What supplements nutritional milk powder for the elderly?

To put it simply, it supplements high-quality animal protein, calcium + vitamin D, which are most commonly lacking in the daily diet of the elderly, as well as some targeted trace elements. It is essentially used to check and fill deficiencies in the diet, and is not a magic medicine.

A while ago, I accompanied Aunt Zhang downstairs to get the physical examination report. She has been a vegetarian all year round and has several missing teeth. She cannot chew lean meat no matter how rotten it is. She is lactose intolerant and has flatulence even after drinking pure milk. Last year, her bone density has reached the critical value of osteopenia, and her blood albumin level has just dropped. The doctor asked her to make a cup of lactose-free high-calcium and high-protein milk powder for the elderly every morning and evening. After drinking it for less than half a year, her bone density did not drop any further, and her albumin also increased by 0.3 units. She said that her legs were not weak even when she climbed the third floor.

However, there are more and more gimmicks in elderly milk powder on the market. Whether these additional ingredients are useful or not is really controversial. Let’s talk about the ones with probiotics and prebiotics. Some elderly people have slow gastrointestinal motility and only defecate once every two or three days. They usually don’t like to drink yogurt and eat fermented foods. If you choose a model with enough live bacteria and drink it for a month, you will really feel that your bowel movements are much smoother. ； But if you drink live yogurt every day and have green leafy vegetables every meal, the probiotics added to the milk powder may not be enough for a meal of yogurt, and you won’t feel much after drinking it. There are also those models that mainly add lutein, DHA, and EPA. If the elderly rarely eat dark green vegetables and almost no sea fish, then supplementing them is indeed good for vision, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, but if the diet is quite balanced, it is really wrong. You spend twice as much money to buy this kind of functional model. My aunt has followed the trend and bought more than 300 cans of the "brain and eye protection" model. She usually eats steamed seabass twice a week and stir-fries spinach every day. She doesn't feel anything special after drinking two cans. She just paid the IQ tax.

Many people also ask whether they can rely on milk powder for the elderly to replace meals to supplement nutrition. Don’t be stupid. I have met some elderly people who were afraid of high blood sugar and only drank milk powder every day. On the contrary, they did not have enough calories and dietary fiber, and they lost weight quickly. It is just a dietary supplement. Just drink a cup of it with steamed buns in the morning and it will make you more full than plain porridge. When you have no appetite after the surgery, make a cup of it thicker and it will be more effective than random unknown supplements. It would be outrageous to expect it to cure all diseases.

All in all, when choosing, it depends on what you are lacking in your daily meals. If you can't eat meat or drink milk, choose the basic model with high protein and high calcium. If your stomach is always uncomfortable, choose the one with active probiotics. Don't spend more money just for the "decathlon" promoted by the merchants.