Venise Wilson

ENG101

Dr. E. McCormick.

May 14, 2011

                                        Daily Value of Ensure

     Ensure provides a series of nutrition products that are used in many hospitals, nursing homes and even prescribed by some doctors to use at home. These products that are supposed to be healthy for you cause more damage than you know.  Diabetes, heart attack, and obesity are diseases Americans struggle to keep in control. People need to know the truth about what they are putting in their body. Ensure supplement should be number one on the list, because people need to know how bad it is for their health.

     The total amount of sugar that is in a single serving of ensure shake is twenty-three grams. There is no daily value of sugar intake because sugar consumption should be as little as possible. Kimberly A. Tessmer says in her article Nutrition & Dieting /Max RDA of Sugars “There is no current RDA for sugar.” People are told to consume as small amount of sugar as possible. They are told to get sugar mostly from fruits and vegetables. Foods that have high sugar content can cause diabetes. Type two diabetes is a disease many Americans are suffering from. According to Generation Extra Large “In San Antonio, diabetes is now the fourth-leading cause of death, up from the eight leading cause in 1992.”(30) Ensure has so many sugars in it and the labels says that it is the number one doctor recommended. The ensure company is trying to sell their product by having consumers thinking it is good for them because the label states doctor recommended and people are taught to trust doctors. Some people might think this drinks is good for them because it is high in protein. Yes it is high in protein, but it is also high in other things that are not good for them. If people want to eat high protein meal, grill a piece of chicken breast or fish fillet. The author of Elementary food science states that “Generally, animals proteins are complete proteins…” (17) People will get enough protein and other nutrients, without consuming other unnecessary additives that are in ensure. Also they may use ensure shake in the hospital for patient who undergoes surgery and cannot consume solid meals. If a person is in that situation, why not puree the freshly cooked meat and serve it to the patient? Not all people can cope with the amount of sugar that is in ensure even if they are getting a high source of proteins from it. For example, my friend Amina is diabetic. One day after visiting the doctor she was told that she needed more protein in her diet. Her friend recommended ensure nutrition drinks, but when Amina read the label at the supermarket she knew right away that ensure would be bad for her health. The amount of sugar content in Ensure products are bad for diabetes patients and even a healthy person who is drinking it to get the protein value.  Ensure causes more problems than solutions because it is high in sugar which is not good for your health.

     Ensure energy bar has four and a half grams of saturated fat. Saturated fat is known to cause heart attacks and strokes. These bars are used for patients who are weak and need energy. It is difficult to imagine a heart patient recovering from heart surgery and is put on ensure diet to boost their energy level. This patient would never get out of the hospital. Saturated fat should be avoided or consumed in small amount as possible. Susan G. Dudek states “With heart disease and stroke, the type of fat may be more important than the amount of fat.” (66)  If a patient has two bars of ensure a day and a regular meal for dinner plus snack in-between meals, they will go over the daily value of saturated fat. The two nutrition bars alone have a total of forty-six percent of the daily value. This is much higher than the protein, vitamin D, K, and B12 that is in it. The patient should have multivitamin pills instead. The pills do not have saturated fat and the patients will get so much more from them than eating an ensure bar. Ensure will not cure or prevent any diseases yet these nutrition products are recommended by doctors. Stuart Elliot states “The genesis of the exhibit was an ad from around 1930 for lucky strike cigarettes, which shows a doctor above a headline proclaiming that “20,679 physicians say ‘Luckies are less irritating.’”” (NYT) Bad products such as ensure are advertised by doctors because they are receiving donations from the company.

      There are thirty-four grams of carbohydrates in a serving of ensure supplement. If a sick person who is bed ridden is put on ensure supplement. That would be too much for the patient because they would not benefit from all those carbohydrates. The main function of carbohydrate is to give the body energy. Most athletes eat food with high carbohydrate so they could get enough energy to perform their athletic skills. Bed ridden patients don’t need all that energy because they are not moving around and all those carbohydrates they are consuming, just going to be stored as fat in their body. As Louis J.Ronsivalli and Ernest R.Viera state “Humans derive their energy mainly from carbohydrates…” (19) If that energy from the carbohydrate is not used up, the carbs will easily turn to fat and there is a great chance that a person may become obese. This country has a high percentage of people suffering from obesity. They don’t need additional products which will make the problem worse.

     Ensure products are widely use in America and they have a lot of unnecessary additives which are unhealthy for you. If something is bad for human’s health, it is supposed to be banned, not have a label stated that it is number one doctor recommended. Ensure products are bad for people because they contain high level of sugar, saturated fat and carbohydrates. This is what most doctors want people to eat less to maintain a healthy life style.

       

Works cited

Dudek G. Susan. Nutrition Essentials for Nursing Practice. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams &Wilkins, 2006. Print.

 Elliott, Stuart. When Doctors, and Even Santa, Endorsed Tobacco. NYTimes.com. The New York Times. Oct 7, 2008. Web. May 24, 2011.

Ronsivalli J. Louis. Elementary Food Science. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1992. Print.

Taratamella, Lisa, Elaine, herscher, and Chris, Woolston. Generation Extra Large: Rescuing Our Children from the Epidemic of Obesity. NEW york: Basic Book, 2004. Print.

Tessmer A, Kimberly. Nutrition & Dieting / Max RDA of Sugar. Allexperts.com. Jan 25, 2005. Web. May 5, 2011.