Dear Performance Nutrition Leaders,
This week: a new tart cherry meta-analysis, the latest news, and how many carbs two very different runners actually need — tested in a lab at LJMU with Professor James Morton.
💡 LATEST RESEARCH
Tart cherry juice (TCJ) has been on practitioner shelves for years. But are you recommending it for the right reasons?
A new systematic review and meta-analysis from Daab et al., published in Sports Medicine on 7 April 2026, provides a clear picture.
Across the included studies, TCJ significantly improved maximal voluntary contraction (MVC) recovery at all measured time points — effect sizes ranging from 0.63 to 4.82. C-reactive protein was also meaningfully reduced post-exercise (ES –0.46 to –0.68).
The pooled data showed no significant effects on muscle soreness, creatine kinase, IL-6, TNF-α, or range of motion.
This paper suggests that TCJ appears to work best as a recovery tool for power output.
Certainty of evidence sits at low to moderate across outcomes, so this isn't the last word. But the direction of effect is consistent.
📈NEWS
University of Oregon Athletics recruiting a Football Sports Dietitian
University of Missouri hiring Assistant Director of Football Nutrition
UCI Sports Nutrition Project: Race Nutrition for Road Cycling published
Madeleine Platten joins the Miami Dolphins as Assistant Director of Sports Nutrition
Men's Health UK names the best electrolyte products across drinks, tablets, and powders
Reagan Boyd accepts Sports Performance Nutrition Intern role with the LA Sparks and WNBA
American Society for Nutrition Foundation seeks nominations for its spring 2026 awards and scholarships
Reabetjoe Mokoko shares how Mamelodi Sundowns keeps fuelling consistent during away fixtures and international travel
Nicholas Economou pushes back on 'healthy eating' dogma — a performance nutritionist's job is fuelling for performance, not food virtue
Can higher fat energy-dense or high essential amino acid (EAA)-dense supplemental foods could preserve whole‑body protein balance during strenuous cold‑weather operations compared with higher carbohydrate supplemental foods?
💡Performance Tech
The Running Channel brought two runners to Liverpool John Moores University, where Professor James Morton — Chief Science Officer at Science in Sport — ran them through lactate threshold testing, VO2 max, and a 60-minute carbohydrate oxidation protocol at LT1 pace.
Both ingested 120g of carbohydrate per hour using SiS Beta Fuel gels. Oxidation was tracked continuously via indirect calorimetry.
One runner started the test oxidising 3.1g of carbohydrate per minute. By the end — same pace, same intake — that rate had dropped to 2.0g/min.
As Morton explained, that's the body running out of fuel. Glycogen depletes. Fat contribution rises. More oxygen required to hold the same pace. Heavier legs. Higher perceived effort.
The second runner showed the same shift.
Morton's practical takeaway: 80–120g of carbohydrate per hour. At 40g per Beta Fuel gel, that's two per hour as a baseline, three if tolerated.
The practitioner value here isn't the data itself — it's the format.
Showing a recreational runner why their oxidation rate falls, through lab results, on someone who looks like them, explained by the scientist running the test — that's a different conversation than you telling them in a consult.
Worth bookmarking as a client-facing resource before your next fuelling conversation.
