What is Glucerna Good For?

Nutrition has come a long way. The old school nutritionists used to say- get your nutrients from food. The irony now is that food is no longer food! So we get these 'health foods'- in this case an engineered tube feeding formula for diabetics. And along the same marketing lines as pharmaceuticals, the market is expanded to anyone who wants it. This leads to the absurd scenario of a healthy person drinking Glucerna because it's 'good for them'. Sigh, I guess eventually the dinosaurs will die off, and the post modern nutritionists will engineer the perfect health food. But until then, I say you can have your cake and eat it too! If you are generally healthy, and maintaining your weight, and your teeth are not falling out, then you should reward yourself with dessert. After all, isn't that the essence of dessert?

I work as a nutritionist for a long term care chain, and have been weighing the nutritional pros and cons of "nutrition in a can" for the last 10 years.  If you are a diabetic, as I am, you should approach any long term use of these items, including Glucerna, with a skeptic's eye.  While labelled as nutritionally complete, well, it's not going to replace meat & veggies for your body any time soon.  The micronutrients just don't match up.  If you are looking to safely gain some weight, I strongly recommend trying the sugar free Instant Breakfast first.  It's much more economical, contains fresh milk once it's mixed, and doesn't tend to either kill your appetite or slow things down in the GI tract to cause constipation as the canned items will do if used often.  If you are lactose intolerant, the Soy Milk mixes with it just fine and tastes just as good.  If you REALLY need to pack on the pounds, you can even mix it with 50/50 milk and whipping cream or half'n'half for a calorie boost. 

It is important to note that the 8 fluid ounce Glucerna shake says that it is Not for parenteral (IV) feeding and Not for tube feeding, which might not be clear in the article. For what it's worth, the back of the Glucerna shake also says "use under medical supervision."