MONITOR:Do energy bars deliver what they say on the wrapper?
I AM FACED with a dilemma. Tomorrow morning, as you all snooze your way into what hopefully will be another gloriously sunny Sunday, I shall be nervously heading off to cycle 200km in the Wicklow countryside.
This is not a race, I am told, but my fellow cyclists have taken on a determined air. This will be my first Wicklow 200, but for the rest it is a second or third outing. What was a Sunday cycle in the park, so to speak, has turned into something more energetic. And at the heart of it all lies the burning question of snacking. Or fuel, as some cyclists refer to it.
I am an ardent non-snacker. They dull the senses, spoil the journey, interrupt the flow of thought from satisfaction to anticipation as you head from one meal to the next. But on a bicycle the subject of fuel is uppermost.
The urge to snack is a strong one, whether you are cycling or just going about your day. Energy levels fall, emotion and tiredness all play a role, and the unpredictable aspects of these influences has us reaching for brightly packaged items at the nearest convenience store.
I am no sports nutritionist, but a chance encounter with somebody who used to cycle competitively 20 years ago put today’s sports nutrition – and hence snacking – into context. Her on-board pantry contains home-made flapjacks, bananas, and dried fruit and nuts.
Read the ingredients of any performance bar and what will strike you are the similarities between industrially manufactured brands – sugar, cocoa butter, emulsifiers, fructose syrup, humectants and plenty of flavourings. It is hard to see what extra the sports versions offer, other than the percentage of protein claimed on the packet along with vitamins and minerals – which the likes of Mars and Snickers have too.
If you are a particularly competitive cyclist, the world of gels beckons. These come with a frightening list of supplements that are supposed to lend all kinds of beneficial assistance in the form of quick and sustained energy.
They are one big cocktail, and according to my fellow cyclists, can have a pretty adverse effect on your digestion system when taken over a sustained period.
Which leads me back to nutrition and the idea of healthy snacking. Oats come top of the list of cereals, a grain we are good at growing in Ireland. Nuts and seeds are also a good source of energy, and dried is a surprisingly good way to eat fruit, nature’s answer to the boiled sweet.
If you require pure energy, then why not consider fashioning your own bar? Grinding chocolate, lime, sesame and pumpkin seeds and combining with raisins can produce a 50g bar of just more than 200 calories – 20g of carbs, 15g of fat, eight grammes of protein and not an E-number in sight.
Almonds, oat bran and dried fruit scores slightly lower on the calorie front, as it does on the other measures, but it is perhaps a little less intense.
If making up your own bars seems a bit too much, then good health-food shops usually have a choice of bars and the ingredients are invariably natural and short. Some can be oversweet, but Granovita, for example, offers an organic version that is rather good.
Or you could make flapjacks that contain oats, butter and golden syrup, plus whatever seeds, nuts and dried fruit you want to include.
Simple, honest and I hope sufficient to keep me going not just for 200km, but for those days when energy levels seem to sag.
harnold@irishtimes.com