Meal Replacement Shakes – a Healthy Choice or Chemical Cocktails?

I’ve met people who feel that protein shakes and meal replacement shakes are not a healthy food choice because they are not “natural”.

The truth is – high quality protein and meal replacement shakes can provide nutritional value and health benefits unattainable through traditional healthy food.

Talk to anyone who looks healthy, vibrant and fit after 45 – chances are they will tell you that they use some form of protein shake or meal replacement on a daily basis.

We can envy the unpolluted food supply of our ancestors. Our ancestors, on the other hand, would have had good reason to envy nutritionally dense “scientifically designed” meals made available to us through advances in nutritional science and modern food processing techniques.

Imagine a hundred or more micro and macro nutrients – protein, healthy carbohydrates, essential oils, vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, fiber, and more – all in an easily absorbable form – put together in a tasty low calorie shake that takes a minute to prepare and a minute to consume. Something like food for astronauts on a long space flight – the perfect combination of potent nutrients going right into your cells. This gives you an idea of what you get from the best meal replacement shakes.

Meal replacement shakes are often confused with protein shakes. Though good protein shakes may contain many beneficial nutrients in addition to protein their main purpose is to provide additional protein but not to replace a complete meal.

Integrating high quality meal replacement shakes into your daily eating routine has several important advantages.

Your daily meal replacement shake:

  • Serves as “nutritional insurance”:  even if you did not manage to eat perfectly at your other meals, you can still have peace of mind knowing that your body received a significant portion of good nutrition.
  • Provides additional health benefits through various extra ingredients such as probiotics, digestive enzymes, antioxidants, plant superfoods, etc. (these ingredients vary for different products).
  • Helps with healthy weight management by both decreasing your calorie intake and providing additional protein to support lean muscle mass and fat loss.
  • Saves a lot of time and effort! It feels good to know that you are able to provide your body with a nutritionally complete tasty meal with extra health benefits and without caloric overload in just a couple of minutes.

A good daily healthy eating strategy is combining one or two meal replacement shakes with respectively two or one wholesome meals and a couple of healthy snacks.

Do not just buy any protein shake or meal replacement shake you find on the store shelf even if it is a health store. Do your research first.

Look at ingredients and make sure they are all natural without any artificial additives. Choose products that provide multiple benefits. Make sure that the manufacturing company has a good reputation.

You also want to know what kind of protein is used (I like whey for its anti-aging benefits), where it comes from (better from organic sources) and how it has been processed (cold processing for whey protein is very important).

My personal favourite meal replacement is whey based  Isagenix IsaLean Shake in Dutch Chocolate.  I have been having it for breakfast for over a decade. I also like whey based Isagenix Whole Blend Shake in French Vanilla with added fresh berries.

Each of those two shakes is a complete meal replacement with an exceptional nutritional profile that contains multiple nutrients essential for the healthy functioning of almost all body processes. Each portion contains 24 grams of the highest grade cold processed whey protein from the milk of caws raised on the pristine pastures of New Zealand, never injected with hormones and steroids and fed on grass never treated with pesticides and herbicides.

For those who like to mix their own shakes using a protein powder, Isagenix offers a pure form of the same unique New Zealand whey protein as another product – IsaPro Whey Protein.

If your are putting together a weight loss or muscle building program for yourself don’t forget to include meal replacement shakes in your nutritional plan – they will help you to achieve your desired results faster and with less effort.