It’s been coming out their gels have about half the calories and carbs Spring claims they do. Started with a random person dehydrating a gel and realizing there’s no physical way it could have the claimed carbs. Since then others (notably Jason Koop) have sent products to labs for analysis, confirming the low numbers. Some higher-profile folks like Sage Canaday and coaches Megan and David Roche have been getting heat for their defense of Spring (or their walking back earlier stories of how much they were involved developing products). 😂
It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if other products were also shown to not contain what the labels say they contain.
It would surprise me, nutrition labels are regulated by the FDA in the US, this is not something companies that want to remain in business want to mess with.
And this is yet another example of why my race day nutrition comes from Maple Syrup (for more concentration), table sugar, and sodium citrate. Maybe a squeeze of lemon/lime juice in drinks for flavor. Saves a ton of $$, and Maple Syrup in particular is delicious and actually sits pretty well on my stomach (both unlike most gels especially at high intensity running).
If I had to guess, they made a mistake when they first formulated the gels (kcal/g of dry rice vs. cooked), and then had no easy way to walk it back (no one would want the gels at their actual calorie count, and upping the carbs would turn the gels into unappealing paste). Thing is, at some point they probably knew and decided not to do the right thing. Given the highly competitive nature of this industry (lots of potential substitutes) this is going to be hard for them to recover from.
As mentioned, the FDA is pretty rigorous about nutritional labelling so I’m guessing they will have to start pulling the falsely labelled products.
I feel bad for folks who thought they had found a magic bullet, “Hey with these Spring gels I can take on 450kal/hr with no stomach issues!”
the feed is doing a responsible thing: they give a 50% discount on the gels, since they have 50% of the calories, or a refund on already bought gels.
edited to add: as much as i like the flavor of the gels and the ease of eating them, i did notice that they did not give the same boost as old fashioned roctane.
I don’t think it’s as simple as cutting corners or cost. There were comments from people about how digestible the gels were given their posted carb content. To bring the gel up to the posted carb content will significantly change its properties.
False advertising aside (people bought these gels specifically for being digestible given the posted carb content), I find that people claiming that Spring ruined their race a bit hilarious. Did they try the gel in training? Either they would have noticed the reduced carb content and adjusted, or they would have been feeling fine anyways despite the reduced carb content. Not to mention before the 100g/hour carbohydrate trend, people were getting by on a lot less, albeit at a slightly slower pace as the race goes on.
Spring Awesomesauce was available to me at the expo of a race a couple of years ago. I picked a few samples up. I didn’t see how it could work. About 2x the volume of a ‘regular’ gel and about 2x the calories (Spring is 54g, 180 kcal - a random Gu pulled from my pile is 32g and 100 kcal). But the Spring is way more liquid/lower viscosity than the Gu. I get the appeal - there has been a surge in gels that require minimal water followup (SiS for sure and the PowerBar Hydro - others, I know…). So the idea of a 2x kcal ‘standard’ gel that was 2x the volume BUT so ‘loose’ that you didn’t need to chase it with water - a WIN! Except…chemistry.
The real Q is how this happened. Were the original samples really 54g/180kcal but thicker? The samples I received in 2022 (?) were liquid/low viscosity. Or has the formulation been unchanged from the start? If so, how did they get the 180kcal measure from one Awesomesauce packet?
Supposedly the whole thing, packet and all doesn’t even weigh 54g. It almost seems too excessive to actually claim malice from the start, so I’d assume there was a spectacular data entry/calculation error somewhere that either never got caught or got caught too late such that they hoped nobody would ever notice.
Ha, well that is wild. I still have one old Awesomesauce packet. 53g including the packaging. I had three Gu Rocktanes on the counter. Supposed to deliver 32g. Weighed each, including packaging and got 33g, 33g, 34g.
Supposedly the whole thing, packet and all doesn’t even weigh 54g. It almost seems too excessive to actually claim malice from the start, so I’d assume there was a spectacular data entry/calculation error somewhere that either never got caught or got caught too late such that they hoped nobody would ever notice.
The going theory is that they used the calorie measurement for dry rice, but then used that quantity of cooked rice…thus failing to account for the water dilution.
….looks like they added 7g of fat and 1g of protein plus 28g of carbs for 180cal. Only 45mg of sodium.
These might taste great, but that is a literal recipe for disaster.
Maurice
Really? I assume they feel 7g fat is reasonable for the typical 1-2 gel users. Not the Ironman guy who takes one before the swim, one coming out of the swim and 4-5 on the bike and a other 3 on the run. That’d be up to 70g of fat?! Not that Ironman is their target. I’m guessing it’s runners primarily.