How well can someone survive, exclusively on products like Ensure or Boost, totally not augmented by actual food?
They may be nutritionally fine, but i think after a time with no actual food, your digestive system would atrophy, you would have a hard time going back to solid foods i think.
yes it would to the point your body cant even physically swallow solid food
my nephew who was bed ridden with a tube in his throat was tube fed a liquid like this and we were told that even if they took the tube out it would be years before he could get used to eating normally again if ever
As we get older, we sometimes no longer feel hungry when we need to eat. The list of things that feel like to much of a bother to eat grows. We still eat, but maybe not enough, or often enough, or in a wide enough variety. That’s when things like Ensure can help fill in the nutritional gaps. They’re really not meant to be the only thing you’re ingesting.
Not directly what you asked, and also anecdotal, but I once tried this for several days due to having had some dental work that made eating solid food difficult. The first 36 hours or so was awesome. What a time saver to “eat” your meals in under a minute! Plus they tasted great. By Day 3 or maybe 4, though, the very sight of an Ensure bottle made me queasy, nevermind the smell of its contents. My body just did not want any more of that game.
Anyway, there’s a lot more to food than raw nutritional numbers. The above was a useful short-term trick to let my mouth heal when I needed it, but it was not sustainable. I would hate to imagine what shape ones intestines would be in with a prolonged course.