A recent study from an international team of sports dietitians compared the fuelling power of three different types of carbohydrate supplements: drinks, gels and jelly chews, either alone or in combination. The researchers, including Canada’s own Trent Stellingwerff of the Canadian Sport Institute Pacific, concluded that all three worked equally well, providing roughly the same amount of energy to hard-working muscles when consumed during prolonged exercise.
That’s good news. After all, everyone has different fuelling preferences, and jelly chews are a relatively recent and untested addition to the sports nutrition lineup. But it was another detail of the study, which was published in the Journal of Applied Physiology, that caught my attention: the huge dose of carbohydrates that the volunteers managed to choke down. For years, experts advised athletes to aim…
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Canadian Running (Digital) - 1 Issue, January/February 2023