I love these shakes and I don't even have diabetes
As a business owner, time is always lacking, so I've been on the liquid meal replacement bandwagon for a while. I was drinking Soylent for around 2 years, those are very satisfying but I always felt had too many calories, too much fat, and were a little too "thick". Also, my digestive system did not appreciate ingesting so much soy every day. So when Soylent recently jacked up their prices, which were already BY FAR the most expensive in the "meal replacement nutritional shake" category, I got motivated to try other things. I started with Ensure, which I liked a lot, but it has way too much sugar (22g per 8oz bottle). So over a few weeks time, I also ending up trying Glucerna, Boost, and Walmart's generic "Equate" shakes. I wanted to try Slimfast too but the normal one has a ton of sugar and the high protein one is low sugar but really expensive. Also I'm not trying to lose weight with these, so just the stigma of being associated with "dieting" kinda kept me away. I did want to try it though. Flavor is important because if you don't like it, you're not going to drink it. They're all pretty similar honestly in flavor and texture, all pretty good, except for Equate - that one isn't just "okay", it's actually bad. Very chalky. Beyond flavor, I was pretty sure I liked Glucerna best because the numbers looked good on the back but I could never be sure until I made a spreadsheet to compare them all (photo attached). I tracked 9 unique variables that I cared about, and out of all the drinks I tried, Glucerna is best or well above average in 6, and average in the other 3. It is more expensive than all the other options, but only a little. Not significantly enough to flag it as a negative. I didn't track vitamins and minerals because all of these drinks are about the same - all have 23-26 of them, and mostly 25-35% daily value for each one. I did make an exception for potassium though because it varied widely, and it's a really important one. So yeah, Glucerna is by far the best nutritional shake out there by a long shot. Whether or not you're diabetic, the low glycemic index is good for staying satisfied longer with whatever you ingest. So it's going to be my drink of choice going forward. Boost is second place, and I've seen it on sale for half the price of Glucerna, so I will be buying that sometimes too. Having zero fiber is a real bummer though, Boost is the only one with actually zero (vs 6g for Glucerna). But otherwise it's a very solid choice as well
Read More...
