. Read "Sugar Blues" by
William Duffy if you want the whole story. You can also look up some of
the literature yourself with the Google Scholar search engine, which
has 17,300 citations for research about sugar and diabetes: click here
to read it yourself.

So far then, for this Ensure product, we have water and sugar, also
known as sugar-water. That means that the top two ingredients in Ensure
are almost identical to the top two ingredients in soft drinks! And yet
the front label claims, 'No.1 Doctor-recommended!' which of course,
makes you wonder about the nutritional knowledge of these doctors.

It wasn't too long ago that doctors were actually being paid to promote
cigarettes in advertisements that appeared in magazines like Time. So
perhaps, with enough money, you can get doctors to recommend just about
anything, no matter how bad it is for your health. Maybe even sugar
water.

But moving on, the next ingredient is none other than corn syrup! Corn
syrup is also a refined carbohydrate with an extremely high glycemic
index value. Corn syrup (and especially high-fructose corn syrup) has
been linked to diabetes, obesity, problems with blood sugar control and
insulin sensitivity. Corn syrup is frequently used as a sweetener. It
is the primary sweetener in soft drinks, which is one of the reasons
why soft drinks so strongly promote obesity. Click here to read more
research on corn syrup at Google Scholar.

By the way, these top three ingredients so far -- water, sugar, and
corn syrup -- offer virtually nothing in terms of vitamins, minerals
and similar nutrition (see related ebook on nutrition). These are
basically empty calories and they have nothing of nutritive value to
offer to the consumer. Maybe we'll find better nutrition further down
the ingredients list, so let's keep looking.

The next thing we find is maltodextrin, derived from corn. Maltodextrin
is yet another refined carbohydrate that's high on the glycemic index
list. So now we have the top four ingredients: water, sugar, corn syrup
and maltodextrin. That's basically three sweeteners and water. So if
you were trying to be funny, you could call this product
'sugar-sugar-sugar-water,' because that is primarily what it's made of,
according to the ingredients label. Click here to read up on
maltodextrin and diabetes.

After the first four ingredients, you're getting to ingredients of some
substance. The next one is calcium caseinate, which is basically a milk
protein. After that you have safflower oil and canola oil, which of
course are sources of dietary oils. After that we have soy protein,
whey protein, corn oil and so on. Then we have a list of vitamins and
minerals that are added to the product. It doesn't say what the source
of these are, but chances are, these are not plant-sourced vitamins and
minerals. These are probably the least expensive commercially produced
vitamins and minerals available on the market.

So essentially, what you have here with Ensure, is a predominantly
sugar-water product that has been fortified with a few vitamins and
minerals. With that in mind, let's go back to the front label and take
a look at all of the claims. It says, 'Complete, balanced nutrition to
help stay healthy, active, and energetic.'

Well, perhaps the only word that's true here is 'energetic' because in
the food industry, energy is typically associated with sugar. For
example, when you buy a so-called 'energy bar,' it's typically a candy
bar, even though it may have a name like a granola bar or a sports bar,
it's typically loaded with sugars and is often marketed as an 'energy
bar.'

The phrase, 'Complete, balanced, nutrition,' in my personal opinion, is
an outright lie. This product has nothing resembling complete, balanced
nutrition. In fact, it is not only lacking outstanding nutrition, it
also contains ingredients that are known to deplete nutrients from the
human body: sugar and corn syrup. So these are ingredients that, when
consumed, will tend to deplete certain vitamins and minerals from the
body. You can read some of the studies on that at Google Scholar.

Put another way, you could get practically the same nutrition by
drinking a can of soda and taking a tiny, low-grade multivitamin. That
would be almost identical to this product, in my opinion. Not exactly
the same, but very similar. And yet here for 32 oz, this product sells
for around $5. You can get 32 oz of soft drinks for a fraction of that
price and it gives you much of the same ingredients.

So the bottom line in my opinion, and once again, this is my opinion
only, I believe that the Ensure product is mislabeled: it is misleading
to consumers, and it should be removed from the market by the FDA as a
protection of public health. This product implies that it offers
complete, balanced nutrition, but I believe it does not deliver on that
promise. And thus, I believe it is making unjustified and illegal
health claims on the label and therefore is a threat to the health of
consumers.

What's especially shocking about this product is that the side label
contains instructions, and one of the instruction points literally
says, 'To use as your only source of nutrition, see your doctor.' This
statement is horrifying, because it is implying that people could live
off of nothing but Ensure. I can state with great confidence that any
person attempting to live off of nothing but Ensure would not be very
healthy.

For example, this product apparently lacks trace minerals. It has no
live food enzymes, there are no whole foods in here, there are no
high-density superfood sources, there are no vegetables from the sea,
there are no health-supporting herbs, and even the vitamins and
minerals that it does offer are not in their optimum form for maximum
bioavailability.

Interestingly, Ensure is a product that typifies what's for sale at
places like Walgreen's and Wal-Mart. This is one of a line of products
that includes items like Slimfast and other meal replacement products
that are primarily nothing but sugar-water and yet are promoted as
healthy products that either provide optimum nutrition or promote
weight loss. The Ensure product label even implies that a person might
live off of this product -- an idea that is utterly ridiculous!

These are products purchased by obese, diseased Americans who simply
don't know anything about nutrition. They actually believe the labels
and trust doctors! And they don't read ingredients lists, either.

Products like Ensure or SlimFast seem to imply that they are serious
products for optimum nutrition, but in fact, an honest analysis of
these products reveals that they offer extremely poor nutrition and
they probably do far more harm than good to people who choose to
consume them on a regular basis, as any good nutritionist will tell
you.

Now for legal clarification, I'm not willing to directly state that
Ensure causes diabetes or that Ensure causes weight gain or cancer or
osteoporosis. I can only explain that Ensure is primarily made with
ingredients that are strongly correlated with such diseases. Refined
white sugar, corn syrup, maltodextrin all have very high glycemic index
values and are ingredients that are well correlated with such diseases.
You'll have to figure the rest out for yourself.

Perhaps there could be some miraculous warping of reality where a
product is made from sugar water but has none of the negative health
effects of sugar water. And I am sure that that is what will be claimed
by the legal team of Ross Products, the manufacturer of Ensure, if they
were to see this article and disagree with the educated opinions I have
expressed here.

Personally, I wouldn't drink a bottle of Ensure for any amount of
money. You couldn't PAY me to put this stuff into my body.
_________________

http://www.newstarget.com/002698.html