In a chocolate flavor comparison, Nestlé Nutrition claims that BOOST Nutritional Drink provides 100% more Vitamin C and 40% more Vitamin B6, Vitamin B12 and Folic Acid than Ensure Shake. But when I saw the percent difference of Vitamin E, I decided to shake things up myself and look into it further…

Dear Those Who BOOST Energy:

You have advertising running that highlights the key nutrients BOOST Nutritional Energy Drink contains more of compared to an Ensure Shake. The one comparison I don’t understand is Vitamin E, which you claim BOOST has 300% more of than Ensure.

Why would anyone want to ingest 300% more of anything? Isn’t 100% the maximum amount needed on any given day for any nutrient? The only thing I’d like 300% more of is income. Why would I need 300% more Vitamin E?

How much Vitamin E is too much? One study suggests that daily doses of 400 IU or more of Vitamin E can actually increase the risk of dying. I didn’t do the study so I can’t vouch for its accuracy. I don’t even know what an IU is, but I do know that no matter how much energy BOOST provides, it won’t be enough if I’m dead. What do your nutritional scientists have to say about this? Not about me being potentially dead, about the level of Vitamin E in BOOST.

Is it also true that certain rodents require Vitamin E for normal reproduction? Did you do any testing on mice or rats when formulating BOOST? Will giving rodents BOOST to drink with all that Vitamin E turn them into super breeders?

The Nestlé Nutrition Contact Center Director, Consumer Affairs responded with:

Thank you for your recent letter and for your interest in Boost®. We are glad to have an opportunity to write to you.

Boost®, Boost® High Protein, and Boost Plus® all contain 30 IU of Vitamin E per 8 fl oz serving. This is 100 percent of the recommended daily value for Vitamin E. When compared to the amount of Vitamin E in the various Ensure® products they may contain 150-300 percent more than their comparable Ensure® counterpart. Vitamin E has a Tolerable Upper Limit (UL) of 1,000 IU per day. Consuming this level over time could put the body in at toxic level. As you see, although Boost nutritional drinks provide 100% of the Daily Value, the level provided is well below the Tolerable Upper Limit.

Again, thank you for taking the time to contact us. Letters are always welcome and our toll-free number, (phone number followed), is a convenient way to contact us. Our representatives are available (hours of operation followed).

Final Thoughts: According to my calculations, if an 8 fl oz serving of BOOST Nutritional Energy Drink contains 30 IU of Vitamin E, you would need to drink about 33.33 bottles of it per day to reach the 1,000 IU Tolerable Upper Limit. Considering that most people have enough trouble keeping up with drinking 8 glasses of water a day, 33 bottles of BOOST seems like a stretch, so it appears that Vitamin E-icide shouldn’t be an issue.

The nutritional statistics of an 8 fl oz chocolate serving says BOOST Nutritional Drink provides 100% of the Daily Value for Vitamin E. For a Creamy Milk Chocolate Ensure Shake, it’s 25%. This would all be much easier to understand if they just said BOOST has four times the % daily value of Vitamin E than Ensure. Better yet, instead of % daily values, why not talk in terms of what the daily requirement of Vitamin E actually is? How did they arrive at 300% more and what does it really mean when all that matters is you’re getting 100%? Then again, maybe I’m missing something because I never did very well on math tests. The only tests I ever passed consistently were blood tests, so perhaps I should ask a phlebotomist to explain all this to me. In any case, I’ve reached my Tolerable Upper Limit for trying to figure it out and I’m so drained that I can’t decide whether I need a BOOST, an Ensure Shake, or a nap.

The response also included a couple of marketing pieces reinforcing the nutritional advantages of BOOST products over Ensure products. One thing the Director, Consumer Affairs didn’t nibble on were the questions about the affects of BOOST on rodents. Rats! That would have been fascinating and probably easier to understand.

Compare BOOST Nutritional Energy Drinks to Ensure Complete, Balanced Nutrition Shakes for yourself. I also wrote Abbott Nutrition, makers of Ensure products, for their thoughts about BOOST having 300% more Vitamin E. I’ll post that exchange next in Round 2: BOOST vs. ENSURE. Finally, when you find any information about a product or its advertising hard to swallow, you might be able to clarify the confusion if you Write The Company.