[berberous]

I've read on the Soylent message board and various related sub-reddits that Ensure and similar products are indeed not as nutritionally optimal. Specifically, many of them are loaded with sugar so that they taste good. Which may be okay for 1 meal, but bad if you are using it regularly. Also, they probably are more expensive.

That said, Ensure is usually the product I hear has too much sugar. I'd be curious if anyone with more knowledge has looked into this issue more, or compared the nutritional components of the major players in that market.