High-carbohydrate Fuel: Dollar for Dollar

High-carbohydrate fueling has become one of the biggest trends in endurance nutrition. For good reason. Carbohydrate is the primary fuel for sustained hard riding, and current sports-nutrition research supports carbohydrate intakes around 30–60 g per hour for many endurance efforts, with 90 g per hour and potentially higher intakes becoming relevant during longer, harder events for trained athletes who can tolerate them. (PubMed Central (PMC))

But comparing high-carb products gets confusing quickly. One company calls 60 grams a serving. Another gives you 80 grams. Another gives you 90. Another gives you 100. So rather than compare “servings,” let's compare the thing we're actually buying: Carbohydrate.

The comparison

For this comparison, we're looking at several high-carbohydrate endurance drink mixes currently available in Canada:

• Bike Dope HiCARB

• Näak Boost 60

• Maurten Drink Mix 320

• Tailwind High Carb Fuel

• Neversecond C90

• Skratch Labs Super High-Carb

Prices are based on Canadian retail pricing available at the time of writing.

To make the comparison useful, every product has been normalized to the same three carbohydrate doses:

30 g — 60 g — 90 g

Cost per carbohydrate dose

HiCARB contains 900 g of carbohydrate per $44.95 bag: 60 scoops at 15 g carbohydrate each. (Bike Dope)

Näak Boost provides 60 g per serving, with 15 servings in a $45 bag. (Outfitters Gear & Apparel) Maurten Drink Mix 320 provides 80 g per packet, with 14 packets selling for about $71 CAD. (Outfitters Gear & Apparel) Tailwind High Carb Fuel provides 90 g per packet, with a Canadian six-pack priced around $37. (Tailwind Canada) Neversecond C90 provides 90 g per packet, with an eight-pack currently around $55 CAD. (Bici) Skratch's resealable Super High-Carb bag provides approximately 800 g of carbohydrate and currently retails around $68.95 in Canada. (MEC)

What happens at 90 grams?

This is where the differences become much easier to see.

90 g of carbohydrate using HiCARB costs about $4.50.

The same amount of carbohydrate works out to approximately:

• Näak Boost: $4.50

• Maurten Drink Mix 320: $5.71

• Tailwind High Carb Fuel: $6.17

• Neversecond C90: $6.88

• Skratch Super High-Carb: $7.76

So HiCARB isn't trying to undercut the market by giving you a smaller dose.

It's providing the same amount of actual fuel.

Now take it on a four-hour ride

Let's say you're doing a hard four-hour ride and targeting 90 g of carbohydrate per hour.

That's:

360 g of carbohydrate.

If all of that carbohydrate came from drink mix, the approximate product cost would be:

That's where seemingly small differences in serving price start adding up.

Especially if you're fueling this way every weekend.

But price isn't the whole story

There is another reason HiCARB is packaged the way it is.

Not every ride requires 90 grams of carbohydrate per hour.

A recovery spin, two-hour endurance ride and six-hour gravel race aren't the same thing.

So HiCARB uses a simple system:

1 scoop = 15 g carbohydrate

That means you can build your bottle around your ride:

Need more? Add another scoop.

Need less? Don't.

The goal isn't to convince everyone that they need 90 grams every hour.

It's to make it easy to get the amount that makes sense for the ride you're actually doing.

Fuel and hydration aren't the same thing

This is also why we don't think carbohydrate intake needs to dictate how much water you drink.

Your fuel requirements are largely determined by workload, intensity and duration.

Your fluid requirements are influenced by things like temperature, sweat rate, humidity and individual physiology. They're related, but they're not the same thing.

A 500 mL bottle can contain 30 g, 60 g or 90 g of HiCARB depending on how you're using it.

On a cool day, you might carry concentrated fuel and drink additional water separately. On a hot day, you may spread the same carbohydrate across more fluid.

Fuel the work. Hydrate for the conditions.

Why HiCARB uses two carbohydrate sources

HiCARB combines maltodextrin and fructose in a 2:1 ratio.

There's a reason for that.

Maltodextrin ultimately supplies glucose, which is absorbed primarily using the intestinal SGLT1 transporter.

Fructose uses a different transporter: GLUT5.

Using multiple carbohydrate transport pathways can increase the amount of carbohydrate that can be absorbed and oxidized during prolonged exercise compared with relying exclusively on glucose-based carbohydrate. That's one of the reasons glucose/fructose combinations have become standard in modern high-carbohydrate endurance fueling. (Frontiers)

HiCARB's full six-scoop dose provides:

60 g maltodextrin-derived carbohydrate + 30 g fructose = 90 g carbohydrate.

Nothing particularly exotic. Just a proven way to deliver a lot of carbohydrate when the workload demands it.

The takeaway

There are a lot of excellent high-carbohydrate products on the market.

Maurten has its hydrogel technology. Skratch uses Cluster Dextrin. Neversecond and Tailwind offer convenient 90 g single-serving packets. Näak offers a competitively priced bulk format.

HiCARB takes a slightly different approach.

Keep the formula simple. Make the dosage flexible. Keep the price reasonable.

One scoop gives you 15 grams.

Two gives you 30.

Four gives you 60.

Six gives you 90.

And at the full 90 g dose, you're spending about $4.50. Because high-carb fueling doesn't need to be complicated. It just needs to give you enough fuel to keep turning the pedals.