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by aianus 4608 days ago
Which Ensure is formulated to replace food entirely? As far as I can tell, if I drank enough ensure to get 2400 calories, the other nutrients would be out of wack. As in, a given portion does not have the same DV% of each nutrient.

I'd never heard of Fortisip but from what I can tell it and ensure are both considerably more expensive than regular food, and actually more expensive than eating out.
2 comments
DanBC 4608 days ago
I'm not a doctor and I'm not going to give you potentially dangerous advice for you to fuck about with while experimenting on your nutritional intake.

Recommended daily calories are 2000 for adults.

One week of soylent is $65. 48 bottles of Ensure Plus is about $80. 6 bottles of Ensure Plus would be 2100 calories.

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aianus 4608 days ago
To be fair, $65 is the pre-order price and includes a shaker bottle (worth $10) and free shipping.

Looking at the nutritional info if I drank 6 bottles of Ensure Plus each day I would be ingesting 360% of the recommended amount of Manganese and only 60% of the recommended amount of sodium. The rest of the listed nutrients would be at about 150%.

I don't think Ensure Plus is a substitute good for Soylent. It's a supplement not a food replacement and it's formulated and priced as such.

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dragonwriter 4608 days ago
> Looking at the nutritional info if I drank 6 bottles of Ensure Plus each day I would be ingesting 360% of the recommended amount of Manganese and only 60% of the recommended amount of sodium. The rest of the listed nutrients would be at about 150%

Most nutrients with recommended amounts are healthy at higher than recommended amounts within fairly wide bounds, but the usually-listed recommended amount for Sodium is much higher than is minimally necessary, and is actually the upper limit recommended for about half the US population. So, actually, I'm not surprised that something intended as a broadly-usable food replacement would go over on most nutrients and under on Sodium.

http://www.cdc.gov/features/dssodium/

Nutrition isn't one-size-fits-all.

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DanBC 4608 days ago
> It's a supplement not a food replacement

You are wrong.

(http://abbottnutrition.com/brands/products/ensure-plus-retai...)

> For interim sole-source nutrition.

edit: removed unnecessarily grumpy sentence.

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aianus 4608 days ago
Interim means provisional or temporary. Doesn't exactly inspire confidence. I have no idea whether Soylent is actually safe as a permanent sole-source nutrition solution but that's what they're marketing themselves as, and Ensure is not.
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DanBC 4607 days ago
You can keep moving the goal posts but the fact is that Soylent is not new.

> [about use of word "interim"] Doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

> [about safety of Soylent for sole use nutrition] I have no idea whether Soylent is actually safe as a permanent sole-source nutrition solution

This is an amazing sentence. It's fucking mind-boggling the amount of cognitive dissonance that the Soylent marketing guys have created. They deserve the funding for that alone. Like, God-Tier troll and God-Tier marketers.

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MDS100 4608 days ago
They are not marketed this way, because the producers are not insane and/or incompetent. Soylent is more expensive than eating food.
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aianus 4608 days ago
Not if you take into account the time and effort of cooking/cleaning/shopping.

Soylent is prepared food. It's a substitute for cheap restaurants like Taco Bell or Subway, not cooking rice and beans at home.

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