This weeks issue is powered by The Performance Nutrition Network
Dear Performance Nutrition Leaders,
This week: is carb loading half placebo, the lactate gel locked up by one Tour team, and who's hiring in elite sport.
💡 LATEST RESEARCH
You see athletes carb loading in the days before a race everywhere you look. It's so embedded that asking whether it works almost sounds like a category error.
But a commentary published this week in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism asks exactly that. How much of the benefit is glycogen, and how much is belief?
Jones, Areta and colleagues systematically evaluated the blinding practices across carb loading research.
Of 14 studies identified, only two were double-blind, placebo-controlled. Both showed no significant performance benefit from loading.
Across the two unblinded studies that provided exogenous carbohydrate during exercise, loading's benefit was small to moderate, d = 0.31 to 0.40. That sits close to the d ≈ 0.35 typically attributed to placebo nutritional interventions. Illustrated by the red dashed line very neatly below.
The pool is small and heterogeneous, spanning different performance tests, durations and carb loading protocols, and the authors are careful here, calling for standardised conditions and more double-blind trials before firm conclusions.
So the takeaway isn't to abandon carb loading. It's to think harder about why it works for your athletes. The strategy you've run on autopilot for years is worth looking at with fresh eyes.
📈NEWS
Elisha Ibrahim shares experience on placement at Carlton FC
Function Health acquires supplement tracking platform SuppCo
Dylan Ive shares Inside the Haiti changing room for this evenings game vs Morocco
TikTok Shop supplements now #1 Health & Beauty category at $784M in sales
Seattle Kraken recruiting Lead Dietitian ($80,200–$95,000) — NHL, full-time
Sporting Kansas City recruiting Sports Performance Dietitian — First Team (MLS)
Ārepa named official brain health partner of NZ Rugby League and Wheelchair Kiwis
Jane McClements celebrates end of season as head of nutrition at Leinster Rugby
UK heatwave drives measurable uplift in electrolyte and hydration product purchases
U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association recruiting High Performance Dietitian ($75,000–$80,000), Park City UT
Have an industry update you’d like to share? Drop us an email → [email protected]
💡PERFORMANCE TECH
From Lab to Field has launched ExoLactate.
It's a gel pairing 40g of carbohydrate with 5g of lactate — the first product to deliver exogenous lactate at a usable dose.
The company's launch webinar is the best place to start. Co-founder Dr Aitor Viribay works through it in three parts.
First, why lactate is now understood as a fuel rather than a waste product — building on George Brooks' lactate shuttle work, and its roles as an energy source, a gluconeogenic precursor, and a signalling molecule.
Second, why no one has brought exogenous lactate to market before now.
Third, the gel itself — the formulation, the "dual fuel" idea of running lactate alongside glucose and fructose, the early pilot data, and the individual variation in response.
For the wider picture, Dr Alex Hutchinson's piece for Outside is a fantastic read. He reports the gel isn't on sale yet — the company made a limited first batch, seven WorldTour teams tried to buy it, and one team bought the entire run to be the only ones with it at this Tour.
