Can other ingredients be added to our products to address a patient’s specific dietary needs?
Any additions to Functional Formularies formulas should be cleared by your medical team.
It is our general approach to nutrition that foods should be nutrient dense in order to support health. Therefore, we highly recommend that foods added to our products be both nutrient dense and compatible with a patient’s physiology or ability to metabolize them.
We never recommend adding fruit juice or any refined sugars or sweeteners.  Many patients needing more fat or calories have had success using foods such as avocadoes or almond butter to increase the energy content as well as the percentage of calories from healthy fats.
Coconut butter and/or extra virgin coconut oil may also be excellent choices, but we suggest going slowly with their addition as they can rapidly change the viscosity of the formula and may also cause diarrhea if the amount added challenges the patient’s digestive capacity.
Most vegetables can work well as long as they are blended very thoroughly. Meats and/or poultry have been blended with Liquid Hope, but again, the extent to which they are liquified is critical.
One of the easiest additions to increase a patient’s protein levels, as well as adding beneficial flora, is to mix with a high-quality yogurt.  The yogurt, or kefir, should preferably be from goats, sheep, or grass-fed Guernsey or Jersey cows and should contain live cultures.  For those who tolerate dairy products, this may be both one of the easiest and most nutritionally rewarding additions. Redwood Hill Goat yogurt is a good example and is nationally distributed.