Ensure powder is a nutritional supplement that can be used in a variety of ways to help support your health.
It is made by Abbott Nutrition that comes in a powdered form. It contains a balanced blend of proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals designed to provide complete, balanced nutrition when mixed with water or other liquids.
With its rich nutritional profile, Ensure can be used in a variety of ways to help support health and meet nutritional needs.
Uses for Health Support
One of the main uses of Ensure is to provide supplementary nutrition to help support various aspects of health:
Weight Gain
If you are underweight or struggling to put on pounds, Ensure powder can help. Thanks to its high calorie and protein content, adding Ensure to your diet makes it easier to consume more calories and nutrients to spur weight gain.
For example, you can:
- Make high-calorie shakes with fruits, nuts, milk etc.
- Add it to foods like oatmeal, smoothies, yogurt.
- Drink between meals to increase total caloric intake.
Consuming enough total calories and protein is key for building lean muscle mass and gaining weight in a healthy way.
Recovery After Surgery/Illness
Due to surgery, chronic conditions, or illnesses like cancer, your body's need for nutrition skyrockets. At the same time, issues like low appetite, digestive problems, or swallowing difficulties can make it hard to eat enough.
Adding Ensure to your diet supplies concentrated, balanced nutrition to aid healing and recovery. Its easy digestibility takes pressure off your digestive system.
Sipping Ensure consistently helps you meet increased nutrition needs required for rebuilding strength after you’ve been sick or had surgery. Your body needs strength to heal itself.
Improve Appetite
A number of factors like age, medications or treatments can negatively impact appetite and food intake. Older adults often struggle with smaller appetites that lead to decreased food consumption and weight loss.
Drinking calorie and protein-packed Ensure is an easy way to get extra nutrition in when you’re just not hungry enough to eat solid foods. Maintaining proper nutrition keeps energy, strength and health stable even with a shrinking appetite.
Reduce Fatigue
Feeling constantly tired and run down - no matter how much rest and relaxation you get - could indicate an underlying nutritional deficiency. Lacking key nutrients hampers your body’s ability to produce sufficient energy.
Sipping on Ensure throughout the day is a convenient way to supplement your diet with a powerhouse blend of carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins & minerals vital to energy production. Reduced fatigue helps improve quality of life.
Boost Immunity
Your immune system is responsible for fighting infection and keeping you healthy. But it depends on getting enough zinc, antioxidants (vitamins A, C, & E) and protein from your diet to function properly.
Ensure delivers high concentrations of zinc & antioxidants to bolster immune cells. It also contains easy-to-digest protein to provide amino acid building blocks needed for rapidly creating new immune cells to battle pathogens. A strong immune system defends against sickness.
Everyday Uses
In addition to supporting health needs, Ensure powder is an easy, nutritious addition to your everyday meals and snacks in simple ways like:
Add to Foods
Stir or sprinkle Ensure powder into a wide variety of foods and dishes to give them a nutritional upgrade, including:
- Hot cereals like oatmeal or cream of wheat
- Yogurt, cottage cheese
- Soups, stews
- Casseroles, pastas, rice dishes
- Puddings
- Baked goods like breads, muffins
Adding Ensure boosts proteins, vitamins and minerals in meals and snacks without changing taste or texture.
Shake Mix-Ins
Whip up tasty, nutritious shakes and smoothies with Ensure powder as the base. Then flavor and customize by blending it with ingredients like:
- Fruits like bananas, berries, pineapples
- Vegetables such as spinach, kale
- Nut butters
- Milk, juice or yogurt
- Cocoa powder
- Seeds or oats
The options for delicious high protein shakes with Ensure are endless. Shake up your routine by trying out new flavor combos.
Homemade Sports Drink
After an intense or endurance workout, you need carbs and electrolytes for replenishing glycogen (energy) stores and staying hydrated. Save money without sacrificing nutrition by mixing up an easy homemade sports drink with Ensure.
Dissolve Ensure powder along with a pinch of salt into water or juice. The carbs and balanced vitamin/mineral profile make it an ideal “recovery drink” to optimize workout performance and results.
Special Uses
In certain situations, Ensure can be useful as:
Meal Replacement
If preparing or chewing/swallowing food has become difficult or tiring due to age, illness or disability, Ensure makes an excellent nutritional stand-in for meals. It delivers complete, balanced nourishment in an easy to drink form.
Having the option to shake up an Ensure drink removes the burden of food shopping/preparation while still meeting daily nutritional requirements. Convenience promotes adequate intake.
Tube Feeding Formula
Those unable to swallow safely often rely on tube feedings to get their nutrition. Ensure’s smooth, pudding-like consistency makes it easier to administer through a feeding tube than solid foods.
Avoiding choking hazards takes priority for tube feeding. Fortifying the liquid formula concentrate with Ensure powder creates a nutritionally balanced “meal in a bag” for simple gravity or pump feeding.
Meeting full protein, vitamin and mineral needs with tube feeding enhances healing, functioning and comfort.
Low Residue Diet
Some intestinal disorders like Crohn’s or diverticulitis require following a low fiber, low residue diet to rest the gut while it heals. Since excess fiber can’t be properly digested, a low residue diet allows better nutrient absorption.
With its high protein and low fiber formulation, Ensure supplies easy-to-digest nutrition that won’t aggravate conditions causing intestinal inflammation or blockages. Adequate calories also help prevent unwanted weight loss.
FAQs
How should Ensure powder be prepared?
The standard recommended serving size is 2 scoops (46g) of powder mixed with 8 ounces of cold water or liquid. But amounts can be adjusted based on your individual needs and preferences. For the best flavor, use chilled water or juice and shake or blend thoroughly to dissolve.
When is the best time to drink Ensure?
Ensure can be consumed at any time of day. It makes a convenient on-the-go breakfast or snack. Many people prefer drinking Ensure between meals as a nutritious pick-me-up when appetite or energy lags. Post-workout is also excellent timing for refueling tired muscles.
Can Ensure powder be added to hot foods or liquids?
Yes. While Ensure has the best flavor when prepared with cold liquids, it can safely be stirred into hot cereals, soups or other foods after cooking. Just avoid letting it boil, as high, prolonged heat can degrade some nutrients.
Should Ensure be refrigerated after mixing?
When prepared ahead of time, it’s best to store mixed Ensure drinks in the refrigerator. But for convenience Ensure can be kept at room temperature for up to 4 hours without compromising safety or nutritional quality. Refrigeration can help minimize separation of ingredients.
Conclusion
Ensure delivers a power-packed nutritional profile that makes it incredibly versatile for supporting health or simply supplementing your daily diet.
It can help address nutritional deficiencies behind fatigue, appetite loss, impaired immunity, poor wound healing and unwanted weight fluctuations. Or be used to add extra protein, vitamins & minerals to foods, shakes and snacks.