I had a similar question a while ago:
Original Post RE: Ensure Text from post:
"Great question and I have wanted to look into it so here are my thoughts.
First lets take Ensure nutritional supplement. It is basically designed for people that don’t have the wherewithal to consume nutritional foods alone.
A weight gainer such as GNC’s powder weight gainer mix.
http://www.gnc.com/productDetails.asp?id=350477 is made for healthy people that are planning on doing a lot of heavy activity (surviving in our case).
Now there is a little give and take here but I think I am in favor of the Weight gainer. Lets take a look at some rough numbers then you can decide.
The numbers:
Ensure liquid form is approximately 250 calories per 8 oz can. For the sake of conversation let’s assume you carry four cans for each day you plan to be “out”. That is a total of 1000 calories and 32 ounces of liquid.
Weight gainer is in powder form. (I hope you can follow this) Weight gainer is approximately 600 calories per serving with 8 oz of water. So let’s just guess that the dry weight of weight gainer for the equivalent of 3, 8 oz servings is 8 ounces dry weight. We know for a fact that 8 ounces of water per serving times 3 servings will be 24 ounces. This gives us a weight of 32 ounces total for water and weight gainer powder.
Bottom line is 32 ounces of weight for Ensure gets you 1000 calories that are put together for the elderly. Or 32 ounces of weight gainer for a minimum of 1800 calories that are put together for active people.
If anyone can come up with a better product please let me know I am very interested.
Cameron
Chicago IL"
Cameron now living in Seattle