Ensure is the brand name of a family of liquid nutritional supplements manufactured by Abbott Laboratories

Abbott Laboratories

Abbott Laboratories is an American-based global, diversified pharmaceuticals and health care products company. It has 90,000 employees and operates in over 130 countries. The company headquarters are in Abbott Park, North Chicago, Illinois. The company was founded by Chicago physician, Dr....

.
The beverages are meant to be administered orally, or through nasogastric tubes, directly to the recipient's stomach.

Recipients are either individuals unable to eat or experiencing undesirable weight loss, through age, infirmity or disease, or individuals like captives who are on a hunger strike

Hunger strike

A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance or pressure in which participants fast as an act of political protest, or to provoke feelings of guilt in others, usually with the objective to achieve a specific goal, such as a policy change. Most hunger strikers will take liquids but not...

, who are undergoing involuntary force-feeding

Force-feeding

Force-feeding is the practice of feeding a person or an animal against their will. "Gavage" is supplying a nutritional substance by means of a small plastic tube passed through the nose or mouth into the stomach, not explicitly 'forcibly'....

.

Hunger strikers at the Guantanamo Bay detention camps are force-fed Ensure via gavage.

In 2009 Abbott Laboratories sold over $1 billion of its liquid nutritional supplements, Ensure, and the related pediatric product, PediaSure.