Episode 206 -The Worst Nutrition Advice I’ve Seen This Month

The Worst Nutrition Advice I’ve Seen This Month

Think that fancy new electrolyte patch or race calculator is helping you perform better? Think again.

This week, I'm calling out the worst nutrition advice I've come across recently in the triathlon world—and trust me, there are some absolute shockers.

From overpriced "sea water" supplements to online tools giving dangerously low fuelling targets, I break down what's wrong with each one and, more importantly, what you should be doing instead. I even share a cracking real-life story from one of our TNA athletes who's now smashing PBs after ditching outdated carb-loading myths.

If you're serious about fuelling properly and not just following the crowd, this one’s for you.

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Episode Transcription

Episode 206: The Worst Nutrition Advice I've Seen This Month

Welcome to the Triathlon Nutrition Academy podcast. The show designed to serve you up evidence-based sports nutrition advice from the experts. Hi, I'm your host Taryn, Accredited Practicing Dietitian, Advanced Sports Dietitian and founder of Dietitian Approved. Listen as I break down the latest evidence to give you practical, easy-to-digest strategies to train hard, recover faster and perform at your best. You have so much potential, and I want to help you unlock that with the power of nutrition. Let's get into it.

Taryn Richardson (00:00)
There is no shortage of bad nutrition advice floating around in triathlon circles. Every week I see athletes being marketed something new.

And this month, I’ve seen some absolute shockers.

Today I’m going to break a few of them down, tell you why they’re terrible advice, and most importantly, what you should be doing instead.

When the ABC article on creatine was published—an article I was an expert for—it went out on social media. I had a look at the comments and honestly, it was the Wild West.

There were keyboard warriors everywhere making bold statements with no clue what they were actually talking about. One guy even tried to throw me under the bus, saying I didn’t know anything, while arguing that creatine is safe and that everyone should be taking it regardless. I had to walk away because I was getting so angry. Honestly, it just wasn’t worth it.

And this is why the nutrition landscape is so dangerous. You’ve got people with zero qualifications dishing out advice all over the internet. It sounds convincing, but if you actually follow it, you’re setting yourself up for problems. You’ll waste time, waste money, and at the end of the day—experience poor performance.

The truth is, fueling for triathlon is not that complicated. There’s a lot to know, yes, but it’s not the confusing mess most athletes are being sold.

That’s why I want to call out some of the worst advice I’ve seen this month. It’s going to get a little ranty, but also practical—because I’ll give you tools to do it the right way.

And if you want the shortcut to filtering out fact from fiction, and to learn how to fuel properly for three sports, that’s exactly what I teach inside the Triathlon Nutrition Academy program.

Our final cohort for 2025 kicks off soon, so make sure your name is on the list at dietitianapproved.com/academy.

So, let’s dive into today’s episode—starting with some snake oil products that make big promises around hydration and performance but, on closer inspection, are absolutely ridiculous.

(02:30)
Welcome to Episode 206 of the Triathlon Nutrition Academy Podcast!

I’m coming to you today from beautiful Mooloolaba on the Sunshine Coast for Sunny Coast 70.3. I’m here with 20 Triathlon Nutrition Academy athletes and I’m so excited to meet them in person. It’s always such a buzz when we get together—not just for the racing, but also for the chance to catch up with athletes from all over the world.

We’ve got people here from Canada, the US, Taiwan, and across Australia. I’ll be cheering them on come race day. I’m doing the swim, which will take me about 30 minutes, and then I’ll get to enjoy the rest of the day while they’re out on course.

At big events like this, there’s always nutrition advice flying around—in cafes, at the expo, on the race course, in transition, and even while lining up at the swim start. Some of it is good, but a lot of it just makes me cringe, cover my ears, and walk away.

So, this week is the perfect time to tackle an episode like this—calling out the worst nutrition advice I’ve seen this month.

(04:10) Snake Oil Products
Let’s kick it off with some snake oil products that promise the world but are way off the mark.

One of the ones I came across recently was a transdermal electrolyte patch. Basically, it’s a sticker you put on your skin that supposedly helps you maintain proper hydration for wellness and performance.

Sounds fancy, right? You might even think, “Cool, that’s interesting—maybe it has some merit.”

So, I did some digging into the research to figure out if you could actually absorb electrolytes through the skin. And there is some research showing that, under very specific conditions, tiny trace amounts of minerals can pass through the skin barrier. But it’s for things like therapeutic mineral baths where you soak for hours in really high concentrations.

It’s also possible if the skin is damaged or highly hydrated and more permeable, or in a medical setting using special delivery systems like iontophoresis—things like electrical currents, microneedles, or chemical barriers that force ions through the skin.

So yes, there are very particular conditions that allow transdermal mineral absorption. But here’s the catch: that absorption is local, not systemic. That means the absorbed minerals stay in that area of skin, maybe useful for wound healing or inflammation, but they don’t spread through the whole body.

So, there’s no evidence they’ll restore electrolyte balance across the whole body in the way an athlete needs.

And that’s the point: slapping on a patch and expecting it to replace litres of fluid and grams of sodium you lose in a triathlon is obviously not going to work. Your skin is designed to keep things out. It’s a barrier, not a sponge.

Without electricity, solvents, or broken skin, electrolytes simply don’t get in at levels that matter for us.

So, the summary here? Relying on patches for electrolyte replacement is not effective, especially compared to just drinking them. At best, they’re a placebo or expensive stickers. At worst, they give you false confidence, leave you dehydrated, and put you at serious risk of underperforming on race day.

(09:00) Concentrated Ocean Water
And just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, I stumbled across another beauty: concentrated ocean water.

It’s sold as a trace mineral solution—forty dollars for a tiny little bottle. It’s marketed as being naturally harvested from the pristine South Australian coast. And yes, the coastline there is beautiful, the oceans in Australia are stunning, but let’s call it what it is: evaporated seawater.

They even remove most of the sodium—which, by the way, is the main electrolyte we lose in sweat and the one triathletes actually need to replace.

So, what you’re left with is a very expensive shot of minerals that will do nothing for your performance.

It’s clever marketing—using buzzwords like natural, ionic, trace minerals. Somebody shared this with me and told me their friend takes it and that’s all they need for electrolytes each day. They don’t need anything else.

But when it comes to replacing litres of sweat and grams of sodium in a race? Completely useless.

So please—save your money. Don’t buy either of those things.

Your hydration needs as a triathlete are built specifically around you. You need to know your sweat rate, your sweat sodium concentration, what type of athlete you are, the conditions you train and race in. It’s individual.

That means testing your sweat rate and building a proper hydration plan—practising it in training with both fluids and electrolytes.

You don’t need to replace 100% of losses, but you do need to understand what’s right for your body, your event, and your environment. That’s what we teach inside the Triathlon Nutrition Academy program—not gimmicks, not expensive seawater, but science-based strategies that actually work.

(14:30) Online Race Calculators
Now, let’s move on to something that looks more scientific but is just as misleading: online race calculators.

These tools ask for a couple of basic numbers like your body weight and predicted race time. Then they spit out a figure—usually calories—that supposedly tells you what you need to eat.

Sounds clever, but here’s the problem: they don’t tell you what to do with that number, or how to turn it into a proper fueling strategy.

I put my details into one of these calculators for my Ironman. It spat out a calorie number, which I then converted into carbohydrate needs because I know how to do that as a sports dietitian. The result? It told me I needed 30 grams of carbs per hour for my Ironman.

Thirty grams! That’s laughably off the mark.

And yet athletes are using advice like this to plan their races. Here’s why that’s dangerous:

1. These calculators are based on outdated ideas—like replacing 25% of calories burned. Endurance fueling is not calorie maths. It’s about carbohydrate intake.

2. They don’t translate calories into grams of carbs or into actual, usable products. Unless you’re a sports dietitian, you’re left fumbling in the dark.

3. They ignore all the other factors that matter: your race intensity, gut tolerance, weather, sweat rate, product choice, and personal needs.

So instead of fueling properly, athletes are counting calories and ending up under-fueled, dehydrated, or with gut problems on race day.

To make it worse, the calculator I tested funneled into a “triathlon nutrition book” written by someone with zero qualifications in nutrition. That makes me furious.

So what’s the alternative? You need a personalised race fueling strategy. It should consider your training, sweat rate, gut tolerance, race demands, and goals—not just spit out one random number. And you need to test and refine it in training.

(21:00) Carb Loading Myths
Now let’s shift gears to a classic piece of bad advice that’s been around forever: carb loading myths.

For some reason, people still believe that carb loading means smashing a giant bowl of pasta the night before your race. Or worse—that you need to deplete your glycogen stores by training hard, cutting carbs, and then bingeing on carbs right before your event.

One of my athletes, Brent—who’s now halfway through the program—learned this the hard way. Before joining, his pre-race nutrition was completely off. He thought eating heavy, fibre-rich meals like curries was fine, because he’d burn it all off.

But what actually happened? Gut distress, urgent toilet stops, pain mid-race, cramping, and limping to the finish line. He was even planning his run routes around public toilets because he knew he’d need them.

That’s not a strategy. That’s sabotage.

The problem with old-school carb loading is that it leaves you bloated, uncomfortable, and glued to the porta-loo. And a one-night pasta party doesn’t actually fuel your muscles.

The right way is a structured, science-backed approach spread over days before your event. It involves strategic carb intake, tailored to your body and your race distance, using low-fibre, easy-to-digest foods. Think rice, white bread, juice, sports products, even lollies if needed.

Brent completely transformed his racing after learning this. He’s now running marathons and half marathons without gut issues, without cramps, and hitting PBs because his fueling supports his performance.

(26:30) Wrap-Up
So there you have it—three of the worst nutrition myths I’ve seen this month:

• Snake oil products like patches and overpriced seawater.

• Online race calculators that give you useless calorie numbers.

• Old-school carb loading myths that wreck your gut and your race.

This is why I get so fired up about triathlon nutrition. There’s so much noise out there, and without proper education, it’s almost impossible to know what’s fact and what’s fiction—or how to apply it to yourself.

That’s why I created the Triathlon Nutrition Academy program: to cut through the noise and give you the tools to fuel properly for three sports.

Our final cohort for the year starts soon. If you’re ready to stop guessing and start fueling with confidence, head to dietitianapproved.com/academy and make sure your name is on the list.

All right—wish us all luck at Sunny Coast 70.3. I’ll chat to you next week!

Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Triathlon Nutrition Academy podcast. I would love to hear from you. If you have any questions or want to share with me what you've learned, email me at [email protected]. You can also spread the word by leaving me a review and taking a screenshot of you listening to the show. Don't forget to tag me on social media, @dietitian.approved, so I can give you a shout out, too. If you want to learn more about what we do, head to dietitianapproved.com. And if you want to learn more about the Triathlon Nutrition Academy program, head to dietitianapproved.com/academy. Thanks for joining me and I look forward to helping you smashed in the fourth leg - nutrition!