Post Published on November 11, 2013.
Last Updated on April 29, 2016 by davemackey.
I’ve been drinking a lot of Ensure nutrition shakes recently. Andrew Vogel suggested that I try Shakeology. It is fairly expensive – $130 for 30 servings ($4.33/serving). Ensure is less than half this expensive – but Shakeology has a good reputation, its ingredients are certainly exponentially superior to Ensure, and home-made meals aren’t as cheap as one would think. So, I jumped and gave it a try…
I ordered it last week and received it on Friday. I started consuming it for breakfast on Saturday and have consumed it each day since then (Saturday, Sunday, Monday). I chose the tropical strawberry flavor. I’m not a huge fan of chocolate and while vanilla is okay, I prefer strawberry.
I had read that chocolate and vanilla the best flavors with tropical strawberry coming in third, but I saw their money-back guarantee which states that they’ll refund me even if I use the entire thing and don’t like it…so I figured why not start out with the least-tasty one and then move to more more-tasty ones if that one didn’t do it for me.
The first thing I don’t like about Shakeology is that it is a powder. An Ensure I can remove from the fridge and drink at a moment’s notice – Shakeology I have to put in a blender, mix a fluid and ice, and spend 5-10 minutes in preparation/cleanup. Bahh, humbug. This is on the upper limit of my tolerance for meal preparation (I know, I don’t have much tolerance at all!), but I’m making the sacrifice. I also realize that when Soylent is released I’ll face the same dilemma.
The next challenge I faced was figuring out how large a scoop was. The package said to use one scoop of Shakeology for each shake I made – but how big is a scoop? 42 grams? Great, that doesn’t really help me! I googled it and discovered I wasn’t the only one struggling to appropriately measure Shakeology. Thankfully, I also discovered there was an easy remedy – a pre-measured scoop inside the bag! Unfortunately, the scoop was buried so I had to fish around a bit (wasting powder which floated into the air and clung to my hand) – but at least they included a scoop. Still, I have to wonder – why include other materials in the box (e.g. instruction booklets) outside of the bag and not include the scoop outside of the bag? This would prevent A LOT of confusion (especially for less tech savvy users who might not use Google to quickly find the answer) and also would avoid unnecessary waste.
Nope, I’m not done complaining. I want to let you know all the bad stuff before I talk about the good. The next issue was using the scoop. First off, it is really tall and it doesn’t have any external numbering on it. It has a line that divides the scoop in half – is that saying that 42 grams is to the halfway mark or is to filling it to the top? I still don’t know the answer – I’ve been too lazy to google it and am currently just filling it to the very top – assuming that when they say “one scoop” they mean “one scoop.”
The scoop is also inferior. Because of its depth it doesn’t usually get a full scoop – there are air pockets. Try as I might I can’t get it to fill entirely with Shakeology powder. So how many powder am I getting? Did they account for this so I’m still getting around 42 grams? Or am I getting 32 grams?
Again, this is an easy fix. Make a regular sized scoop and tell us to make our shakes with two scoops. This should resolve the air bubble problem and doesn’t significantly increase our labor.
The first day I dumped in my powder then 12 ounces of almond milk followed by some ice. I learned that putting the powder in first isn’t the best idea – it doesn’t seem to mix as well and it makes it more difficult to measure out 12 ounces.
I also was frustrated that there wasn’t any indication of how much ice to add – just add ice. Unfortunately, I added too much and ended up with sludge instead of a shake…but I still drank it.
On my second day I used Lactaid fat-free milk (12 oz.) then added the shakeology powder and finally some (less than before) ice. This shake turned out fine.
Today I used Lactaid fat-free milk, the powder, and a bunch of frozen mixed berries. Again, the shake came out fine.
So how does it taste? Hmmm….Sandy? I thought at first the issue might be that I hadn’t added any other ingredients besides the liquid to the powder – and so today I tried adding the berries (a significant number), but the taste was still sandy. I feel the powder granules getting stuck between my teeth, in front of my gums, under my tongue. For somebody with OCD this is a quite unpleasant experience.
I’m using a normal, run-of-the-mill blender by Hamilton Beach – so I’m not sure if it just doesn’t do a good job or completely mixing the ingredients (I doubt it) or if the sandy composition is just inevitable. It doesn’t make it undrinkable – but it certainly isn’t as tasty or pleasant as Ensure.
So my thoughts overall? Well, I’m going to keep mixing and see if I can find anything out about reducing the graininess of the shakes. If I can’t, I’ll probably return it and try vanilla. If I don’t find vanilla to be better flavored, then I’ll likely continue with some sort of nutritional shake – but not Shakeology.
I’ve tried Garden of Life’s RAW Meal previously, which also had a grainy consistency, which caused me to discontinue using it….but if that is the way all these shake powders are, then I might as well go back to RAW Meal which is around 1/3rd the price of Shakeology but still uses high quality ingredients.
Thoughts? Suggestions? Alternatives?
P.S. One other thing I don’t like is that Shakeology is somehow associated with Team Beach Body. Ummm…I’m not looking to form a beach body – just want to be healthy. I don’t really want to go about talking about “beachbody.” I know, I know – not that big of a deal…I’m just saying, not everyone who is using this product is looking to get their “beach body” on.