It’s something that, as of late, requires my attention and possibly yours.
Protein drinks. In particular, the meal replacement kind that are geared towards seniors and cancer patients. Never thought of them? Consider yourself lucky.
I never thought of them either, until a friend of mine was going through cancer treatments with his wife.
Treatment and Advice
Note: I’m not a doctor — just a Certified Nutrition Expert (ACN) and health nut sharing what works for me. Always check with your healthcare team before making dietary changes, especially during cancer treatment.
The body really takes a beating going through cancer treatment. The process of completely irradicating your immune system so the radiation/chemo isn’t fighting your body’s defense system AND the cancer is trauma on trauma. Food is not on anyone’s mind but the need to nourish remains.
So the solution provided to the patient is a pre packaged 16oz bottle high in calories to keep up their strength.
I won’t mention the brand but we all know which one is the market leader.
This also comes with a huge amount of sugar and artificial ingredients.
I mean eyeball popping HUGE amount of added sugar and artificial ingredients.
The patient can consume up to 3 or more of these per day!
At this point in recovery EVERYONE is just trying to get through each day in one piece.
As someone who is interested in everyone’s healing journey through any ailment, hearing about this protein drink recommendation took me aback.
Is this ideal?
I started doing the macros and creating new, tasty comparatives and you know what, it was doable without adding in any refined sugar.
The goal was to create a satisfying drink to rebuild that immune system and nourish the body.
WARNING– GEEK STATS AHEAD
This is SHOCKING
So I did the research and all the ground work on it and then just sat with it but now I’m sharing! Here’s what I found:
*Simple carbs are like candy or fruit juice — your body uses them super fast, but the energy doesn’t last long. **Complex carbs are like whole grains, beans, or veggies — they take longer to use, so they give you steady energy that lasts.
At first glance it looks like the store-bought might be the way to go. It’s supposed to. The label is accurate but not completely forthcoming.
Allow me to explain 2 things:
1. All Sugar is not Created Equal
To understand the nutrition part of this you need to look at the sum of it’s parts when it comes to sugar. Here’s the calculation:
On the store-bought nutrition we have:
Total Carbohydrate = 96 g
Dietary Fiber = 2 g
Total Sugars = 44 g (includes both natural + added)
Added Sugars = 42 g
Natural Sugars = 2 grams
The home-made nutrition is this:
Total Carbohydrate = 69 g
Dietary Fiber = 17.2 g
Total Sugars = 40 g (includes both natural + added)
Added Sugars = 0 g
Natural Sugars = 40 grams
Sugar is sugar. HOWEVER the sugar in the home-made smoothie comes from natural ingredients, as a package deal. It is part of vitamins, minerals and fiber. The store-bought is refined sugar that is added on it’s own. Our body responds to these sugars differently:
Natural Sugars → liver-heavy processing, little insulin spike.
Health impact: Small amounts (like from whole fruit) aren’t a problem — the fiber, water, and nutrients help balance things. But large added doses of either fructose or sucrose (soda, candy, sweetened foods) can overload the body.
2. Ingredient List
I am going to leave this here:
Home-made
Store-bought
1 1/2 cups milk 1/2 banana small Avocado 1/2 cup blueberries 1/2 can coconut milk 2 tbsp peanut butter 1 scoop protein powder 1 tbsp hemp seed
Shared with love from a Certified ACN nutrition enthusiast — always check with your care team to be sure it’s right for you.
I Chickened Out
You see even though I had figured out a way to mainline nutrition into this very battle weary person it wasn’t going to work.
The caregiver was uprooted from any stable home situation and so emotionally distraught there was no way he could take this on and keep it together for himself, his wife and life stuff in general.
That’s the reality for most (if not all) people on the inner circle of the affected person.
Than, it happened again.
Another cancer diagnosis of a friend, another brutal treatment process.
Same situation.
So…it started to bug me
I finally committed to it with the understanding that if you are ABLE to, there is this really great support you can provide.
It was never my intention to make someone feel bad for being too overwhelmed to look closer at nutrition, I’m the nutrition nut and love to talk about it. This realization that my concern could appear judgmental from their point of view alarmed me. It alarmed me so much so that it stopped the whole process of sharing right in it’s tracks. How horrible to see it from that perspective! I weighed the pros and cons on if ‘sharing’ this would do more harm then good. Then just filed it and walked away.
The information was too valuable to just discard, so after it sat rent-free in my mind for 8 years and was presented a similar situation again, it was definitely time to share it.
Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing’s going to get better it’s not.
The Lorax, Dr. Seuss
I care – a lot, if a blog post about healthy choices helped one person and insulted one person I would take that as a win but also apologize.
In a perfect world we would all be doing all the right things all the time.
For everything.
It’s not possible. But it is possible to just try your best with what you have, at that time.
Good Intentions are Never a Bad Thing
Armed with the motivation of love for your fellow person, you move forward with good intentions.
That’s it.
It seems to me someone in the outer circle of a cancer patient could feel so much less helpless by providing smoothies on a visit rather than casseroles. Some people feel the need to do more but don’t know what that means. This could be it?
It’s been 8 years in the making, it never left my heart and weighed heavily on me for this stupid paralysis that overcame me.
If you’re interested in my original source of inspiration check out this post .
This the original protein drink meal replacement I created:
1 1/2 cups milk, cashew/oat/almond/regular
1/2 banana
1 small avocado, (1 cup)
1/2 cup blueberries
1/2 can coconut milk
2 tbs peanut butter
1 scoop protein powder
1 tbsp hemp seed
This protein drink meal replacement recipe can be easily adapted to taste, watered down for consistency, lowered in fat content by using 1/2 avocado and less peanut butter and meal prepped into single serving – ready for the blender portions.
Once I started this dive down into the Protein drink rabbit hole I dedicated the time. This website is filled with healthy recipes (including smoothies) like these ones:
FTB 
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