Sipping Your Sustenance -- Drinks Packed With Nutrients Supply A Meal On The Move

They started as sustenance for the sick. Now, TV ads pitch them to the hale and hearty, and more are buying the idea.

You'd never confuse nutritional supplement beverages with "real" food from the farm, yet they're growing on America's eating scene like corn on a hot summer night.

The drinks, sold in single-serving cans or "drink boxes," offer a liquid meal or snack with the pull of a tab. They're crammed with vitamins and minerals, come in flavors like chocolate, vanilla and strawberry and will get you by in a pinch if you lack time for a meal you might actually chew.

With busy Americans caught in a time crunch these days, or worried they're not eating right, more are turning to these products - and finding more of them in supermarkets. Dollar sales zoomed up 80 percent in the year ending Aug. 31, reports the trade journal Supermarket News, placing annual sales at about $200 million.

Once, such liquid supplements went almost entirely to the ill or elderly, prescribed by doctors for those who couldn't eat regular meals or needed extra nutrients or calories. Now, they're marketed to the well and vigorous, young or old.

Newest of the bunch is Boost, from Johnson Mead & Company, which also makes a similar product, Sustacal. Top seller is Ensure, known for years as a supplement for hospital and nursing-home patients. It and Sustacal are still used that way, though TV commercials for both now target healthy, active older people.

Breakfast stand-in

Should you use such products?

University of Washington nutrition expert Dr. Bonnie Worthington-Roberts, thinks they're fine for moderate use, such a stand-in for breakfast or as an afternoon snack. They beat junk food, if that's your alternative.

"Nutritionally, these products are good," she said. "They are meant to be nutritionally complete, and they are. They can be used for multiple purposes."

But she qualified "nutritionally complete." While the products supply good amounts of most essential nutrients, they don't have everything whole foods provide, such as the micro-chemicals in fruits and vegetables that research hints may help prevent cancer or other ills. And most have little or no fiber.

If you use the beverages to replace one or two meals you should also eat at least one regular, balanced meal every day, Worthington-Roberts said.

Chill out

The drinks' taste varies by brand. Tip: Drink them cold; at room temperature, they can be sickly sweet.

What's striking about the products is how similar they are nutritionally, even though marketed to different population groups.

Boost and Sustacal are identical in calories, close in fat levels and fairly close in vitamins and minerals, with some exceptions. Yet Sustacal is aimed at the 55-plus crowd, while Boost targets younger adults ages 25-54, a company spokesman said.

Boost also targets athletic types and calls itself a "nutritional energy drink," though any food with calories supplies energy.

Sustacal touts its "high protein formula," and does contain more protein than most others, but the difference usually isn't great.

Most of the nutritional differences among all the products are relatively minor. Though some supply total daily vitamin C requirements, exceeding competitors, this isn't especially significant because vitamin C is plentiful in most people's diets, Worthington-Roberts said.

Gains and losses

The products are also much like weight-loss meal-replacement drinks, such as Ultra Slim-Fast and Nestle Sweet Success - even though sales in this category are falling.

One difference does stand out among the products: For those who need to gain weight, Ensure Plus and Resource Plus come packed with extra fat and calories. The others are mostly low-fat.

Calcium levels also vary fairly significantly.

But whatever nutrients the drinks deliver, one fact remains: They'll never taste like that sweet corn from the farm.

--------------------------------------------- NUTRITIONAL SUPPLEMENT BEVERAGES - A SAMPLING ---------------------------------------------

-- The percentages of daily values, or recommended levels, are based on a daily intake of 2,000 calories. If your caloric needs are higher or lower, your nutrient needs will be correspondingly higher or lower. -- Except for fat grams, all grams and percentages are rounded off to the nearest whole number. -- Serving sizes are as indicated on containers; weight-control beverages tend to have larger serving sizes. -- Besides the nutrients shown here, the beverages also contain others such as phosphorus, thiamin, zinc and vitamin E, as indicated on labels.

(CHART NOT AVAILABLE ELECTRONICALLY)