Give it to the pregnant lady! She'll drink ANYTHING!
Written: Jun 06 '05
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: It doesn't taste awful. In small quantities, it's probably not harmful.
Cons: The health argument holds even less water than the shake itself.
The Bottom Line: Take your prenatal pill, eat a healthy diet and treat yourself to some REAL chocolate. I wouldn't waste my money on this solution in search of a problem.
|
|
|
| theeye's Full Review: Ensure Healthy Mom Shake |
First things first: no, I am not pregnant.
Why, then, you ask (not unreasonably), am I reviewing this rather odd product which purports to provide 'balanced nutrition for pregnant and nursing moms?'
Good question. Odd answer.
I received an email a few weeks ago from a marketing firm representing the makers of Ensure Healthy Mom shakes and snack bars. 'May I send you some chocolate?', the email provocatively began. (Well, that IS a good way to get my attention.)
It would appear that this marketing firm has bought into the 'viral marketing' craze and is under the impression that I, the superannuated mother of a five-year-old, who once, in a past life, wrote a few epinions on baby paraphernalia, would be a good agent for generating some buzz. Ooooookay.
In return for some free samples of their product, the email assured me, '[a]ll we ask in return is that you post an honest review on Epinions.com.' I was dubious, but curious enough to click on the http://www.EnsureHealthyMom.com link.
It probably isn't certified kosher, I said to myself, which would be a deal-breaker for me right there. But, in fact, the shakes do have a kosher certification. (OU-D, for those who care.)
But what about cholesterol, saturated fat and (shudder) the Greatest Evil Of Them All: trans fats? I'm under strict doctor's orders to get my cholesterol down to a safe level and, much to my surprise, my dietary efforts have been showing some real results. If I'm going to cheat on my diet, it sure as hell isn't going to be with some freebie chocolate-flavored swill. Lo and behold, though: the nutritional information, available on the web site (no, I am NOT going to reproduce it here: click on the link yourself), is surprisingly unobjectionable on the cholesterol front.
And so I reviewed the email, found no strings attached, and could think of no immediate reason to turn down an offer which, if not the most thrilling I've ever received, seemed at least to pose no compelling ethical, religious or medical problems. (Yeah, I do tend to overanalyze. It's congenital.)
And they did say 'chocolate'.
And so it was, last week, that a package containing a four-pack each of the ersatz choco-flavor and the artifical vanilla version of the latest entry in the Fake Food Follies arrived at my door.
The first thing I noticed about the shakes was their small size: each bottle contained a mere eight ounces into which two hundred calories and a remarkable array of vitamin and mineral supplements had been packed. A surprising 20% of the calories derive from a hefty 10 grams of protein, apparently in the form of calcium caseinate, a milk-derived protein. (Those who suffer from milk allergies would be well-advised to avoid this product like the plague: that's a lot of concentrated milk protein.) Another 14% derives from fat: primarily high oleic safflower oil and canola oil, which are among the least troublesome fats from a health perspective.
The bulk of the calories, of course, come in the form of good old-fashioned simple carbohydrates: sucrose, to be precise. (Well, how did you think they were going to make a chemical cocktail palatable?) There's no dietary fiber at all and a full 33 grams of carbohydrate in that tiny eight ounce container.
As for taste? The vanilla flavor is cloyingly sweet and not at all to my taste. The chocolate flavor: well, it ranks up there with the best of the Delicious Chocolate Meal Substitutes. There's not much chalky aftertaste, but there's not much recognizable chocolate flavor either. It's ... tolerable. Of course, there's really no accounting for odd cravings during pregnancy. If you have a guilty fondness for, say, a Slim Fast diet shake, you'll find this shake comparable in taste, though a bit thinner in consistency.
Which brings us to an interesting comparison. A Slim Fast shake (I use Slim Fast as a convenient comparison: I presume most such products are similar in composition) is aimed at the weight loss customer; the putative target for an Ensure Healthy Mom shake, on the other hand, is, by definition, not planning or expecting to lose weight. And, yet, the two products are remarkably similar: both consist of a cocktail of vitamin and mineral supplements, injected with milk protein and doctored up with just enough sugar and flavor to make the medicine go down.
Aside from the precise combination of nutrients (the Healthy Mom shake purports to provide those nutrients especially important for pregnant and nursing mothers), the major difference between the products seems to the significantly larger volume of the diet product: a standard 325 ml can of Slim Fast, nearly 40% more volume than contained in a Healthy Mom shake, contains almost exactly the same calories and precisely the same protein content.
In other words, the diet product contains some dietary fiber and, apparently, a lot more water. The pregnant person product, on the other hand, provides an array of artificial nutrient supplements, the most essential of which are already provided, in carefully calibrated doses, by the prenatal vitamins the expectant mom is presumably taking daily.
I am neither a doctor nor a nutritionist, nor, frankly, am I even much of a healthy eater by nature. I am not opposed, in theory, to convenience foods or to artificial supplements. If a pregnant woman finds that an occasional shake of this sort satisfies a craving or one of those sudden and maddeningly urgent pangs of hunger, well and good.
And, yet, I have a very hard time seeing any compelling need for a product of this sort. On the part of its intended users, that is: I can well imagine how it might play an important role as part of a market penetration strategy for a business looking for a new customer base for an old product. Indeed, the notion of removing water and dietary fiber, thus reducing package size and a host of manufacturing and transportation costs, and selling the result to a specialized market willing to pay a premium, is almost as clever as, well, as trying to get your advertising for free.
Recommended:
No
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
theeye
|
|
Location: New York, NY (it's a hell of a town!)
Reviews written: 66
Trusted by: 165 members
About Me:
Company president, math geek, first time mom at 39, epinion addict. Sleep? Not lately.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.