By: Emily Ing and Igor Klibanov
As you open up your bottle of Ensure Diabetes Care, make your daily drink and take a sip you wonder “Is this really doing anything?” It’s chalky and tastes meh but people say it’s good for you so you continue to sip on it. That’s when you think “I’ll just search up ‘Ensure Diabetes Care’” and that’s how you ended up here 🙂
Original source here
While Ensure Diabetes Care is recommended very frequently to diabetics as a partial meal replacement, is it really the best drink option? And are there any alternatives? That’s exactly what we’ll cover in this article. Briefly, here’s what we’ll go through:
- What goes into Ensure diabetic drink?
- Nutrition
- Is there any good in Ensure Diabetes Care?
- 3 alternatives to Ensure Diabetes Care
If you want to watch the video version of this article, here it is:
But before we even start, what are the benefits of improving your blood sugar levels (which can also be referred to as blood glucose)?
- Diabetes patients with well-controlled blood sugar levels have better heart health, muscle health, digestive health
- In some cases, controlling blood glucose can help diabetes patients with weight management
- Better immune system health
- It can help with diabetes management and lower risk of developing severe diseases in diabetes patients
- Controlled blood glucose levels can help with a poor appetite by helping your body utilize nutrients, which can once again help with weight management
You might be wondering “what qualifies you to write about Ensure Drinks for diabetics?” Allow me to introduce myself.
I’m Igor. Nice to meet ya 🙂
I’m a personal trainer who has worked with lots of diabetics, like Mandy, John and others to improve their blood sugar control.
Additionally, I’ve been hired to do over 400 speaking engagements by some of Canada’s largest corporations, including American Express, Qualcomm, the Royal Bank of Canada, and others.
And, I’ve published a book, titled Type 2 Diabetes Reversal Secrets, which hit the bestseller status on Amazon.
By the way, you want to get the first chapter of my diabetes book for free? It’s titled 10.5 Diabetes Myths That Are Harming Your Health. If you want it, just fill out the form below, and I’ll send it to you.
What Goes Into Ensure Diabetes Care?
Before we can start we have to take a look at what actually goes into making that popular chalky drink. I know it’s going to just look like a big jumble of letters, but trust me. So here is the list of ingredients that go into Ensure Diabetes Care: Maltodextrin, Calcium Caseinate, Edible Vegetable Oils (High Oleic Sunflower Oil, Soy Oil), Fructose, Cocoa Powder, Minerals***, Fructooligosaccharide (FOS), Soy Polysaccharide, Flavoring, M- Inositol, Vitamins**, Antioxidants (Soy Lecithin, Mixed Tocopherols) Taurine, L-Carnitine and Sucralose.
I know, it’s just a long list of big words (you get bonus points for using these in Scrabble). Just pay attention to the three bolded ingredients: Maltodextrin, Fructose, and Fructooligosaccharide (FOS). These three are the ingredients that actually affect blood sugar levels (which can also be referred to as blood glucose levels). All the rest are various essential vitamins and minerals that are good for you (like vitamin C), but they aren’t in high enough quantities for it to matter (they’re just there to make it look more impressive to the consumer who has no background in nutrition).
Maltodextrin
Oh no, more big words! Don’t worry, maltodextrin (pronounced maal – tow – dek – struhn) is just a type of carb. It’s the main ingredient in Ensure Diabetes Care and a type of carb known as a complex carbohydrate. Complex carbohydrates are carbs that take longer to release sugars into your blood compared to a simple carb such as white bread. The goal is to minimize blood sugar spikes.
Original source here
The fact that it takes longer to release sugars is actually a good thing! So good in fact, they’re called a “slow release energy system.” You see, simple carbs cause spikes, which are then followed by crashes in a short amount of time, which in turn will cause your energy levels to do the same. On the other hand, a complex carbohydrate like maltodextrin causes a slow and steady increase in your blood sugar levels, which helps minimize blood sugar spikes.
But the thing is, there are so many other options for drinks that you can enjoy without your blood sugar rising at all! Drinks like coffee, tea, and water can be great alternatives if you’re looking for something that won’t raise your sugar levels (assuming you don’t add sugar or cream). Maltodextrin is only really great in comparison to sugary drinks such as sodas and artificial fruit juices.
Does maltodextrin slow down the speed of blood sugar rise? Sure. But does it decrease the extent of the blood sugar rise? No. What matters more than the speed is the extent of the blood sugar rise. And maltodextrin doesn’t change the extent – just the speed. Which matters a whole lot less than the extent.
Fructose
Unlike maltodextrin, fructose might actually sound familiar along with its brother and sister sugars, glucose and sucrose. All three are types of sugars that are frequently found in foods. The best way to differentiate is by looking at where they’re found. Sucrose is just a fancy word for processed table sugar, so it can be found in processed goods like candy, and anything with table sugar in it. Fructose is the sugar that’s naturally found in fruits. It also makes up half of sucrose.
Now the reason fructose is found in Ensure Diabetes Care instead of glucose is similar to why maltodextrin is in Ensure. Like maltodextrin, fructose is used to manage blood sugar. It raises blood sugar at a much slower rate compared to other options like glucose. Which causes less blood glucose fluctuation. It’s because of these properties that Ensure chose to put fructose in their drinks opposed to glucose.
Unlike maltodextrin, however, fructose does affect not just the speed, but also the extent of the blood sugar rise.
Fructooligosaccharide (FOS)
I know, the word “fructooligosaccharides” probably just looks like a big jumble of letters that mean absolutely nothing to you. Don’t worry, that’s what I thought at first as well. But fructooligosaccharide (pronounced frookk – tahl – ih – go – sack – uh – ride) can be referred to as just FOS, looks a lot less intimidating now too, right?
Well now you’re probably thinking, “What is FOS? After seeing its super scientific name it must be something important!” Well, not exactly. According to these three studies led by J. Luo, M. S. Alles, and another by J. Luo, FOS was found to affect the blood glucose of non-diabetics but not in people with diabetes.
So in reality, FOS really isn’t doing too much for the target market of Ensure Diabetes Care. But this statement goes for a lot of their ingredients. As I mentioned earlier, a lot of their ingredients aren’t really doing anything since their amounts are so low and instead are just making the label look impressive and full – to someone who has no knowledge of nutrition. To someone with a decent knowledge of nutrition, they’d realize that many ingredients are in there at doses too low to do anything, but impress the consumer.
Nutrition for Ensure Diabetes Care to Improve Blood Sugar Levels
From a nutritional standpoint, Ensure Diabetes Care isn’t that great either. The drink itself contains 96 calories with 4 grams of protein, 13 grams of carbs, and 1 gram of fiber; all of which are low amounts. When looking at dietary fiber especially, the amount that’s in Ensure Diabetes Care is extremely low, a high amount of dietary fiber would be 5 grams or more or 1.5-2 grams for every 10 grams of carbs. However, clearly that is not the case with the levels found in Ensure Diabetes Care.
To give you some context – it is recommended that people get 25-38 grams of fibre per day. People with diabetes need even more. Ensure Diabetes Care only has 1 gram. So nutrition wise, Ensure really isn’t your best bet.
Is There Any Good in Ensure Diabetes Care?
Now you might be asking yourself why you’re even bothering with buying and drinking Ensure Diabetes Care, and is Ensure safe for diabetics? Well, the short answer is probably something along the lines of “It tastes better than broccoli.” And that’s all that it’s really meant to be.
Aside from the maltodextrin and the very low levels of vitamins, we just can’t recommend Ensure Diabetes Care. It’s low fiber, low protein, high carb, and high amount of calories. Yes, it’s better than drinking soda, but it’s cheaply produced and you get what you pay for. If anything, you can get a very similar effect from taking a multivitamin with chocolate milk.
3 Alternatives to Ensure Diabetes Care
Here’s a chart of some of our recommendations for complete or partial meal replacements in comparison to Ensure Diabetes Care.
| Product | Calories | Protein | Fiber | Carbs | Other Micronutrients of Note |
| Ensure Diabetes Care | 96 | 4 | 1 | 13 | Not enough to be useful |
| Vega all-in-one | 160 | 20 | 7 | 13 | 100% of RDA Vitamin D & Vitamin E 90% of RDA Folate 70% of RDA Vitamin C 500% of RDA Biotin |
| Metagenics Ultra Glucose Control | 200 | 13 | 4 | 21 | 80% of RDA Folate 250% of RDA biotin 130% of RDA zinc 340% of RDA Chromium |
All in all, as we said earlier, the nutritional profile of Ensure leaves much to be desired – from its macronutrient profile, to its levels of essential vitamins and minerals.
If you’re worried about lack of flavour options, both of the brands above come in a plethora of flavours. However, only Vega All-In-One is gluten free, so if that’s something that’s important to you, we would highly recommend Vega!
DIY Recipe
- For our final recommendation, if you’re looking for a cost effective alternative, without sacrificing quality, just make it yourself. Just blend up 3 veggies and 1 fruit of your choosing, along with 1 scoop of some high quality protein powder with water and milk. Or for a lactose free version you can use any dairy substitutes and you’ll be golden.
If you’re worried about having the veggies be overpowering in your drink don’t worry. Make sure to choose 1 fruit that you really enjoy and it will cover up most if not all of the veggie flavour!
In the end all we can say is it’s best to try and avoid Ensure Diabetes Care. It’s low fiber, low protein and fairly high carb. The ingredients Ensure chose to include are okay at best and thus aren’t the best options when looking at having a healthy diet. Instead, go for an alternative, be it from a different company like Vega or make a drink yourself. It’ll be better for you and more nutrient-packed!
If you’d like to see how Ensure compares to Glucerna, just fill out the form below, and I’ll email it to you.
