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Last week, RUN published an article about the nutritional inaccuracies recently uncovered in some of Spring Energy’s most popular gels. Awesome Sauce, sold with a nutrition label claiming it contains 45 grams of carbs, has been third-party tested multiple times in various locations to indicate that it contains about 16g of carbs. Hill Aid allegedly contains 20g of carbs, but third-party tests reveal it contains 10g. Canaberry, labeled with 17g of carbs, was third-party tested to show it contains about 10g.
Founded in 2014, Spring Energy has sold its fruit-based energy gels for a decade, with Awesome Sauce joining the lineup in 2021. The longevity of these popular products raises numerous questions, including: Did Spring Energy get away with misleading the public about the contents of its products all that time? Why did it take so long for anyone to question the nutritional claims for Spring products? And how worried should runners be about the nutritional accuracy of other energy gels and running fuel sources?
We spoke with Liza Ershova, the Redditor who goes by the username “sriirachamayo,” who seems to be the first person to publicly question Spring Energy’s nutritional accuracy. Namely, Ershova shared her concerns about Awesome Sauce on the Reddit thread “False nutritional info on Spring energy gels.”
Ershova is an ultrarunner who used to love Awesome Sauce, and even paid “a super hefty import fee on top of an already steep price” to get them delivered to Norway, where she currently resides and works as a postdoctoral fellow in marine research.
“This spring, I ran an ultra and there I really tuned into how hungry I felt after taking Awesome Sauce compared to other gels that claimed to have half of the carb values of Awesome Sauce,” she says. “So upon coming home, I took my last remaining gel to the [environmental chemistry] lab where I work and dehydrated it in a drying oven.”
In her test, Ershova says she found that the dry weight of Awesome Sauce was 16g instead of the stated 45g. She hypothesized that if all of those grams were carbs, that corresponds to about 60 calories, not 180.
“To be honest, I am shocked that nobody else brought this up before I did, like a competitor company,” she says. “Even without any lab tests, the ingredients were just not adding up and it felt like such low-hanging fruit to me.”
She was even more stunned when additional Spring gels Canaberry and Hill Aid were found to have far fewer calories than advertised.
“The Awesome Sauce was the only Spring gel that looked entirely unreasonable to me, so I always assumed it was an honest mistake that never got caught,” Ershova says. “The fact that now their other popular gels are off from their stated caloric values just as much, if not more, is wild to me, and paints this whole situation in a completely different light.”
Spring Energy Maintains Innocence Despite Industry Fallout
On May 30, Spring Energy’s co-founder Rafal Nazarewicz released an apology video on the brand’s Instagram, adding that the company plans to rectify the situation by addressing several manufacturing problems. “We identified weaknesses in our manufacturing and inconsistency in our ingredients that may have contributed to variations in the nutritional values of some batches in the past,” he said in the post.
We reached out to Nazarewicz for comment and did not receive a response.
Despite multiple third-party tests over the course of several months, Spring Energy maintains that these nutritional inconsistencies are only found in “some batches.” Meanwhile, running stores like Sports Hunger (one of the third party testers) and the Nashville Running Company are no longer selling Awesome Sauce. Matt Johnson, founder of The Feed, a sports nutrition and supplements online retailer that sells popular brands like Maurten, Precision, Skratch, Bonk Breaker, and Gu, began offering the remainder of The Feed’s Spring Energy inventory at a discount.
“We recently learned that the nutrition facts provided by Spring may not be accurate, specifically regarding the calorie and carbohydrate content per serving,” Johnson said in a statement on May 30. “Third-party tests suggest that the actual values might be approximately half of what’s listed. Consequently, we’re now offering all Spring products at a 50% discount. Why 50% off? If you’re getting half of what you expect, you should pay half as much. Despite the issue, Spring products remain all-natural and taste great.”
Johnson added that customers in possession of unopened Spring products purchased from The Feed could request a refund, and those who had purchased and consumed Spring products from The Feed and weren’t satisfied could receive store credit.
Behind the Bonk: Why it Took so Long to Question Awesome Sauce
If the Spring Energy calorie and carb count discrepancies are as egregious as these third party tests suggest, why did it take so long before anyone looked into it? Stephanie Howe, a CTS coach who has a Ph.D. in nutrition and exercise physiology, unpacks the complexity of the issue. She points out that, as far as she knows, this sort of situation hasn’t happened before during her years as a coach and runner. In addition, while many runners are now vocalizing their experiences of bonking while using Spring Energy gels, with so many factors within running, it’s hard to pinpoint blame.
“When you’re bonking, there’s a lot of reasons for that. It’s not just carbohydrate or calorie content,” says Howe, winner of the 2014 Western States 100. “You could also just be bonking because you’re underprepared or you haven’t been hydrating enough or you didn’t get enough sleep. It’s not the first thing I would look to—the gel underperforming. Now, in hindsight, seeing a lot of athletes having poor performances, it does make sense to me, but I think that would be a really hard thing to pick out if you didn’t question the gel.”
Awesome Sauce gained popularity partially because the product seemed to make it easy to consume high amounts of carbs on the run—the gel is smooth, thin, and settles well in the stomach. But now, runners who thought they were taking in a large amount of carbs without issue may be left wondering what it really feels like to eat that much fuel while running. That’s exciting—lots of room for fueling improvement! And perhaps daunting.
“It’s difficult to get 90 grams an hour. Current recommendations for endurance performance is somewhere between 60 to 90 grams. But that’s hard to do because of GI distress and taking in big volumes of product,” Howe says. “There are some other products [similar to what Awesome Sauce promised] that are just more volume.”
Howe is referring to gels like Maurten’s gel 160, which has 160 calories and 39g of carbohydrates in a 40g serving. Precision sells the PF 90, a three-serving gel with a screw top that contains 360 calories and 90g of carbohydrates in a 153g packet.
“The difference is, they taste like high-carbohydrates,” Howe says. “They’re thick, sweet, and harder to get down.”
Howe doesn’t believe Spring Energy’s explanation that just “some batches” are inaccurate due to manufacturing errors, which is why she’s frustrated by the situation.
“I think this isn’t a one time unfortunate thing, I think it was fraud. There’s no way this would be an oversight—it’s not just one batch or one gel. There have been three different types of gels tested from different places. From my own personal experience and other professionals in the field, there are many steps and stages to ensure the quality of your products, so there’s no way that there was just a bad batch that didn’t meet the recommendations.”
Howe says she doesn’t want to attack the brand, but she’s angry on behalf of athletes she’s worked with whose careers have been potentially impacted by this. It’s not just a matter of performance. It’s also a matter of health and safety.
“It’s dangerous if you’re out there in the middle of the night in a race and you don’t have enough fuel,” she says. “You can get hypoglycemic. I just want to be clear that I’m not anti-them, but that doesn’t mean you get to bend the rules.”
A Jam with Gels: FDA Clarification on Running Gel Regulation
Many runners are outwardly angry at Spring Energy—some athletes have begun swapping stories of bonks and DNFs that could be partly due to Awesome Sauce’s lack of carbs, while others tally up how much they spent on gels that may not have contained the precious energy they were paying top dollar for. But beyond the frustration, this ordeal also opens up the conversation about how gels are regulated (if at all) by the Federal Drug Association (FDA).
Energy gels can fall under two FDA classifications: supplements and conventional foods. This designation has important implications for how the gel is regulated.
“There are different regulatory requirements for dietary supplements and conventional foods. Dietary supplement labels are required to have nutrition information in the form of a Supplement Facts label that lists all dietary ingredients in the product,” an FDA spokesperson told RUN. “Conventional foods are required to have nutrition information in the form of a Nutrition Facts label listing certain nutrients. All food labels and labeling must be truthful and not misleading, which includes the accuracy of the nutrition information and ingredients declared on the label.”
In other words, supplements need only list their ingredients, while conventional foods must also display nutritional information, including calorie and carbohydrate counts. So are energy gels supplements or conventional food?
In the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, the FDA defines a dietary supplement as “a product intended for ingestion that, among other requirements, contains a dietary ingredient intended to supplement the diet.”
Dietary supplements can contain two kinds of ingredients: dietary substances like enzymes, probiotics, concentrates, extracts, and metabolites, and substances like fillers, binders, sweeteners, preservatives, and flavorings. For this reason, many gels are considered dietary supplements. Dietary supplements can also be products like bars and teas, which fall under the conventional food category, but only if the food isn’t represented as a sole item of a meal. Because of this ambiguity of classifications, the FDA often administers its own analysis of products in question, taking into account how it is marketed to the public.
This loophole, along with Spring Energy’s own nutritional labels, suggest that Spring Energy gels are considered conventional foods and are thus beholden to FDA conventional food labeling and regulation standards.
FDA spokesperson Courtney Rhodes told RUN: “Our team has found that the product website [Spring Energy] indicates that the gels are not labeled as dietary supplements; rather, the website includes nutrition information for conventional foods.”
The FDA’s website states that it does not approve individual food labels before food products go to market. However, the FDA does require that products contain nutrition information and serving size, and that the calories stated have no more than a 20 percent margin of error. The FDA encourages consumers to call an FDA consumer complaint coordinator if they suspect a product is inaccurate, and make sure to have the food package handy to provide the product information.Though all cases are different and require unique legal ramifications, inaccurate nutrition information can result in actions that range from a warning letter to regulatory fines to litigation.
Should We Trust Our Fuel?
How worried should runners be about the accuracy of nutrition labels on other energy gels? In addition to Spring Energy gels, ultrarunning coach Jason Koop submitted Gu’s Chocolate Outrage gel for testing, and found the results matched its nutrition label.
“Our commitment to accurate labeling begins at the product development phase and runs all the way through finished goods with regular third-party testing of caloric/macronutrient and other nutritional analysis using an AOAC or USP method at an ISO-17025 accredited third party laboratory,” says Sri Chandra, director of quality assurance and regulatory measures at Gu. “We have robust process controls and testing programs in place to ensure our products meet the set nutritional values, and our quarterly testing program’s compliant results underscore our commitment to nutritional accuracy in all Gu products.”
Note: AOAC and USP are predetermined methods and processes used by a number of industries to test products for safety. An ISO-17025 accreditation means a laboratory meets global industry regulations for accuracy, quality, and safety.
With individuals, companies, and brands seeking out their own tests on various gels on the market, the emphasis on nutritional accountability is more prevalent than ever. With the assistance of donors on GoFundMe, trail-ultrarunning resource iRunFar raised $2,805 to submit 13 samples from nine energy gels, both from Spring Energy and other popular brands, to be third-party tested. The three Awesome Sauce gels were purchased from different retailers (directly from the brand and The Feed) and their production date varied from 2023 to 2024. Results from these tests proved to be in line with previous third party tests that Awesome Sauce, regardless of its batch, contained 28 to 36 percent of expected carbohydrates—far behind the FDA’s 20 percent margin of error allowance.
Other gels tested by iRunFar included Honey Stinger, Hüma, Näak, Gu Energy, Maurten, Precision Fuel, and Science in Sport. The results from all of these samples matched their nutrition labels or fell under the FDA’s 20 percent margin of error allowance.
These tests indicate that, while it’s smart to equip yourself with knowledge and skepticism when choosing your fuel, the public shouldn’t be categorically disillusioned by this ordeal. It appears, based on these results (with more sure to come from additional sports fuel brands eager to gain consumer trust) that Spring Energy is an anomaly.
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