Charlotte doctor offers alternative to PediaSure

Charlotte pediatrician Sheila Kilbane has a keen interest in good nutrition and helping children who have developed allergies or aversions to particular foods.

Kilbane

As an integrative medicine practitioner, trained by Dr. Andrew Weil at the Univesity of Arizona, Kilbane was asked by "100 Days of Real Food" to write a recipe for a natural alternative to PediaSure, advertised as a "nutritional drink for children."

Her report, including a recipe for Dr. Kilbane's Liquid Vitality, starts by describing her own experience with Pediasure. On a road trip years ago, she stopped at a gas station and bought a bottle of PediaSure instead of indulging in chips or candy bars. She began drinking as she finished pumping my gas, and she described what happened next as a "scene from a Jim Carrey movie."

She gagged and nearly spit the contents all over her car. THEN she read the ingredient list. After water and sugar, the list was rife with items such as short-chain fructooligosaccharides, carrageenan, calcium pantothenate, phylloquinone and cyanocobalamin.

She realized she should have followed the advice she has given parents for years: “If you can’t pronounce the product ingredients, put it back on the shelf.”