Ensure drink recommendation

There is a lot of research that indicates carrageenan is bad for out colons. I know personally ensure makes me bleed more because of the carrageenans.

Milkshakes are a great way to gain weight. Whole milk and good quality ice cream are calorie bombs.

You can also make smoothies with whole milk, banana, nut butter, pasteurized raw egg (adds no taste but it's more protein and it makes it fluffier)

Good luck

Despite the long list of dodgy ingredients in Ensure drinks, there are people with Crohn's who have achieved remission through a liquid diet consisting of Ensure. It is lactose and gluten-free, believe it or not, so it could be worse.

That said, it's not a bad idea to make your own, healthier, versions of commercial drinks. But it's better to drink the commercial crap and get the extra calories/nutrients (as needed) than eschew them entirely, unless you do plan on making your own milkshakes and smoothies. I have no personal recommendations, as I drank Fortisips rather than Ensure - Fortisip is like the European version of Ensure. But their website has all the different versions and flavours.

/ensure.com/nutrition-products

I used to make calorific smoothies consisting of whole milk, peanut butter, and bananas. I'd make it unhealthier but tastier by adding banana nesquick, banana ice-cream and/or nutella to the mix - if I'm gonna drink a milkshake, then I want it to be sweet. It was proper nice, and if I needed to put on weight, I'd make them again. I also sometimes made savoury soups but it's hard to pack a lot of calories into a smooth soup - you can add double cream and that's about it.

Edit: Is it the lactose or protein in milk which affects him, do you know? There are lactose-free versions of cow's milk you can buy, but that won't help if he's intolerant to milk proteins rather than milk sugars. Only alternative there is to use a non-dairy milk, like almond milk, coconut milk, etc.

This is my opinion but you couldn't pay me enough to drink those highly processed drinks. For me, carrageenan causes extreme GI distress(think hot burning lava shooting through my GI). It has known inflammatory effects. Just read the ingredients in those drinks. Mostly corn sugar, water, and chemicals. You would be better off making your own drink. Try juicing. Can he do yogurt? Some people that have problems with milk can drink fermented milk like yogurt or Kefir. He could use those as a base for homemade shakes. Also note that 90% of the soy and almond milks contain.

Carrageenan inflammatory properties:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22579587
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3677668/

That is why I prefaced it with in my opinion. Everyone needs to figure out what works for their systems. I don't espouse processed organic food, which can be just as bad as any other processed foods. I do believe in making your own food so you can control the ingredients that work for your body. The carrageenan industry always throws out the degraded vs undegraded argument when in reality we don't know what is going on in the human GI tract with these additives (undegraded being digested to degraded?) The GI tract of a Crohn's patient is not the same as a healthy individual. I believe in doing anything you can to help reduce inflammation and the unknown effects of unnecessary additives.

eridon said...
That is why I prefaced it with in my opinion. Everyone needs to figure out what works for their systems. I don't espouse processed organic food, which can be just as bad as any other processed foods. I do believe in making your own food so you can control the ingredients that work for your body. The carrageenan industry always throws out the degraded vs undegraded argument when in reality we don't know what is going on in the human GI tract with these additives (undegraded being digested to degraded?) The GI tract of a Crohn's patient is not the same as a healthy individual. I believe in doing anything you can to help reduce inflammation and the unknown effects of unnecessary additives.

If you'd rather be safe than sorry, that's absolutely fine by me. But there seems to be no evidence that shows carageenan causes GI inflammation or ulcers at the doses which are typically consumed by humans. Maybe folks with IBD are a special category, maybe not. For me I don't think food makes any different to my inflammation - I starved myself on an elementary diet a few years ago and I still had all the symptoms of Crohn's; diarrhoea (less of it, but not surprising), pain, and fevers.

Put this way: I wouldn't go out of my way to eat anything with carageenan in it. But I wouldn't go out of my way to avoid it either.

eridon said...
This is my opinion but you couldn't pay me enough to drink those highly processed drinks. For me, carrageenan causes extreme GI distress(think hot burning lava shooting through my GI). It has known inflammatory effects. Just read the ingredients in those drinks. Mostly corn sugar, water, and chemicals. You would be better off making your own drink.

To be fair, the 'chemicals' in Ensure are simply the chemical names for various vitamins and minerals. Calling them 'chemicals' is like saying taking a daily vitamin is taking 'chemicals.' You use the term 'chemicals' in a way that implies something negative, and that's not a fair use of the word.

Beave-When I say chemicals I am referring to the Acesulfame and Sucralose which are man-made chemicals. I am not referring to the vitamins.

Beave - More and more soft drink companies in the UK are adding artificial sweeteners to their drinks, because artificial sweeteners are cheaper than real sugar and they can claim the drinks have 40% less sugar (but often they do it on the stealth as well and make no claims to be lower in sugar). It drives me nuts, as there's a few favourite drinks I've had to give up on because of this stealth adding of artificial sweeteners - they taste horrible after a few sips now.

I'm, er, digressing a tad :-/ My point is that it's quite possible Ensure have changed their recipe in recent years.