ensure

Personally, I drink Carnation Instant Breakfast when I'm not doing so well. But I've had Ensure before and it seemed to hold me over well, but it's quite a bit more expensive than CIB.

Most, if not all, Ensure is lactose free. It will say on the front label.

One bit of advice that I have from my experience with Ensure is that you need to drink it slowly. The first one I had I drank rather quickly (< 5 minutes), and I was almost immediately nauseous. If I'm going to drink one now, I usually spread it out over 30-45 minutes. This may not be the case for everyone, but that first time was so unpleasant that I have no desire to repeat it.

My husband when he was in the hospital, and for months later, downed a lot of ensure. It contains a lot of calories, and he did good on it. Now that he's back to his normal weight though, and because we're trying to cut out all the sugars, he has switched to a protein supplement made of whey protein (milk) from GNC which he seems good with.

I think when you're not getting enough calories and enough nutrition from anything else, ensure may be a very good thing indeed.

PV

My daughter's doc put her on it when her Crohn's first reared it's ugly head. She was losing weight fast and was anemic. It really seemed to help stop the weight loss and I know I personally felt better knowing that she was gaining nutrition from it. I believe it is lactose free, I remember reading the label. Hope it helps you.