Bonk Breaker has added Mint Chocolate Chip to their lineup, which is all gluten free and densely packed with energy. While not my personal favorite flavor combo in general, these were pretty darn tasty and worked well to fuel our ride-heavy, sleep-deprived #EscapeFromInterbike road trip from Vegas to North Carolina.
Check out more tasty little treats below…
Clif Bar’s nut butter filled bars are now in production and shipping. We’d sampled them at Sea Otter, and they’re amazing. How has no one thought of this before? Available in Peanut Butter, Chocolate Peanut Butter, Chocolate Hazelnut Butter and Coconut Almond Butter.
If you’re used to only seeing Nature’s Bakery Fig Bars in Costco, you’ll be as pleasantly surprised as I was to know they offer quite a few more flavors. Including the new Chocolate Brownie and Gluten Free Pomegranate ones, there’s raspberry, apple cinnamon, fig, peach apricot, lemon, mango, pumpkin spice and blueberry. They’re certified vegan and Kosher, are free of soy and dairy and use stone ground whole wheat for the regular varieties. Gluten free flavors use amaranth, teff and sorghum. You can find these in some grocers, Wal-Mart and convenience stores, and they’re available to bike shops that want to carry a natural snack.
Glukos operates on the premise that glucose is the most immediately available and used source of energy for the body, so why not just give it what it wants? That said, their energy bars start out with dates and cashews as the base, and they’re simply delicious. For after the ride, they’ve now added two ways to get your whey protein recovery on. The bars come in Rocky Road, Chocolate Peanut Butter and Cookies ‘n’ Creme. All three are delicious, but do border on the dry side. The main ingredients are whey crisps (made from whey concentrate), whey isolate and glucose, with various nuts or other ingredients added based on flavor. All three are gluten free.
Their whey protein powder mixes isolate and concentrate with glucose, stevia and sea salt (plus natural flavors) to create a tasty mix (especially rich when blended with milk) without artificial sweeteners. The stevia left no weird taste, making this one a good option for anyone that hates that chemically sweetened flavor.
GU’s Roctane energy drink gets a new caffeinated flavor called Summit Tea that’s made with…black tea. Add in the Roctane amino acid blend of BCAA’s, Taurine and Beta Alanine and you get a combo that helps spare muscle breakdown during long rides. Each serving has 35mm naturally occurring caffeine.
Cucumber Mint debuted earlier this year, and Mint Chocolate Chip makes a comeback.
Energy Bits takes a different approach to firing you up, relying on pure botanical nutrition rather than stimulants or sugars to fuel the ride. They’re made of spirulina algae, helping you reach your goal of eating more vegetables at the same time. The catch? You’ve gotta chew the entire tin’s worth to get the full serving…30 tabs. They’re sold in bags of 1,000 bits and come with the travel tin. Retail is $115, working out to just under $3 per serving. New from them are Recovery Bits, which use Chlorella algae that provides more than 40 nutrients, including chlorophyl and antioxidants.
Xendurance takes a much more engineered approach to sports nutrition. Their products range from lactic acid buffering (Extreme Endurance) pills have been third party, double blind clinically tested to reduce lactic acid and improve aerobic performance in the double digit percentages. Their Fuel-5 energy drink combines sweet potato, maltodextrin, sucrose, glucose and lactate as energy sources to provide sustained, steady and quick energy, plus electrolytes and B-vitamins.
Extreme Hydro-X provides 1,500mg of lactate for energy plus Sustamine, a patented blend of amino acids that helps rebuild muscle and promote deeper hydration. The Protein recovery mix also gets lactate to replenish energy stores along with both whey and casein proteins.
Bounce Protein Balls get you out from behind bars with quite a few really good flavors that build in a lot of nutrition around whey protein. Flavors range from Coconut Macadamia to Orange Cacao to Vanilla Almond to SuperBerry and more, each with 8-10g of protein. Other ingredients vary by flavor and include almonds, chia, sunflower seeds, cacao nibs, cinnamon, cashews, pecans, etc.
Wash it all down with several new flavors from Guayaki Yerba Mate, including Enlighten Mint and unsweetened Lemon Mint. Not only were these immensely refreshing out at Boulder City during Interbike’s demo, they also helped fuel the long drives home. If you haven’t tried them, Yerba Mate tends to give a longer, more mellow wakefulness than coffee’s potent smash of caffeine. We still love coffee, of course, but there are times when Guayaki’s teas help keep things rolling along without any jitters or anxious feelings.
