Episode 195 - Not All Sports Drinks Are Equal: Pure Race Fuel vs Electrolyte Hydration

Not All Sports Drinks Are Equal: Pure Race Fuel vs Electrolyte Hydration

Think you’re using the right sports drink? Think again.

In this episode, I break down the critical differences between Pure Sports Nutrition’s Race Fuel and Electrolyte Hydration mixes. Both are marketed as “sports drinks” but serve completely different purposes—one could support your race goals, the other might gut bomb your day.

We look at carbohydrate concentrations, sodium levels, osmolality, and the sneaky pitfalls of trusting serving sizes on labels. Whether you’re training for a sprint or going long, this episode will show you exactly what to look for in your bottle—and why not all carbs are created equal.

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Episode Transcription

Episode 195: Not All Sports Drinks Are Equal: Pure Race Fuel vs Electrolyte Hydration

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)
When it comes to sports nutrition products, not all sports drinks are created equal. In fact, some products could be holding you back or reaching havoc on your guts if they're not actually matched to you and your goals. So today I wanted to compare two different types of sports drinks from the same brand. Now this is in no way sponsored.

They haven't asked me to do anything. In fact, they don't know that I'm doing this and hopefully they don't get in trouble, but I want you to have confidence that this is an entirely independent review and hopefully you learn something from it too.

So today I'm comparing the Pure Sports Nutrition Race Fuel as a sports drink compared to their Electrolyte Hydration Mix, which again is another sports drink.

And we'll dive into some of the things that I look for straight away when a new product comes on the market or my TNA athletes bring me something and we go through it in detail to understand like what is actually in the thing and the practicalities of how you would go about using it. So whether you're training short or training long, we're always trying to race hard. The wrong choice here in your race nutrition products and your sports drinks in particular can cost you massive performance and definitely gut issues if you're not careful. So let's unpack what's really inside and maybe which one belongs in your bottle versus which one doesn't.

So to kick us off, let's actually dive into each product individually. We're gonna start with the Pure Race Fuel Drink Mix. It is in their shop under the Performance Plus section. So automatically I'm thinking, ⁓ I wanna perform to the best of my ability. This is the product that I'm going to go for. It is designed as an endurance fueling drink. So it's 90 grams of carbohydrate per serve, which is about four or five scoops of the product. So a serve is actually 97.5 grams of powder, which is a lot. And they recommend mixing that up into a full bidden. So a 750 mil or 25 fluid ounce bidden to have a whole bottle that includes your 90 grams of carbohydrate. I always check out the ingredients.

This one is made up of the first ingredient being clostodextrin, then fructose, and then mineral salt. So sodium citrate, sodium chloride, potassium citrate, magnesium lactate, calcium citrate, and then it's got an acidity regulator and an antioxidant. So ascorbic acid, which is actually vitamin C. So that's one of the first things I look at, as well as looking at the nutrition information panel.

If you're like, Taryn, what on earth is cluster dextrin? It is actually trademarked, but it's also known as highly branched cyclic dextrin or HBCD. It is just basically a fancy way of saying that it's highly branched glucose molecules. And this one in particular is linked together in a cyclic ring. It is meant to have a low osmolality, so less particles in solution, which is going to help with faster gastric emptying. So it pulls apart very quickly because we need them to be in individual molecules for it to be useful for us to absorb it into our bloodstream. But this guy is highly branched. So in solution, there's not a lot of particles because they're all joined together, but it'll pull apart very quickly and rapidly digest, which is kind of what we want when we're exercising.

It has a fair whack of sodium in it too, which is something else that you should be looking for in your products. Now I can't tell you exactly how much sodium you need without doing some testing first, but having a look at what's in stuff is quite valuable because there's a lot of products now that are being produced without any sodium or only small amounts. So if you're using particular things, you need to be aware of that as well. And if you're a really like sweaty beast type person, salty sweater, heavy sweater, then that's probably something that you look for already. But if you're not, you need to add it to your list of things for things to start to dive into. So it's got 651 milligrams of sodium per serve, plus it's got some calcium, magnesium and potassium included. This one, this race fuel is unflavoured, which is going to help with flavour fatigue and the really overly sweet products. And this one is also HASTA certified. So if you don't know what that is, you should be starting to look for or be aware of products that are independently batch tested and they're batch testing for wider prohibited substances. Now, if you're an age group, that may not mean too much to you, but they do drug test age groupers. So it is just something to be aware of that something that is either has to certified or informed sport tested. Both of those are independent companies that will batch test their products and they're looking for banned substances inside. It has happened. I have been at races where they have tested drug tested age groupers and I have also known of multiple products that have been found to have wider prohibited substances. There was actually a big brand of sports nutrition here in Australia that one of their gels, the caffeine gel was found to have wider prohibited substances and then they actually did a full rebrand.

But you know, that's a story for another day. So that is the race fuel. Okay. You kind of getting what they're laying down. It's high carbohydrate. It's being marketed to, you know, longer endurance type stuff, you know, 70.3 full distance Ironman's type thing is where my mind goes when I see that marketing message. Now let's dive into their standard sports drink. It's called Pure Electrolyte Hydration.

And this is where things get confusing because it doesn't say sports drink. You might think it's hydration as in it's just electrolytes, but this one is actually carbohydrate containing. So it's fluid and electrolyte replacement. It is their sports drink. The carbohydrate sources here are sucrose and glucose. And it's got 12 a half grams of carbohydrate per scoop, which is not a lot, right? We've just compared it to a 90 gram carbohydrate thing. There's multiple scoops that go into that serve.

But for this product, they've dictated that their serve is one scoop and that's 12 and a half grams of carbohydrate. Doesn't mean you need to stick to it, but just so that you're aware. So that's only 14 grams of powder, so way less powder compared to the other one. And that is mixed with 250 mils or a cup of fluid or water. So it's about a 5 % solution.

Now you could put three scoops or even four scoops into a 750 mil bidden or 25 fluid ounce bidden to increase that carbohydrate. So three scoops is going to be 37 and a half grams of carbs and four scoops is going to be 50 grams of carbohydrate. Now we've changed the osmolarity here a little bit. It's no longer a 5 % solution at four scoops.

It's a 6.666 recurring with a seven on the end solution, which is just a sort of standard sports drink concentration. So it's actually on the lower side at 5 % and 6 % is relatively standard. So bumping it up actually is still not problematic.

So you have to be a bit of a detective when you're starting to think about those things and look at those things because automatically I go, that's not enough. Why don't we put more scoops in? You don't have to follow a label when they dictate what a serve is, but you do need to understand how to read those bad boys and then figure out how to make this product work for you if you want to use it. So per serve or per scoop, there is 100 milligrams of sodium, but if we're putting three or four scoops in, then we've got 300 or 400 milligrams of sodium. So we're getting back up to similar amount of electrolytes compared to the race fuel. It also has potassium, magnesium and calcium in it. And again, you're needing to times those numbers on the serve sizing label by three or four to figure out what would actually go into your bottle.

So the osmolarity, they actually know what it is in this product and that they have told us that it's 252 millioz moles per liter. So it is isotonic, which is good for absorption. It's not low and it's not hyper, which is really high. And sometimes that can be really difficult to digest.

Their 500 gram pouch of the powder is also now Haster certified. So if you're looking at things like the individual sachets or other ways of getting it, it may not be. So you do have to be a bit of a detective and have a look at the label, have a look at the product. And you can also go on the Haster or InformSport website and look up specific batch numbers to see if that batch number has been tested too. So sometimes they might put a logo on, but they're not testing every batch. And again, just something that you're going to need to be aware of and start to look for, because it is quite expensive to have an independent company batch test every single batch that you have. And so sometimes, not all the time, I'm not saying this company does this, but sometimes they will test one batch only and then put a logo on and go, yeah, we are, we did this for this one batch. And so we're clear, but if they're not doing every single batch, then you don't have a hundred percent confidence that it is. So again, just something to be aware of, not saying it's, good or bad necessarily depends if that's something that you're looking at. But for our elite who do get drug tested all the time, they need to be diligent at checking batch numbers and making sure everything is good to go. And that is part of their, you know, due diligence as an athlete. They need to be aware of everything that goes in their body because they will get randomly drug tested.

And it would be horrible if it came from something like your sports drink or your gel that had caffeine in it or something like that. So that is the two products. They are some of the things that I look at. I do look at other things as well, but you know, we don't want to get too nerdy on the podcast. I don't want to lose you. I do want to keep you listening here, but let's actually get practical. Cause I think there's the, that's the value in having a sports dietitian in your corner is, is diving into the practicalities of like whether we use these products or not. Now I think the bottom line with a sports drink, first and foremost is that you need to like it. There is no point having a sports drink that you think is perfectly formulated if you don't actually like the taste of it, the flavour, the texture, consistency, whatever. You have to first and foremost like it and then you need to understand about what is in it and how you are going to use that based on you and your goals and your training.

Okay, that is the first rule. And then the other things to think about, and these are things that I dive into with my Triathlon Nutrition Academy athletes all the time. They know how to do this because I teach them how to do it. And we get practical every time something new comes on the market. Cause you can go to thefeed.com and just be overwhelmed by choice. And you have no idea where to start. And so you pick the one that looks the nicest. You pick a label or a colour, or brand and the marketing gets you, whereas you actually do need to look past that and dive into the ingredients, the nutrition information panel and understand if this is going to meet your needs or not. So firstly, the race fuel is marketed as endurance fueling. At 90 grams of carbohydrate, people will be like, yes, I'm aiming for 90 grams of carbs. All I have to do is have a serve of this in my bottle each hour and I'm done.

But if you actually dive into the details of it, it's clostodextrin and fructose, but it only contains nine grams of fructose per serve, which means that 81 grams of the total carbohydrate is coming from glucose alone. It's coming from the clostodextrin. So that is not a two is to one ratio and you'll see that everywhere. Like the two is to one, the one is to 0.8 ratio. It's more like a nine is to one ratio at that.

So that is going to significantly limit your carbohydrate absorption per hour compared to a dual source product that is the two is to one at 90 grams an hour fueling. So wild clostridectin is potentially, you know, a great source of glucose for your gut and gastric emptying and it's, you know, good osmolarity in solution and it pulls apart very quickly so we can use it as a fuel source.

It's very low in fructose and so we can't actually use all of that if we're having that amount per hour. It's just going to back up and slowly fill up your gut over time. And if you're using that at 90 grams, one serve, one bottle an hour for six hours, that is going to absolutely wreak havoc on your gut. No matter what the osmolarity is.

So you can't hit high carbohydrate fueling targets with this product alone. So if you're aiming for 90, 100, 110, 120, whatever it is you're doing, this is not the product for you.

It's much better suited to far lower fueling targets because of that combination of carbohydrates in there, unless you're pairing it with a significant amount of other products that have the fructose to bump it up.

Now, if we look at the hydration mix, that's actually got a much better glucose to fructose balance despite being much lower in carbohydrate. So if we're putting three scoops in a bottle or four scoops in a bottle, say we're putting four scoops in and we've got 50 grams of carbohydrate, that's not too bad. And then you have a much better balance of glucose and fructose to help with that absorption into the bloodstream. You could put seven scoops in a bottle if you wanted to, to get 90 grams of carbohydrate in there or just under 90 grams of carbohydrate, but that is going to destroy the osmolarity. And if you're not doing other things that I teach my athletes to do to deal with that, then it is absolutely going to destroy your gut. And it is potentially really sort of syrupy and thickly sweet as well, which for some people just can't tolerate that for an extended period of time.

So I think both products have their merits and I guess both products have their disadvantages. And when you understand how to look at a product and look at it with a critical eye and understand what is actually in it, how to figure out the carbohydrate breakdown and where those things are coming from, plus looking at all of your electrolytes, you can look at the osmolarity if they have it.

But not a lot of products do do that, but we can still look at the percentage of carbohydrate too and work that out that concentration to see if it's like off the scale or not. Understanding how to critique products is a mad skill that you were going to need if you want to have success in this sport and something that I love to teach my athletes to do, because even I get overwhelmed with the amount of products on the market. Every time I log on to the feed, there is something new every single time.

And without having the ability to dive into those sorts of details of things, then it's really hard to know whether something is actually a good fit for you. It is also really easy to make your own products if you know how to do that. And I can give you recipes for how to do that. If you are that way inclined, it's actually not very complicated when you know how to do it. But as an example, like Troy, who you will hear from on the podcast next week, he was making his own gels at home.

But then racing with on-course sports nutrition, because he just didn't have the confidence in what his methods were. He didn't know if his recipe was right or not. So he trained on that because it was far cheaper, but then just flipped his complete race nutrition. And that makes no sense either, because there is no point training on something, your whole training block, and then switching your nutrition up on race day. He no longer does that anymore, thankfully.

But sometimes you just need to know how to get started to do that properly, to dial it in for you. And then your sports nutrition products can be super easy and also far cheaper. So in terms of usage for the race fuel, I definitely wouldn't be using it as your sole source of nutrition. In fact, I'd cut the serving size down to use it and add something to it to make it more user friendly.

Same as the electrolyte hydration, I probably wouldn't use it as described or as they suggest you use it. I would change it or again, add something to it to get the right balance of things for the person depending on what they're trying to do. If you're not doing a lot of fueling or you're in your off season, or it doesn't matter so much like fail forwards. The normal electrolyte hydration is probably okay as a base. But if you're in peak race season and you're really trying to dial in things and pull all of your levers, your carbohydrate, your electrolytes, your fluid and get all of those things right, then neither product is good as a standalone product. And you do need to do some finessing and get a little bit nerdy to get them to work for you.

What I do like about Pure Sports Nutrition as a product though, is it's more kind of natural. So it is based in New Zealand and I guess marketing is around more real food. They use a lot of freeze dried fruits, like say freeze dried raspberries and strawberries, super fruits, those sorts of things for their flavourings rather than using a lot of artificial stuff, which I do enjoy. But we need to get products that work for us, not against us and understanding how to actually do that and build a race nutrition plan because it's more than just sports drink.

So that is my final verdict on both of those things. You really do need to match your fueling to your goals and your purpose and it can change over time. So you might use something for a full distance race and have a completely different product for a sprint or Olympic distance race the next year, depending on what you're doing. You don't wanna chop and change all the time, but we do need to have a strategy for that particular race and you cannot then duplicate that race, say 70.3 race nutrition plan, you can't duplicate that to do your full distance 140.6. Same as you can't, you know, double a sprint to get to an Olympic distance or have an Olympic distance to get to your sprint race nutrition. They each have their own different strategies that you need to lean on and harness the power of to get the most out of that race. And again,

like you might have a 70.3 race nutrition plan, but you've got a full distance race coming up. And so instead of doing your 17.3 race nutrition, you're doing your full distance, 140.6 race nutrition in your 70.3 distance to practice for your A race in a couple of weeks time or a month, a couple of months time. So there's no like set and forget race nutrition. And I think there's no set and forget sports products either.

Don't feel like you have to follow what is on the label. You can be your own chemist when you have a bit of knowledge behind you around how to do that and design your products for the purpose.

So hopefully you've learnt something today and you are still with me and it wasn't too nerdy. I tried not to get too deep into the numbers, but having a good understanding of that stuff I think is so valuable and that's a skill that you can take with you for life because using the wrong products is obviously performance limiting. It could be doing horrific damage to your gut and is an expensive mistake that we want to avoid quickly as possible because you don't have to go always go down the I'm using race day products that are on course. They are some of the most expensive out there. There's plenty of other options, but if you're trying to just wing it and test a bunch of stuff and you don't really have any idea what you're doing, then that cost can add up very, very quickly.

So if getting nerdy and diving into all of your sports nutrition products is something that you do want me to teach you about, then the Triathlon Nutrition Academy program is where I do that in detail. We are opening doors soon and it's not too late if you do want to register your interest at dietitianapproved.com/academy. We're running to the final week where that list is open. And then I'm sending a very special email to those on that list with some very juicy race specific bonuses that I've cooked up for early birds too. So dietitianimproved.com / academy. If you are interested in our July cohort, we kick off on the 12th of July, doors will open on the 4th and early bird starts a few days before that. So make sure your name is on the list if you do want to come and join me.

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!