Is the high price of energy bars stealing from your tire budget? Bars are easy to carry and work well, but your local supermarket has many economical items that make good ride food.
You need grub that’s moist so you can get it down even when you have a dry mouth. It should be easy to chew so you don’t suffocate before you can swallow. It helps if the chow is bite size or can be broken down for easy handling. And it should travel well in your jersey pocket. You don’t want to reach back for food 60 miles into a century and find a pocketful of crumbs or a soggy mess.
Here are some suggestions for your shopping list:
—Fruit bars. They can contain traditional fig or lots of other fillings. Two quick bites and they’re down. Just plain figs work well, too.
—Granola bars. They’re individually wrapped just like energy bars but they cost a lot less. Check in the cereal aisle for a variety of similar products.
—Panini. These are little bite-size sandwiches, the traditional European race food. Make them at home with cream cheese and/or jelly after cutting the crust cut off the bread. Then wrap them individually in aluminum foil. To eat like a real Italian bike racer during long, cold rides, put a hunk of ham in there, too.
—Fruit. Bananas are nearly perfect: moist, easy to chew and swallow, and they come in their own wrapper. Slices of apple or orange in a baggie are great on hot days. Just be sure to eat them before they ferment.
—Dried fruit. Most is moist enough to go down easily, especially when accompanied by a sip of water.
—Candy bars. If you look at the carb and calorie information on a Pay Day, Three Musketeers and many other candy bars, you’ll see that it isn’t appreciably different from the numbers on many energy bars. But candy is considerably cheaper and more readily available. It could melt into a mess on a warm ride, though — one reason we like Pay Day, which is coated by peanuts, not chocolate.
These foods are a sure path to weight gain and diabetes
If you are munching on them while watching the boob tube from your recliner, I agree. However eating these foods during exercise is not the same. Your body needs the energy they provide.
I respectfully disagree. Unless one is racing the TDF, one’s body fat provides amble energy to fuel a long bike ride. Ingesting carbohydrates forces our bodies to use glucose for energy and blocks fat metabolism. Also, it requires frequent refeeding, Again this is important for TDF racers, but not for most cyclists. Also, over time that much carb ingesting can cause weight gain and T2D. As Prof Tim Noakes says, you can out run (or out ride) a poor diet.
I live a pretty low carb lifestyle myself and am also familiar with Noakes and don’t entirely disagree with your point of view.
But I think if you look at the labels of a lot of these supermarket foods that are quite cheap and tasty, the numbers look very similar to the very expensive and often NOT tasty energy bars and drinks.
So for the majority of cyclists who tend to consume carbs on a rider longer than a certain number of miles, these supermarket items are an option that works equally well to a lot of energy bar and energy drink products.
That was the main point of the tip. Most people and particularly most endurance athletes have not switched to low carb nutrition and it just isn’t very mainstream at this time, even though it definitely can work and too much sugar is definitely unhealthy in general.
We have covered low carb / ketogenic cycling in the past here:
https://www.roadbikerider.com/interview-a-beginners-guide-to-ketogenic-diets-for-cyclists/
Thank you and I agree that cyclists who are not adapted to burning their body fat for fuel, are better off eating a Payday bar than an expensive energy bar. Payday bars are cheaper and available at any convenience store. Good points
Candy bars FTW!
A few years back I took the wrapper from a friend’s energy bar and compared it to a Snickers. The Snickers almost perfectly matched the fat/sugar/protein mix of the expensive energy bar, and about a third of the price.
On long rides, I tend to stop every couple hours to (a) get off the bike for 5-10 minutes, (b) refill water bottles, and (c) grab something to eat. If the convenience store doesn’t have fig newtons, it’ll almost certainly have Snickers — and the chocolate won’t have melted as it would have if I’d carried it with me.
Baby food pouches!! You can buy 3 from the price of one energy gel
How right you are. Not only are they generally less expensive than “sports nutrition” (read flavored sugar) and junk food candy that also contains unneeded stabilizers, shelf-life extenders, etc., but are often made from organic, real food items, are about 60-90 calories each, easy to digest and taste great.
ReneM: Thanks for the tip!
Chocolate milk. reeses peanut butter cups, and peanuts.
All are available in single-serving sizes.
These days I make my own crunchy granola bars, but the above is always my plan B.
DIY crunchy bars search for: “7 cups” toasted oatmeal energy bars
It makes 36 bars so I have a supply in the freezer for many rides, ready to go.
I’m a dates and walnuts person myself. My main riding mates carry pjbs or bananas.
Don’t ride with anything snank with chocolate in it during the summer months. when you stop to eat it it’s a melted mess.