Ultra-Processed Sports Nutrition: What's Actually in Your Gels and Why It Matters

Read the back of a typical energy gel and you'll find a list that looks more like a chemistry practical than food: maltodextrin, thickeners, acidity regulators, preservatives, flavourings, sometimes a sweetener or two. Nobody's pretending a gel is a bowl of porridge. But with ultra-processed food making headlines almost weekly, plenty of endurance athletes are asking a fair question: is what I'm taking on the bike or the run quietly working against me?

The honest answer is more nuanced than either camp likes. Ultra processed sports nutrition isn't automatically bad, and "natural" isn't automatically better. What matters is what each ingredient is doing, whether your gut tolerates it at 90 minutes into a long session, and whether you're hitting the carbohydrate numbers your event demands. Let's pick it apart properly.

What "Ultra-Processed" Actually Means

The term comes from the NOVA classification, developed by Brazilian researchers, which sorts food into four groups by degree of processing. Group 4, ultra-processed, covers industrial formulations made mostly from extracted substances (refined starches, isolated proteins, modified oils, sweeteners) plus additives such as emulsifiers, colourings and flavour enhancers that you wouldn't find in a home kitchen.

By that definition, most gels, many bars, and a lot of sports drinks land in group 4. So do some things athletes happily eat: flavoured yoghurts, breakfast cereals, sliced white bread, jelly sweets.

Here's the catch. The strongest evidence linking ultra-processed food to poorer health comes from large population studies of everyday diets, plus one small but well-known NIH trial in which volunteers on an ultra-processed diet ate roughly 500 more calories a day than when on an unprocessed one. Those findings are about what happens when people eat ultra-processed food all day, every day, with no training load. They don't tell us much about a 60g dose of carbohydrate during a four-hour ride.

Is Ultra Processed Sports Nutrition a Problem?

For fuelling during exercise, probably less than the headlines suggest, but not nothing. Think of it in three parts.

• The job is different. During a long session you want fast, predictable, easily absorbed carbohydrate. Fibre, fat and protein slow gastric emptying, which is precisely what you don't want at 200 watts. Some degree of refinement is the whole point.
• The context is different. A few grams of additive in a gel you eat twice on a Sunday is a very different exposure from ultra-processed food making up half your weekly diet. Your everyday diet is where processing deserves real attention.
• The ingredients aren't equal. Maltodextrin, glucose and fructose are digestible carbohydrates doing exactly what you bought them for. Others are more debatable: artificial sweeteners, sugar alcohols such as sorbitol or xylitol, and some thickeners can cause bloating or loose stools in a proportion of athletes.

That last point is where I'd focus. Gut problems are one of the most common reasons people fail to finish endurance events, and a product with a long list of additives gives you more variables to troubleshoot. If something upsets you, it's much easier to work out why when the ingredient list is short.

There's also a practical argument for keeping things simple. Every new product you introduce on race day is an experiment, and gut tolerance is highly individual. Two athletes can eat the same gel at the same pace and have completely different afternoons. Train with what you'll race with, ideally for several weeks, and treat any stomach complaint as data rather than bad luck.

What to Look for on the Label

You don't need a nutrition degree. Run through these checks and you'll catch most of the problems.

• Carbohydrate per serving. Current guidance is roughly 30-60g per hour for sessions of one to two and a half hours, and up to 90g per hour for longer, harder efforts if your gut is trained. If a product only gives you 20g a serving, work out how many you'll need to carry.
• The carbohydrate blend. Glucose alone is absorbed at around 60g per hour. Adding fructose uses a second transporter, which is why a glucose-to-fructose blend allows higher intakes with less stomach trouble.
• Sugar alcohols and sweeteners. Sorbitol, mannitol, xylitol, sucralose. If you've had unexplained mid-race gut issues, check for these first.
• Caffeine content. Useful when planned, unpleasant when you've had three gels and two coffees.
• Sodium. Useful in hot conditions, but you can top it up separately, so don't let it dominate your choice.
• Length of the ingredient list. Not a moral test, just a practical one. Fewer ingredients means fewer things to go wrong.

Does "Real Food" Beat Sports Products?

Sometimes. Rice cakes, bananas, jam sandwiches and boiled potatoes have fuelled plenty of good performances, and they're cheap. For steady, lower-intensity riding they work well. The trouble starts when the effort gets hard or the numbers get high. Getting 90g of carbohydrate an hour from bananas means eating around four of them every hour, and chewing and digesting that at threshold is a big ask. Real food also has more fibre, which is a benefit in daily life and a liability at race pace.

The sensible position for most endurance athletes is a mix: whole foods in your everyday diet and on easy long days, and purpose-built carbohydrate when intensity or duration makes convenience and absorption the priority. Being relaxed about ultra processed sports nutrition during exercise doesn't mean being relaxed about it at every meal.

What We Use at FTP Endurance Fuel

We built our pastilles around the practical problems above. They deliver carbohydrate as a glucose and fructose blend, they're small enough to eat one at a time without breaking rhythm, and they're easy to portion, so hitting 60g or 90g an hour is a matter of counting rather than guessing. The Tart Cherry Pastilles are tart cherry flavoured, for anyone who prefers a sharper taste. If you want real Montmorency tart cherry, it's in our Power Fluids drink mix (3g per serving). The Mixed Fruit Pastilles are the easy-going option if you like variety on long days.

We'd never claim any fuel is unprocessed, because it isn't. Our advice is the same as for any product: read the label, check it against the points above, and test it in training well before race day. If it agrees with your stomach, hits your carbohydrate target and you actually want to eat it at hour three, it's doing its job.

The Bottom Line

Don't lose sleep over processing in the middle of a long ride. Do pay attention to the ingredient list, because the things most likely to hurt your performance are sugar alcohols, unfamiliar products on race day and under-fuelling. Put your effort into your everyday diet, build your carbohydrate intake gradually in training, and choose fuel you've tested and trust. If you'd like to try before you commit to a full bag, the Taster Pack is the easiest way in, and you can browse everything together in our bundles.