My Response to The New York Times Article

Corn syrup and maltodextrin... just to name a few ingredients of a typical oral nutritional supplement. A bottle of oral nutritional supplement typically contains about 20 to 23 grams of sugar. Sounds terrible, right?

Yes, making fruit smoothies with yogurt may be a great substitution for conventional liquid oral nutritional supplement. All the fresh ingredients and probiotics in one drink. Imagine all of your patients getting one of these smoothies everyday. It would take three extra full-time equivalents just to make smoothies all day. In reality, it's not economical, it's ideology.

The idea of telling my acutely sick patients to only eat healthy food seems to be the equivalent of telling my patient who did not eat well for days to just eat a celery stick because it's healthy.

When one is sick, they often lose his/her appetite and eat inadequately. A high protein, high calorie liquid oral nutrition supplement becomes a quick fix to such patient. But an experienced registered dietitian will choose an oral nutrition supplement that contains 350 calories and 20 grams of protein in an eight fluid ounce serving, not the one that Dr. Lieberman describes in his article. Dr. Lieberman, you ordered the wrong product for your patients. Next time, a little more research coupled with consulting your registered dietitian will help you pick the right product.

Fortunately, I work in a health system that is willing to invest in high quality, healthy, gourmet food that is appealing to our patients. Freshly prepared food that my hospital serves is much more nutritious and appealing than the defrosted food that many other hospitals still serve. When I visited my patients with our chefs during meal time, their response are mostly positive and I am proud of the work we have done to improve their dietary selections.