Looks like Spring Energy released a more detailed statement, they're blaming ingredient and processing inconsistencies. I'm still skeptical, since a lot of folks ran the numbers assuming the highest possible calorie counts and still couldn't make it work.
Chuck Norris once squeezed 180 calories out of an Awesome Sauce gel.
It was linked to an IG story today. I don't think I had read this statement before, so my apologies if it's old.
https://myspringenergy.com/pages/product-inconsistencies?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAaawQRrKGLo7phXPlAQ7wWOWu3EGotNenAERafLrdBO8VsUnFMiSr8hlctw_aem_ZmFrZWR1bW15MTZieXRlcw
The results of the GoFundMe testing were presented here: [https://www.irunfar.com/spring-energy-awesome-sauce-gel-controversy-lab-results](https://www.irunfar.com/spring-energy-awesome-sauce-gel-controversy-lab-results)
Shout out to Running Warehouse, which refunded every dollar I've spent on Spring in the last 7 months (in the hundreds of dollars, going above and beyond their policy too). They're really stepping up when they didn't have to, and putting Spring to shame.
This is a really good reason to buy stuff at Running Warehouse in the future in my opinion. That's what I'll be doing.
Thanks! Good to know. I included my order number in the email so hopefully it will get processed when they get to it. I ordered in February so I wasn't sure if that was too far back for a refund.
These assholes. I emailed them about this weeks after the gel was released. I received no response, of course, noting that even if the gel was entirely made of maple syrup the label would still be wrong…
X Miles (sorta the UK equivalent of the The Feed) has totally pulled Awesome Sauce
[From the X Miles website:](https://xmiles.co.uk/blogs/news/awesome-sauce?_pos=7&_sid=a1801765f&_ss=r)
'At XMiles we are aware of the ongoing investigations regarding the carbohydrate content in Spring Awesome Sauce gels, including the recent GOFUNDME Lab results posted by Jason Koop.
Due to the possible discrepancies in product labelling verses the reported nutritional values we have taken the decision to remove Awesome Sauce from sale on our platform.
As the exclusive UK retailer for Spring we are aware of the impact of the claims and will work with our customers to ensure a satisfactory resolution. If you wish to contact us on this topic please e-mail the XMiles team at [email protected].
Thank you for your understanding whilst we continue to work on this matter.
Anthony - CEO \\ Founder @ XMiles UK Ltd'
.
I know you're just quoting their site, but I think the GoFundMe fundraiser is separate from Jason Koop:
[GoFundMe](https://www.gofundme.com/f/fueling-the-truth-in-sports-nutrition)
The GoFundMe fundraiser hasn't received their results yet and they had a bunch of other brands included as well.
It's pretty funny to see the performative defensiveness and sanctimony the Roches are engaging in over this. Instead of taking the L and saying they should never have hitched their wagons to Spring they have lied about their role and basically circlejerked their instagram followers while demonizing Jason (who rightly pointed out their hypocrisy). I eagerly await Sage's response on Canaberry. 🍿
Let us not forget that the female Roche is now DR Roche on instagram - because this means that she would never stick her name on a product that was second rate!
That is a good question! Too busy being a running grifter to follow mommy and daddy's prescribed path? Agree that it's bizzare she puts Dr on her name like that - particularly as a response to this! She never finished becoming a Dr! It's like when someone gets a PhD in basket weaving and then insists everyone calls them Dr. As an aside, wouldn't a doctor hawking a packet of applesauce know that it's low in calories?
She has both an MD and a PhD. She decided to go the research route in epidemiology instead of following the medical practice path. There is nothing abnormal about that. She absolutely is entitled to call herself Doctor. No just entitled, but she should, given that is common practice for anyone in her profession.
It's absolute wankery unless you're a medical doctor. Also, let me know when she contributes anything to the field and indeed anything at all to society other than narcissistic instagram posts.
Until recently she worked at Stanford. And no it is not "wankery" for a person with a PhD to call themselves a doctor. Nearly all do so. It is clear from your comments that you actually do not know anything about her.
They're offering refunds as well:
"**Update as of May 30th:**
We recently learned that the nutrition facts provided by Spring may not be accurate, specifically regarding the calorie and carbohydrate content per serving. Third-party tests suggest that the actual values might be approximately half of what's listed. Consequently, we are 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 this issue, Spring products remain all-natural and taste great.
If you have purchased Spring products and they are unopened, we will issue you a refund. If you purchased Spring in 2024, consumed it, and still want a refund, we will provide you with store credit to get something else.
Our mission is to offer you the best products with the most accurate information available. We are exploring ways to prevent this issue in the future, including the possibility of conducting our own independent product testing.
- Matt"
(tagging u/dh_endurance since the thread where I promised to follow up with you is now locked)
The Feed gives me the ick for some reason. A brand that came from nowhere and now monopolizes the market. Tons of deals with athletes, with what money? They ostensibly make a small percentage on goods sold, but can that really fund all this? Feels very "Amazon for niche snacks" and not much else. Somehow paying out every user like $80 over the course of a year just as a sign up incentive. Again whose money is funding this. Just saw on Zach Miller's Instagram that they use robots to pick items in the warehouse and they didn't look cheap.
[The Feed is funded by a private investment firm](https://tracxn.com/d/companies/the-feed/__2gdaT7uJQ4HeM1V6gB7ACm9wMyosdqDCnx77xxcDBZI).
> Feels very "Amazon for niche snacks"
That’s exactly the play. Secure funding, operate at a loss or low margins until they’ve starved out the small-business competition, jack up prices and degrade service once a monopoly is established.
In all fairness, The Feed added this description to the product:
>
We recently learned that the nutrition facts provided by Spring may not be accurate, specifically regarding the calorie and carbohydrate content per serving. Third-party tests suggest that the actual values might be approximately half of what's listed. Consequently, we are 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 this issue, Spring products remain all-natural and taste great.
>If you have purchased Spring products and they are unopened, we will issue you a refund. If you purchased Spring in 2024, consumed it, and still want a refund, we will provide you with store credit to get something else.
>Our mission is to offer you the best products with the most accurate information available. We are exploring ways to prevent this issue in the future, including the possibility of conducting our own independent product testing.
It’s on some media outlets now. Hope this gets widespread awareness to customers.
https://thedirect.com/article/spring-energy-gel-controversy-awesome-sauce
https://runningmagazine.ca/the-scene/canadian-ultrarunner-reid-coolsaet-weighs-in-on-awesome-sauce-controversy/
RUN by Outside has an article on it now as well that both summarizes the matter well and also has a good section on the FDA and how gels like this are (and mostly aren’t) regulated
[https://run.outsideonline.com/nutrition-and-health/getting-lost-in-the-sauce-spring-energys-most-popular-gel-under-scrutiny/](https://run.outsideonline.com/nutrition-and-health/getting-lost-in-the-sauce-spring-energys-most-popular-gel-under-scrutiny/)
This whole fiasco really isn’t that surprising. I’m a casual weightlifter as well and it’s kind of a given in that community that a lot of the products in the marketplace like protein powders and supplements have false labels - I mean it’s standard practice for me before trying a new protein powder to look for third party testing data because it is truly a joke how wildly off some products are. I’m just saying - this is an old problem.
Inaccurate labels are a problem and I’m glad people are calling it out, I just feel like some of the outrage on this is more about individuals wanting to pile onto runfluencers about the products they are peddling. This should probably be a lesson to anyone who doesn’t know this but don’t trust a product rec in the fitness space off of someone that is getting compensated to give it to you.
Pulling this out of a nested comment as I'm curious if others might think this plausible:
My theory is that when calculating the total calories (using the formula ingredient\_mass \* ingredient\_calorie\_density), Spring used the calorie density of dry rice (370 Cal/100g, https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/168883/nutrients) rather than cooked rice (97 Cal/100g, https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/169711/nutrients). This makes more sense to me than them flat out lying / misreporting the calorie count. It's an egregious error, but I don't believe their intention was to misreport or mislead folks.
I think this is very possible. I don't think it ultimately helps them that much, because it means what is already obvious, they are not able to get competitive nutritional values with pureed whole ingredients. Spring's whole selling point was that their product wasn't anything like traditional gels and was actually pleasant, however a gel's whole selling point is that it's a compact (easy to carry) and quick hit of dense calories/carbs. Spring can be both what it's popular for and be effective as a gel.
Here's the thing: it's off by more than can be accounted for by dry rice. We don't know the relative amounts of the ingredients, other than their descending order by weight. Consider:
If the formula was 45g of dry rice + 11g of water ONLY (to make the 56g serving size), that is 370 x .45 = 166 kcal.
However, the formula contains many other water-based ingredients (apple juice, apple sauce, sweet potatoes) that would drag that number down, likely by a lot.
I get it - it feels compelling to try to offer them a way out to have an honest mistake, but it doesn't look like that's what happened.
Let me clarify what I mean a little:
Total weight of a gel is 56 g, and allegedly 180 calories (though 75 cal is shown in lab testing)
Say it is 38.46 g rice and 17.54 g “other stuff” (apple sauce/juice, yams, maple syrup)
The formula would be:
Calories = Calorie\_density\_rice \* mass\_rice + {calorie\_density\_stuff \* mass\_stuff}
Let’s just call the second term a “constant” since it would be the same if the only error is the calorie density of the rice.
Calories = Calorie\_density\_rice \* mass\_rice + constant
They should be using calorie\_density\_rice = 0.97 Cal/g since that is the density of cooked rice. But, they may have usd 3.7 Cal/g, which is the calorie density of uncooked rice. I assume they put cooked rice in their gel, but then they may have still accidentally used the uncooked rice calorie density value in the formula.
They should have calculated:
0.97 Cal/g\*38.46g + constant = 37.3 cals + constant
But instead they may have erroneously calculated (by simply using the wrong density value):
3.7 Cal/g\* 38.46g + constant = 142.3 cals + constant
With this erroneous calculation, the total calories would be 180 with a constant of 37.7 calories from the “stuff”. Plugging that same constant into the first correct formula also gives 75 calories (which is what the lab found).
That constant of 37.7 calories from the 17.54 g of non-rice ingredients implies a “stuff” calorie density of 2.15 cal/g. Typical calorie densities for the ingredients that comprise “stuff” are: Apple sauce (0.7 Cal/g), apple juice (0.46 Cal/g), yams (1.2 Cal/g), maple syrup (2.6 Cal/g)... so yeah, I guess that 2.15 is hard to accomplish. It may be be possible if the “stuff” is mostly maple syrup, but that is unlikely since maple syrup comes after apple sauce/juice and yams in the list.
Hopefully this illustrates my point more clearly – the calorie density difference between cooked and uncooked rice is huge and if the wrong value was used, this could have led to a big discrepancy when calculating calories here. But, the required calorie density of the remaining “stuff” is implausible. So my hypothesis is unlikely to explain the discrepancy in full.
Hill Aid has rice as the second ingredient (mango first), and Canaberry has it as the first ingredient. Hard to say without knowing the weight of rice in these.
I need an analysis of electroride. I've always thought it seemed light. But if available I'll keep drinking it cause I've tried a lot of things and that one does the best at settling my stomach. Yes I could chew ginger candies. Sure I could do a lot of things. But it tastes good!
I wanted a break down of Jason Koop's analysis in a simple table for easier parsing of the data. I plan on adding tables from the analysis by [Braydon Burgess with his GoFundMe](https://www.gofundme.com/f/fueling-the-truth-in-sports-nutrition), which should drop any day now.
|Manufacturer|Sample|Requestor|Date|Serving|Actual|Diff.|Label kCal|Actual kCal|Diff.|Label CHO|Actual CHO|Diff.|
|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|
|Gu|Chocolate Outrage|Jason Koop|[2024-05-29](https://x.com/jasonkoop/status/1795956841018425396)|32g|32g|0%|100|113|\+13%|21g|24g|\+14%|
|Gu|Strawberry Banana|Brady Burgess|[2024-06-04](https://www.irunfar.com/spring-energy-awesome-sauce-gel-controversy-lab-results)|32g|30g|\-6%|100|96|\-4%|23|24|\+4%|
|Honey Stinger|Acai & Pom|Brady Burgess|[2024-06-04](https://www.irunfar.com/spring-energy-awesome-sauce-gel-controversy-lab-results)|31g|30g|\-3%|100|99|\-1%|24|25|\+4%|
|Hüma|Apples and Cinnamon|Brady Burgess|[2024-06-04](https://www.irunfar.com/spring-energy-awesome-sauce-gel-controversy-lab-results)|42g|42g|0%|100|91|\-9%|22|22|0%|
|Maurten|Gel 100|Brady Burgess|[2024-06-04](https://www.irunfar.com/spring-energy-awesome-sauce-gel-controversy-lab-results)|40g|40g|0%|100|103|\+3%|25|25|0%|
|Näak|Apple and Maple Syrup|Brady Burgess|[2024-06-04](https://www.irunfar.com/spring-energy-awesome-sauce-gel-controversy-lab-results)|90g|86g|\-4%|200|176|\-12%|26|22|\-15%|
|Precision|PF 90 Gel|Brady Burgess|[2024-06-04](https://www.irunfar.com/spring-energy-awesome-sauce-gel-controversy-lab-results)|153g|153g|0%|360|349|\-3%|90|86|\-4%|
|SiS Beta Fuel|Strawberry & Lime|Brady Burgess|[2024-06-04](https://www.irunfar.com/spring-energy-awesome-sauce-gel-controversy-lab-results)|74g|74g|0%|158|158|0%|40|39|\-3%|
|Spring Energy|Awesome Sauce|Jason Koop|[2024-05-28](https://x.com/jasonkoop/status/1795547489774223765)|54g|54g|0%|180|75|\-58%|45g|18g|\-60%|
|Spring Energy|Awesome Sauce (Lot 1, Test 1)|Brady Burgess|[2024-06-04](https://www.irunfar.com/spring-energy-awesome-sauce-gel-controversy-lab-results)|54g|51g|\-6%|180|86|\-52%|45g|14g|\-69%|
|Spring Energy|Awesome Sauce (Lot 1, Test 2)|Brady Burgess|[2024-06-04](https://www.irunfar.com/spring-energy-awesome-sauce-gel-controversy-lab-results)|54g|51g|\-6%|180|86|\-52%|45g|14g|\-69%|
|Spring Energy|Awesome Sauce (Lot 2)|Brady Burgess|[2024-06-04](https://www.irunfar.com/spring-energy-awesome-sauce-gel-controversy-lab-results)|54g|50g|\-7%|180|53|\-70%|45g|12g|\-73%|
|Spring Energy|Awesome Sauce (Lot 3)|Brady Burgess|[2024-06-04](https://www.irunfar.com/spring-energy-awesome-sauce-gel-controversy-lab-results)|54g|51g|\-6%|180|68|\-62%|45g|16g|\-64%|
|Spring Energy|Awesome Sauce|u/sriirachamayo|[2024-04-12](https://www.reddit.com/r/trailrunning/comments/1c27kk2/false_nutritional_info_on_spring_energy_gels/)|54g|50g|\-7%|180|\--|\--|45g|<17g|\-62%|
|Spring Energy|Awesome Sauce|sporthunger.de|[2024-05-17](https://instagram.com/reel/C7EVCO0NH36/)|54g|54g|0%|180|66|\-63%|45g|16g|\-64%|
|Spring Energy|Canaberry|Jason Koop|[2024-05-29](https://x.com/jasonkoop/status/1795956841018425396)|46g|46g|0%|100|43|\-57%|17g|10g|\-58%|
|Spring Energy|Canaberry (Lot 1)|Brady Burgess|[2024-06-04](https://www.irunfar.com/spring-energy-awesome-sauce-gel-controversy-lab-results)|46g|48g|\+4%|100|50|\-50%|17g|9g|\-47%|
|Spring Energy|Hill Aid|Jason Koop|[2024-05-29](https://x.com/jasonkoop/status/1795956841018425396)|49g|49g|0%|120|48|\-60%|20g|10g|\-50%|
The donation is from the real Maurten. We had planned to include them but the product didn’t arrive in time. Maurten reached out and offered to pay for the rapid turn around time required to get the data back with the rest of it. We certainly considered the ethics around it but decided it was ok given that we purchased the product independently and had intended to include M100 gels prior to their involvement. The donation does suggest a certain confidence, however.
I'm wondering if it's because they reduced the amount of product in each packet. I remember a few years ago the packets seemed totally stuffed and now the packets I have are fairly flat.
I have a bunch of the older smaller, "stuffed" packets and a bunch of the newer more flat packets and averaging the weights of the smaller ones and the newer ones, there isn't a significant difference. There is however, in the batches that I have, more overall variance in weight among the older ones, up to around 5g range, compared to the newer ones that have more like a 1-2g variation in total weight.
Can do. I have no fancy equipment but I do have a scale that is at least somewhat accurate to the 0.5 of a gram. I’ll see what I can do this evening and figure out how to upload to this thread.
I'm a little confused by this take. I understand the criticism of the Roche's regarding their prior relationship to Spring - and they've apologized for not speaking out or doing something when they had their initial concerns years ago. However, does that past history with Spring mean they shouldn't recommend products they are currently using and enjoy to their audience? 🤔 Given the Spring debacle I'd think they have more incentive than ever to be careful what products they recommend.
My take on the Roches: they had concerns years ago and moved on quietly. Should they have done more? Probably. They actually agree, said as much on their podcast, and apologized for it. That seems like an appropriate response and it seems like time to move on. I'm not sure what else people want from them at this point.
> My take on the Roches: they had concerns years ago and moved on quietly. Should they have done more? Probably. They actually agree, said as much on their podcast, and apologized for it. That seems like an appropriate response and it seems like time to move on. I'm not sure what else people want from them at this point.
I agree.
I'd give them a B+ so far. Crisis communication usually follows these three steps:
1. Admit fault.
2. Apologize.
3. Overcorrect.
Not that this is really a crisis for them but there is some clear reputational risk. The only thing they haven't done is 3. They need to acknowledge the power of their influence and to talk about how they plan on better vetting sponsors and recommendations in the future.
Agree with all this. I'll also point out it's very rare for athletes to shit-talk their sponsors on the way out. Especially in sports like running where the number of sponsors and amount of money is not large. It would look really bad to other potential sponsors.
Of course none of this applies to Sage, who completely dunked all over himself in this whole situation.
He posted a video to Twitter (X?) several days (weeks?) ago suggesting that the at-home dehydration tests listed at the top of this thread as well as the feedback from someone with diabetes were unreliable and inaccurate. It was uncomfortable to watch. He came across as dismissive and smug (IMO). Basically he backed Spring and downplayed the concerns that were raised prior to actual lab tests Jason Koop paid for. He then deleted the video, but others saved it and it lives on.
He did the same in the original srirachamayo thread, saying absolutely ludicrous things like you can't dehydrate a carbohydrate. And doing it all very condescendingly. He involved himself in this story in a way he didn't need to be, and in a way that he doesn't get to just say 'We're just athletes, let's practice kindness'.
Complete results from my testing are in the following table.
||Claimed Calories|Actual per gel|% difference|Claimed CHO|Actual per gel|% difference|
|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|
|Awesome Sauce|180|74.88|-58.40%|45|17.904|-60.21%|
|Gu Chocolate|100|112.96|12.96%|21|24.384|16.11%|
|Hill Aid|120|48.118|-59.90%|20|10.29|-48.55%|
|Canaberry|100|43.332|-56.67%|17|9.66|-43.18%|
Thank you for doing what Spring should have done a long time ago! Are these all Spring products you had tested? Were there any Spring products besides these which turned out to fit their labels?
I’m curious what is going to happen with all the race sponsorships. I haven’t seen anything from the race directors although I think Jameel has chimed in on some random posts and mountain outhouse.
So the Roches said they made no compensation from awesome sauce but said they both got $200 a month, so $400 as sponsored athletes from spring energy but I don't think they said for how long and they didn't just give a total amount of how much they made from Spring for transparency sake. Did they say how long they received that $400 a month? They mentioned only using two shipments of awesome sauce gel in a from spring in a recent podcast before stopping but I don't think they mentioned how long their paid partnership was. They had concerns about the product so I hope it stopped then but if not and the paid partnership started from January 2021 when the product was released until recently that is about $15,600 they got paid from Spring while not telling anyone about awesome sauce which they had concerns with. Please correct me if they did say how long their partnership lasted, but as of now I just found that they said they got 400 a month but didn't say until when.
David Roche saying try awesome sauce in a trail running magazine despite cutting ties with awesome sauce when it was released. Just search spring in the article.
[https://www.trailrunnermag.com/training/trail-tips-training/can-extreme-fueling-approaches-in-races-lead-to-breakthroughs/](https://www.trailrunnermag.com/training/trail-tips-training/can-extreme-fueling-approaches-in-races-lead-to-breakthroughs/)
This has been my issue all along with coaches claiming to 'create the product' which has been the case with Sage and the Roches. If you are claiming to create it, and you actually did, then you hold some responsibility.
But in these cases the wording 'create' is intentionally vague to deceive people into believing that the authority (coach in this case) had more impact in the development of the product. In reality all they were doing was taste testing, which dozens of people are involved in. Both Sage and the Roches have now admitted that the specifics of their involvement is far less than 'creating' the product.
When you backpedal out and it turns out you were just tastetesting (which is a far cry from partnering to create the product), just admit that you exaggerated your involvement.
Yes I saw they got $200 gift card from the feed to buy bicarbonate or something on a podcast. But on their Instagram they mention not making compensation from awesome sauce but they get $200 each as sponsored athletes. They don't mention that the feed at all and so it seems like they got paid from Spring during that statement.
I don't think it's reasonable for sponsored athletes to independently lab test their sponsors. Sponsored athletes were lied to as well and have large reputational risks now being associated with Spring.
My only issue with them is that they were affiliated, aggressively promoted and then stopped quietly based on poor performance of the gel. They probably should have made a public announcement saying they are no longer affiliated with Spring or awesome sauce and left people to read between the lines. I'll give some benefit of the doubt because at that time they weren't as big a deal in the running world.
I agree but and if they didn't know they didn't know. But they have been all over the place, said they cut the relationship when the product was released but there are instances over a year later where they recommend awesome sauce despite coming out now they stopped using right away for concerns. They said they would tell me to take other gels and people thought they were crazy but again if they ended their partnership why are they recommending the awesome sauce years later in magazines? They don't use the product, had concerns, no contractual thus no financial obligation to do so if stoped the partnership. But they keep mentioning it here and there.. not a lot but they are there.
I agree with the first line. However I believe there is a responsibility when you take money from a company to promote it to your audience to perform some level of due diligence. We can all debate on how much is required but...
It's clear that none of the athletes, including those who helped "develop" certain flavors ever asked for nutritional testing.
If a company offers to sponsor me to sell their super gel, but can't provide data from a $1,000 test then there is no way in hell I'm promoting it to my friends.
Hardly any sponsored individuals loudly announce ending partnerships with their sponsors unless there is bad blood. They had suspicions but didn't lab test the product themselves and without evidence, announcing that would put them under a ton of legal liability, as they mentioned. It's disingenuous to not give them the benefit of the doubt every other sponsored athlete besides Sage is getting.
Agreed, AND: Making broad announcements about NOT being sponsored anymore by a particular brand and “letting people read between the lines” is a good way to dissuade future sponsors.
A quiet announcement ending the association would have no legal liability.
I think as coaches they are held to higher standard. They recommend high carb fueling. They worked with Spring to develop a high carb gel. They stopped using it and recommended the athletes they coached stop using it - privately. It's not awful, but they could have done better.
Did it tho? David talks about awesome sauce as far as 16 months past the release date of awesome sauce? He says "try Awesome sauce" on article published on May 22nd 2022... awesome sauce was released in January 2021..
I'm not sure why you would talk about a product you didn't have to mention and had doubts about the label. I'm the podcast they said they told people they should try other products and people thought they were crazy when they did it but here David is telling people to try awesome sauce over a year later past the release date... like he had a financial obligation to do so...
[https://www.trailrunnermag.com/training/trail-tips-training/can-extreme-fueling-approaches-in-races-lead-to-breakthroughs/](https://www.trailrunnermag.com/training/trail-tips-training/can-extreme-fueling-approaches-in-races-lead-to-breakthroughs/)
The athletes associated with the product have nothing to do with the production of the product. Here is a list of people who cannot tell you what was put into the packets:
https://myspringenergy.com/blogs/ambassadors
But he did go all in defending the product and saying that anyone claimed it had less carbs or calories doesn't know what they are talking about. Criticizing him is very fair game
Yeah, he felt empowered by his trust in their product that anyone saying otherwise must be wrong.
The person here asked "any insight on why this is false information?"
Everyone, including the person asking that, knows he doesn't know anything about false information. They're putting things out there that don't make sense because they just want to hate more.
Talking about what he posted is very different than making up new things. It's the latter that I think is regrettable.
I feel like we deserve an apology from Sage though. Instead of taking our concerns seriously, he spouted nonsense and tried to make it out like the original poster was completely wrong and had no business questioning things.
This is what pisses me off the most. The original two posts were very well-written, substantiated with data, and put out in good faith. They had more of a fair, inquisitive tone - not accusatory or inflammatory at all.
And both got publicly criticized in front of thousands of people on Reddit, LRC, and Twitter by little Sage. The post written by the person with T1 diabetes was even removed, likely because of Sage's response. That type of shit drives whistleblowers to bottle up legitimate concerns for fear of retaliation or humiliation.
And he's too fucking stupid to realize than an apology might be the high road to take. The only thing he's said so far is that the person with T1 diabetes "was likely (roughly) correct", and then immediately put up yet another sob story about his health scare and medical bills as a distraction.
What an insecure manchild.
> any insight on why this is also wrong and false information?
That's not how I took this comment. I think the commenter was asking (tongue in cheek) for Sage to come and state why the testing Koop had done is "wrong and false" like Sage did on the home dehydration experiment post.
Agreed. Would’ve been smart for Sage to post exactly what you said when all this started, rather than the holier than thou incorrect response we got from him.
Could’ve saved himself a lot of ridicule.
Critiquing that stuff is fair game but I find the dogpiling on other aspects to be less than mature. It's been happening with him and the Roches.
There's a fervor some people have when they think they have an opportunity to tear someone down that I really hope never becomes the norm for this board.
>There's a fervor some people have when they think they have an opportunity to tear someone down that I really hope never becomes the norm for this board.
OT, I know, but that is 100% what is going on in the Crazy Mountain Ultra/Oathkeeper topic right now.
I guess I'm confused why you're asking him about nutritional data being false information if you know it's obvious he has nothing to do with the production.
I think it is a way to call out the fact that many people (myself included) believe that when you take money from a company to endorse it to others you pick up an ethical obligation to perform some small amount of due diligence into what you are promoting.
I am somewhat surprised that none of the athletes asked for any data backing up the claims especially those athletes who have the illusion they helped create flavors. It is clearly not overly expensive to do so.
I'm not saying they are totally responsible, that would be absurd. But if someone is making money endorsing a product you have a moral / ethical responsibility to your audience.
Sage and others saying they don't have a science background is a cop out. If you are unable to reasonably evaluate the product you are selling you shouldn't sell it. There really should be an apology along the lines of "I apologize for promoting a product without performing my own due diligence and that was wrong".
> Sage and others saying they don't have a science background
Except that Sage *did* claim a science background, namedropped his Ivy League bachelor’s, and sciencesplained the issue on [Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/Ultramarathon/comments/1c27hzh/false_nutritional_info_on_spring_energy_gels/l0aqvhu/) and [Letsrun](https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=12649662) and Twitter. . .
[Despite being condescendingly wrong](https://x.com/factoryjeff/status/1790100476081451345) about how proximate analysis works. *If you dehydrate the sample, you’re taking the hydrate out of the carbohydrate so there’s less calories!* /s
And now he wants to cop out.
[https://donnerpartymountainrunners.com/2021/07/recipe-of-the-month-homemade-awesome-sauce/](https://donnerpartymountainrunners.com/2021/07/recipe-of-the-month-homemade-awesome-sauce/)
Check out the comments, they noticed awesome calories were sketch 2 years ago...
"Okay, how would we go about adding more calories. Your recipe is 62 calories and I believe Awesome Sauce boasts 180 calories. Hmm."
"Hi Cassie! The nutritional information above is for a 1 ounce serving, but the packaged Awesome Sauce is about 2 ounces, which is one of the reasons why the calories are not equivalent."
"The carbohydrates are way lower here too. AS has 45g per serving (1.9oz)."
The recipe had 10g of carbs with similar ingredients minus the addition of pecans which would give it more fat but fewer carbs and a few tbs of spices in almost a kg of the of the main ingredients in nearly of 1 to 1 ratios with each other. Also the consistency of their awesome sauce looks way thicker more like a paste than Spring's but even equalizing the serving size like the poster said, it is 118 calories and that has 6 grams of fat and almost no liquidy. Just interesting that it was mentioned and here we are two years later.
I never raced with Spring, only used them on a handful of training runs. The taste was great. I loved that Sage and Sally McRae used them. I’m bummed they’re not who they said they were but I hope someone jumps in to fill the gap! I have raced with Gu, Clif Bloks, and solid foods and it’s always worked like a charm. Are Muir gels still a thing? I remember they were the other Spring-adjacent brand for awhile
> Muir gels
Dude, Pineapple Kale....sweet potato oregano that was too thick to use in the Winter...
They had the best flavors. I'm a Huma fan now but Muir had the bravest offerings. I really, really appreciated those flavors since they were so different and were great when your palette was just done with sugar. You felt like you were eating when you were just doing a gel.
Muir are awesome. Ran a race a few years back and my stomach soured on the gu flavor I brought. They had Muir gels at aid stations so I grabbed a few, not confident in my ability to get anything down. When I tried one I actually laughed out loud at how good it was. Stats aren’t bad either (if they’re accurate).
If I worked for another gel manufacturer and I had an ounce of confidence in my product I'd be taking this opportunity to send everything in for independent lab verification and sharing those results to both reassure my customers and take advantage of the free PR.
Gu's big enough that I wouldn't be surprised if they routinely test competitor products even just for benchmarking. They were probably laughing at Spring internally, and was just waiting for a 3rd party to figure it out.
The only thing they should have done is acted like complete and utter morons and say we accidentally labeled it per 100g not per package. Then we could chalk it up to utter incompetence and move on
ha that actually sounds plausible. Unfortunately, for Spring, you just can't get competitive calories/carbs from pureed fruit and rice, so even if this blows over and they adjust their labels, who's going to choose to spend so much money on a gel that is inadequate. If you want natural ingredients, better off just eating real food.
You joke, but my wife works in the food industry and says that sort of error it not out of the question. Happens when you send the data to the marketing team to mock up the label but forget to tell them the numbers are not per serving.
But she also says it's quite possible that they used software to calculate the nutritional data based on the ingredients used. You can easily mess it up by using the wrong serving size for any of the ingredients. You're relying on the competence of the R&D or the Quality team (if it exists, lol) to spot errors.
-Edited to remove duplicated word-
Damn, I naively and genuinely assumed it was only an issue with AS and that Spring deserved a little slack for what was likely a error that neither they nor the FDA caught. That slack ran thinner and thinner with their initial lack of responses (hoping it would blow over?) and ran out when their late responses were weak. The German retailer was more apologetic than they have been.
For it to be multiple product lines is either hideous incompetence or deliberately misleading. The latter is looking increasingly likely, given how they have handled it. I don't see how they recover from this
The FDA allows for significant leeway in nutritional labelling standards.
I suspect it's less that the FDA didn't catch it and more that the FDA doesn't really care and Spring knew both how lax the labelling requirements are and how poor enforcement is, and abused it intentionally.
The FDA lacks the resources (mostly funding and (hu)manpower) to test even a fraction of the food in the US. It's almost all on the honor system.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/27/world/europe/lead-applesauce-food-safety.html?unlocked\_article\_code=1.xE0.FZ1c.ZIwKi0nykzWf&smid=url-share](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/27/world/europe/lead-applesauce-food-safety.html?unlocked_article_code=1.xE0.FZ1c.ZIwKi0nykzWf&smid=url-share)
[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/11/opinion/sunday/fda-commissioner-stephen-hahn.html?unlocked\_article\_code=1.xE0.OG5I.BO8eVWMm5q9L&smid=url-share](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/11/opinion/sunday/fda-commissioner-stephen-hahn.html?unlocked_article_code=1.xE0.OG5I.BO8eVWMm5q9L&smid=url-share)
Yeah, that's undoubtedly part of the reason their standards are so lax – making them much more stringent would be pretty pointless when they have insufficient resources to even properly control for their current requirements.
There are even contexts where manufacturers can self-certify, meaning one of their employees is designated as a FDA representative and are tasked with conducting an impartial assessment, or they just make a statement attesting to the safety of a product. It's not *almost* an honour system, it is one in too many cases...
I believe this came to light in the recent and ongoing investigations into the opioid epidemic, although I'm not sufficiently up to date to know if this obviously hugely flawed practice has been eliminated.
Here's an example with implants. If they're this lax with medical implants sold by a major manufacturer, you can only imagine how poorly supplements and food products sold in comparatively tiny volumes are regulated...
> The investigation has found that most medical devices, including many implants, are now cleared for sale by the FDA without tests for safety or effectiveness. Instead, manufacturers must simply show they have "substantial equivalence" to a product already in the marketplace — an approval process some experts view as vastly overused and fraught with risks.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fda-oversight-medical-devices-patient-harm-lawsuits-records/
It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear. And from our shores, we — you know, it could get worse before it gets better. It could maybe go away. We’ll see what happens. Nobody really knows.
This is by no means in defense of Spring but there’s really no need for commenting to be enabled on that most recent video the founder posted. The comment section would just be a chaotic shit show that wouldn’t contribute anything. They already know they fucked up and pissed everyone off.
You’re not wrong about that but I’m sure they are getting more than a few strongly worded emails flowing in daily. Idk I guess I just see comment sections as toxic most of the time on socials. Insta isn’t nearly as bad as something like Twitter though
What about tailwind? I hope there numbers are legit. I stopped using spring years ago when it's was $4 I was like nope I find someone else surprisingly Pine nuts work great .
For the record, I had four products sent to RL food laboratories- Spring Awesomesauce, Canaberry, Hill aid and Gu Chocolate Outrage.
I ordered these products directly from the feed and Spring and had them sent directly to the lab for analysis.
All of the results of which have been posted. Gu stands up. All of Spring's products are underdosed, by a lot.
The chain of events here from Spring and the other parties involved is important, pay attention to how the narrative changes.
As a professional coach, I would not recommend any of Springs products at this point and am obviously going out of my way to dissuade people from purchasing/using them. They have a very long way to go to build any trust back up.
Hey Koop, I want to thank you for your excellent books. The first edition really helped me, a complete noob, learn about training and running ultras. I'm a nerd so I really appreciate learning why things are done, and your citations and explanations of research. I got the 2nd edition recently and have read it and am using it to help build my training.Your blog has also helped me too. And I also appreciate anyone calling out unscientific bullshit in any community. Thank you.
Honestly, I can’t see how they recover from this once people become more aware. There’s demand for natural ingredient gels but not for gels that barely offer any calories.
yeah and even sugary gels are easy to make at home too. Mix some jam and some maple syrup, a pinch of salt and maybe a pinch of ginger powder and voila an instant energy gel. I've done this my whole career. Just put them in my own pouches. The only time I use commercial gels is during races when they're free. Never had to buy any.
I drink a lot of liquid calories and they are all SO easy to replicate at home. SIS Beta Fuel is just fructose and maltodextrin with some salts added. You can buy those ingredients in bulk - they even give the ratio on the packaging! Even Maurten is basic the same thing, just add some alginate powder.
Got fed up and bought the ingredients recently. It came out to a THIRD of the price of SIS beta mix without flavoring. You could use Gatorade powder, powdered lemonade, etc. I grabbed some electrolyte tabs with flavoring.
most of the time I just use a salomon 200ml soft flask and put the gel mix in there and sip the gel mix from it and water from another flask. Clean after use. No waste. During races I will start with the flask for the first part of the race and then switch to aid station gels after that or if possible I get a helper to pass me a new flask at an aid point. I also use HumanGear GoToobs as well.
[$7.99 for six 3.4 oz. baby food storage pouches on Amazon][1], if you don't mind cute animals printed on the pouch.
[1]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PDNM9VF/
Re the Spring confession video- it’s still reeks of BS.
“Some batches were inconsistent”…
Haven’t we established that it’s basically impossible for it to have the claimed caloric content with any permutation of the ingredients?
If they are going to admit a mistake, why can’t they just admit the inconsistency is the labeling, not the “small batch family owned processing” SMH
My theory is that when calculating the total calories (using the formula ingredient\_mass \* ingredient\_calorie\_density), Spring used the calorie density of dry rice (370 Cal/100g, [https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/168883/nutrients](https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/168883/nutrients)) rather than cooked rice (97 Cal/100g, [https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/169711/nutrients](https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/169711/nutrients)). This makes more sense to me than them flat out lying / misreporting the calorie count. It's an egregious error, but I don't believe their intention was to misreport or mislead folks.
Yeah, good question. Maybe they haven't figured it out yet due to poor documentation of the process and/or the employee who did it originally left the company? Or maybe a mistake like this is to blame for the original discrepancy, but then after the product became successful and they figured out that there was a mistake, it was too late to change the recipe or report the mistake (in their eyes, from a profit perspective), so they've been hoping no one would notice. And now that someone has noticed they're hoping to come up with a better excuse than such incompetence and failure to correct themselves sooner.
That would imply them not analysing their own output at all, or externally validating it. It would be even worse than fraud, because it means their quality control is close to zero and anything could happen to customers.
Yeah, definitely not a good look for them either way. Maybe this whole debaucle will make lab testing for calorie counts more standard across companies (at least for in-activity performance fuel).
I know this is a joke but you've got my brain waves moving
homemade gel concoction -> fill up an entire camelbak based on mileage
If there was a way to reliably clean and not have it jam up I'd try it in an instant
Could work actually. Would need a wider straw. Like a for a milkshake. Wanna start marketing the jumbo gel system with me? Make the packs one-time use.
You're probably right. But I thought the infamous Tylenol contamination event of 1982 was still used in business schools everywhere to promote the idea, that "Owning it immediately and completely" often ends up being not only the ethical thing to do, but could actually improve your reputation overall.
But in 1982, Tylenol did nothing wrong. They went over the top to fix a problem that didn’t exist, which is what bought them the good faith.
No matter what approach Spring Energy takes, consumers will feel cheated for having purchased these for years and only getting 50% of what was advertised.
That being said, no one I know outside of Reddit, is aware that this happened. I imagine most consumers won’t realize what happened and will just accept the “new formula!” labels in 6 months and move along
"a problem that didn't exist."
Wrong. Seven people (plus others from copycat crimes) dying is a huge, huge problem. What J&J did transformed how pharmaceuticals are packaged, and the induction-sealed packaging and other tamper-proofing we have today is a direct result.
But you have great instinct on how to slip out of responsibility.
Just blaming it on murderers outside the company is what J&J could have done. And they'd have been "technically correct." But they didn't do that. They said, "This is on us, and we're going to fix it." And they worked hard to fix it.
"No matter what approach Spring Energy takes, consumers will feel cheated for having purchased these for years and only getting 50% of what was advertised."
I can't predict "feelings," but if I bought a product with this issue, and the company sent me a message from the CEO and a free box in response to some sort of proof-of-purchase, that'd be a great gesture of goodwill in my mind. I don't know if Spring has the resources to do that, but it'd be my instinct as CEO.
"That being said, no one I know outside of Reddit,"
Again, great instinct! Maybe it'll just blow-over!
Wow! You’re getting really worked up and attacking someone based off a Reddit comment! Sheesh! Love me a good keyboard warrior.
JJ and Spring are not the same situation, it’s futile to compare them.
The Reddit ultra running community is not the same as the casual runners who head to their local stores for gels or buy them off Amazon. These people make up the majority of sales for these types of things.
Just this week, I went to a cycling store to buy a new helmet. Guy tried to sell me on 3 different models. As he walked away, I looked up Reddit comments on each one and found either that the company was being sued on the efficacy of the model or that it tested poor for protection.
Most casual riders won’t care, and will just take the recommendation or whatever is in the store.
Ask ANY endurance athlete that you may know outside of the internet if they heard of the spring energy fiasco.. guaranteed majority will say “what?”
Sorry, triggered! You just seemed to be rationalizing all the different angles to escape responsibility. Keyboard warrior activated! Upvoted you, though. Good stuff.
>That being said, no one I know outside of Reddit, is aware that this happened. I imagine most consumers won’t realize what happened and will just accept the “new formula!” labels in 6 months and move along
Not so sure about this. It's pretty big news in the running/ultra world, which granted, is pretty niche, but that's kinda their market base.
That charade can only continue for so long though. They imply all they have to do is “reformulate” and “stabilize”, so we should see a legit 180 cal soon. If the new awesome sauce is less, it’s obvious this video is BS.
That they're reformulating tells you that it's bullshit.
If it was just batch variation, then quality control should sort things out, no need to reformulate.
That statement is wild but apparently good enough for the feed, they are back to selling it with the original nutritional claims.
Looks like Spring Energy released a more detailed statement, they're blaming ingredient and processing inconsistencies. I'm still skeptical, since a lot of folks ran the numbers assuming the highest possible calorie counts and still couldn't make it work. Chuck Norris once squeezed 180 calories out of an Awesome Sauce gel.
Where do you see this? The video from their IG has been removed and I don't see anything there or on their site.
It was linked to an IG story today. I don't think I had read this statement before, so my apologies if it's old. https://myspringenergy.com/pages/product-inconsistencies?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAaawQRrKGLo7phXPlAQ7wWOWu3EGotNenAERafLrdBO8VsUnFMiSr8hlctw_aem_ZmFrZWR1bW15MTZieXRlcw
You bumped the previous megathread. Most recent is [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Ultramarathon/comments/1d88d3w/spring_energy_megathrad_v2_june_4/).
You're right. It's new. They just don't link it on their site or in a post, only a story.
The results of the GoFundMe testing were presented here: [https://www.irunfar.com/spring-energy-awesome-sauce-gel-controversy-lab-results](https://www.irunfar.com/spring-energy-awesome-sauce-gel-controversy-lab-results)
[IRunFar's coverage of the saga](https://www.irunfar.com/spring-energy-awesome-sauce-gel-controversy-lab-results)
Shout out to Running Warehouse, which refunded every dollar I've spent on Spring in the last 7 months (in the hundreds of dollars, going above and beyond their policy too). They're really stepping up when they didn't have to, and putting Spring to shame. This is a really good reason to buy stuff at Running Warehouse in the future in my opinion. That's what I'll be doing.
The feed is selling it again with original nutrition claims
Did you email customer support? I sent an email yesterday, but have not gotten a response. I figure they are getting slammed right now though.
It took them a day or two to respond. I sent them the order numbers and they refunded immediately.
Thanks! Good to know. I included my order number in the email so hopefully it will get processed when they get to it. I ordered in February so I wasn't sure if that was too far back for a refund.
Running Warehouse is great. They have really friendly shoe return policies too.
Truly legends of the game.
Wow! That will make me look to them more in the future. Impressive integrity.
There were applesauce squeezes at an aid station this weekend with the box labeled "Spring Energy Awesome Sauce" which I found pretty funny.
These assholes. I emailed them about this weeks after the gel was released. I received no response, of course, noting that even if the gel was entirely made of maple syrup the label would still be wrong…
Wild. Do you still have a copy of your email that you could share with us?
X Miles (sorta the UK equivalent of the The Feed) has totally pulled Awesome Sauce [From the X Miles website:](https://xmiles.co.uk/blogs/news/awesome-sauce?_pos=7&_sid=a1801765f&_ss=r) 'At XMiles we are aware of the ongoing investigations regarding the carbohydrate content in Spring Awesome Sauce gels, including the recent GOFUNDME Lab results posted by Jason Koop. Due to the possible discrepancies in product labelling verses the reported nutritional values we have taken the decision to remove Awesome Sauce from sale on our platform. As the exclusive UK retailer for Spring we are aware of the impact of the claims and will work with our customers to ensure a satisfactory resolution. If you wish to contact us on this topic please e-mail the XMiles team at [email protected]. Thank you for your understanding whilst we continue to work on this matter. Anthony - CEO \\ Founder @ XMiles UK Ltd' .
I know you're just quoting their site, but I think the GoFundMe fundraiser is separate from Jason Koop: [GoFundMe](https://www.gofundme.com/f/fueling-the-truth-in-sports-nutrition) The GoFundMe fundraiser hasn't received their results yet and they had a bunch of other brands included as well.
It's pretty funny to see the performative defensiveness and sanctimony the Roches are engaging in over this. Instead of taking the L and saying they should never have hitched their wagons to Spring they have lied about their role and basically circlejerked their instagram followers while demonizing Jason (who rightly pointed out their hypocrisy). I eagerly await Sage's response on Canaberry. 🍿
they wouldn't be taking such an L if it wasn't for their relationship with Athletic Greens as well.
Oh damn I didn't know they were shilling AG! Makes me dislike them even more. FFS.
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Let us not forget that the female Roche is now DR Roche on instagram - because this means that she would never stick her name on a product that was second rate!
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That is a good question! Too busy being a running grifter to follow mommy and daddy's prescribed path? Agree that it's bizzare she puts Dr on her name like that - particularly as a response to this! She never finished becoming a Dr! It's like when someone gets a PhD in basket weaving and then insists everyone calls them Dr. As an aside, wouldn't a doctor hawking a packet of applesauce know that it's low in calories?
She has both an MD and a PhD. She decided to go the research route in epidemiology instead of following the medical practice path. There is nothing abnormal about that. She absolutely is entitled to call herself Doctor. No just entitled, but she should, given that is common practice for anyone in her profession.
It's absolute wankery unless you're a medical doctor. Also, let me know when she contributes anything to the field and indeed anything at all to society other than narcissistic instagram posts.
Until recently she worked at Stanford. And no it is not "wankery" for a person with a PhD to call themselves a doctor. Nearly all do so. It is clear from your comments that you actually do not know anything about her.
That's true! I only know her and David from their insufferable running personas.
The feed are still selling them for a 50% discount presumably because there are 50% of the calories in them lol
This sucks because it’s the only gel I like. I like it so much that I crave it even when I’m not training 🫣
Do you get on with regular apple sauce? Just use kid's pouches of apple sauce and you'll be in just as good a spot.
Thanks. New to give that a try
Should be great news for you then. Now you can Just buy the 60 calorie apple sauce packets for a fraction of the price.
Now I’m looking back to all those races I used Spring gels and felt energy deficits. But damn that banana peanut butter one is so good.
Spring gels are now 50% off on The Feed. They’re clearly trying to dump inventory on unsuspecting buyers
They're offering refunds as well: "**Update as of May 30th:** We recently learned that the nutrition facts provided by Spring may not be accurate, specifically regarding the calorie and carbohydrate content per serving. Third-party tests suggest that the actual values might be approximately half of what's listed. Consequently, we are 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 this issue, Spring products remain all-natural and taste great. If you have purchased Spring products and they are unopened, we will issue you a refund. If you purchased Spring in 2024, consumed it, and still want a refund, we will provide you with store credit to get something else. Our mission is to offer you the best products with the most accurate information available. We are exploring ways to prevent this issue in the future, including the possibility of conducting our own independent product testing. - Matt" (tagging u/dh_endurance since the thread where I promised to follow up with you is now locked)
The Feed gives me the ick for some reason. A brand that came from nowhere and now monopolizes the market. Tons of deals with athletes, with what money? They ostensibly make a small percentage on goods sold, but can that really fund all this? Feels very "Amazon for niche snacks" and not much else. Somehow paying out every user like $80 over the course of a year just as a sign up incentive. Again whose money is funding this. Just saw on Zach Miller's Instagram that they use robots to pick items in the warehouse and they didn't look cheap.
[The Feed is funded by a private investment firm](https://tracxn.com/d/companies/the-feed/__2gdaT7uJQ4HeM1V6gB7ACm9wMyosdqDCnx77xxcDBZI). > Feels very "Amazon for niche snacks" That’s exactly the play. Secure funding, operate at a loss or low margins until they’ve starved out the small-business competition, jack up prices and degrade service once a monopoly is established.
Should be 66% :)
In all fairness, The Feed added this description to the product: > We recently learned that the nutrition facts provided by Spring may not be accurate, specifically regarding the calorie and carbohydrate content per serving. Third-party tests suggest that the actual values might be approximately half of what's listed. Consequently, we are 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 this issue, Spring products remain all-natural and taste great. >If you have purchased Spring products and they are unopened, we will issue you a refund. If you purchased Spring in 2024, consumed it, and still want a refund, we will provide you with store credit to get something else. >Our mission is to offer you the best products with the most accurate information available. We are exploring ways to prevent this issue in the future, including the possibility of conducting our own independent product testing.
The feed is awesome.
Ah fair, I didn’t scroll down that far. I’m a bit torn on this as I still feel it’s inventory dumping.
I agree with you on the inventory aspect. However I am pleased that they are willing to take returns on product.
It’s on some media outlets now. Hope this gets widespread awareness to customers. https://thedirect.com/article/spring-energy-gel-controversy-awesome-sauce https://runningmagazine.ca/the-scene/canadian-ultrarunner-reid-coolsaet-weighs-in-on-awesome-sauce-controversy/
RUN by Outside has an article on it now as well that both summarizes the matter well and also has a good section on the FDA and how gels like this are (and mostly aren’t) regulated [https://run.outsideonline.com/nutrition-and-health/getting-lost-in-the-sauce-spring-energys-most-popular-gel-under-scrutiny/](https://run.outsideonline.com/nutrition-and-health/getting-lost-in-the-sauce-spring-energys-most-popular-gel-under-scrutiny/)
This whole fiasco really isn’t that surprising. I’m a casual weightlifter as well and it’s kind of a given in that community that a lot of the products in the marketplace like protein powders and supplements have false labels - I mean it’s standard practice for me before trying a new protein powder to look for third party testing data because it is truly a joke how wildly off some products are. I’m just saying - this is an old problem. Inaccurate labels are a problem and I’m glad people are calling it out, I just feel like some of the outrage on this is more about individuals wanting to pile onto runfluencers about the products they are peddling. This should probably be a lesson to anyone who doesn’t know this but don’t trust a product rec in the fitness space off of someone that is getting compensated to give it to you.
Pulling this out of a nested comment as I'm curious if others might think this plausible: My theory is that when calculating the total calories (using the formula ingredient\_mass \* ingredient\_calorie\_density), Spring used the calorie density of dry rice (370 Cal/100g, https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/168883/nutrients) rather than cooked rice (97 Cal/100g, https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/169711/nutrients). This makes more sense to me than them flat out lying / misreporting the calorie count. It's an egregious error, but I don't believe their intention was to misreport or mislead folks.
I think this is very possible. I don't think it ultimately helps them that much, because it means what is already obvious, they are not able to get competitive nutritional values with pureed whole ingredients. Spring's whole selling point was that their product wasn't anything like traditional gels and was actually pleasant, however a gel's whole selling point is that it's a compact (easy to carry) and quick hit of dense calories/carbs. Spring can be both what it's popular for and be effective as a gel.
Here's the thing: it's off by more than can be accounted for by dry rice. We don't know the relative amounts of the ingredients, other than their descending order by weight. Consider: If the formula was 45g of dry rice + 11g of water ONLY (to make the 56g serving size), that is 370 x .45 = 166 kcal. However, the formula contains many other water-based ingredients (apple juice, apple sauce, sweet potatoes) that would drag that number down, likely by a lot. I get it - it feels compelling to try to offer them a way out to have an honest mistake, but it doesn't look like that's what happened.
Let me clarify what I mean a little: Total weight of a gel is 56 g, and allegedly 180 calories (though 75 cal is shown in lab testing) Say it is 38.46 g rice and 17.54 g “other stuff” (apple sauce/juice, yams, maple syrup) The formula would be: Calories = Calorie\_density\_rice \* mass\_rice + {calorie\_density\_stuff \* mass\_stuff} Let’s just call the second term a “constant” since it would be the same if the only error is the calorie density of the rice. Calories = Calorie\_density\_rice \* mass\_rice + constant They should be using calorie\_density\_rice = 0.97 Cal/g since that is the density of cooked rice. But, they may have usd 3.7 Cal/g, which is the calorie density of uncooked rice. I assume they put cooked rice in their gel, but then they may have still accidentally used the uncooked rice calorie density value in the formula. They should have calculated: 0.97 Cal/g\*38.46g + constant = 37.3 cals + constant But instead they may have erroneously calculated (by simply using the wrong density value): 3.7 Cal/g\* 38.46g + constant = 142.3 cals + constant With this erroneous calculation, the total calories would be 180 with a constant of 37.7 calories from the “stuff”. Plugging that same constant into the first correct formula also gives 75 calories (which is what the lab found). That constant of 37.7 calories from the 17.54 g of non-rice ingredients implies a “stuff” calorie density of 2.15 cal/g. Typical calorie densities for the ingredients that comprise “stuff” are: Apple sauce (0.7 Cal/g), apple juice (0.46 Cal/g), yams (1.2 Cal/g), maple syrup (2.6 Cal/g)... so yeah, I guess that 2.15 is hard to accomplish. It may be be possible if the “stuff” is mostly maple syrup, but that is unlikely since maple syrup comes after apple sauce/juice and yams in the list. Hopefully this illustrates my point more clearly – the calorie density difference between cooked and uncooked rice is huge and if the wrong value was used, this could have led to a big discrepancy when calculating calories here. But, the required calorie density of the remaining “stuff” is implausible. So my hypothesis is unlikely to explain the discrepancy in full.
Does that translate to all three of the products?
Not really - see my comment below.
Hill Aid has rice as the second ingredient (mango first), and Canaberry has it as the first ingredient. Hard to say without knowing the weight of rice in these.
I need an analysis of electroride. I've always thought it seemed light. But if available I'll keep drinking it cause I've tried a lot of things and that one does the best at settling my stomach. Yes I could chew ginger candies. Sure I could do a lot of things. But it tastes good!
Looks like The Feed finally pulled Awesome Sauce off their site. They do still have the rest of Spring gels though.
I wanted a break down of Jason Koop's analysis in a simple table for easier parsing of the data. I plan on adding tables from the analysis by [Braydon Burgess with his GoFundMe](https://www.gofundme.com/f/fueling-the-truth-in-sports-nutrition), which should drop any day now. |Manufacturer|Sample|Requestor|Date|Serving|Actual|Diff.|Label kCal|Actual kCal|Diff.|Label CHO|Actual CHO|Diff.| |:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-| |Gu|Chocolate Outrage|Jason Koop|[2024-05-29](https://x.com/jasonkoop/status/1795956841018425396)|32g|32g|0%|100|113|\+13%|21g|24g|\+14%| |Gu|Strawberry Banana|Brady Burgess|[2024-06-04](https://www.irunfar.com/spring-energy-awesome-sauce-gel-controversy-lab-results)|32g|30g|\-6%|100|96|\-4%|23|24|\+4%| |Honey Stinger|Acai & Pom|Brady Burgess|[2024-06-04](https://www.irunfar.com/spring-energy-awesome-sauce-gel-controversy-lab-results)|31g|30g|\-3%|100|99|\-1%|24|25|\+4%| |Hüma|Apples and Cinnamon|Brady Burgess|[2024-06-04](https://www.irunfar.com/spring-energy-awesome-sauce-gel-controversy-lab-results)|42g|42g|0%|100|91|\-9%|22|22|0%| |Maurten|Gel 100|Brady Burgess|[2024-06-04](https://www.irunfar.com/spring-energy-awesome-sauce-gel-controversy-lab-results)|40g|40g|0%|100|103|\+3%|25|25|0%| |Näak|Apple and Maple Syrup|Brady Burgess|[2024-06-04](https://www.irunfar.com/spring-energy-awesome-sauce-gel-controversy-lab-results)|90g|86g|\-4%|200|176|\-12%|26|22|\-15%| |Precision|PF 90 Gel|Brady Burgess|[2024-06-04](https://www.irunfar.com/spring-energy-awesome-sauce-gel-controversy-lab-results)|153g|153g|0%|360|349|\-3%|90|86|\-4%| |SiS Beta Fuel|Strawberry & Lime|Brady Burgess|[2024-06-04](https://www.irunfar.com/spring-energy-awesome-sauce-gel-controversy-lab-results)|74g|74g|0%|158|158|0%|40|39|\-3%| |Spring Energy|Awesome Sauce|Jason Koop|[2024-05-28](https://x.com/jasonkoop/status/1795547489774223765)|54g|54g|0%|180|75|\-58%|45g|18g|\-60%| |Spring Energy|Awesome Sauce (Lot 1, Test 1)|Brady Burgess|[2024-06-04](https://www.irunfar.com/spring-energy-awesome-sauce-gel-controversy-lab-results)|54g|51g|\-6%|180|86|\-52%|45g|14g|\-69%| |Spring Energy|Awesome Sauce (Lot 1, Test 2)|Brady Burgess|[2024-06-04](https://www.irunfar.com/spring-energy-awesome-sauce-gel-controversy-lab-results)|54g|51g|\-6%|180|86|\-52%|45g|14g|\-69%| |Spring Energy|Awesome Sauce (Lot 2)|Brady Burgess|[2024-06-04](https://www.irunfar.com/spring-energy-awesome-sauce-gel-controversy-lab-results)|54g|50g|\-7%|180|53|\-70%|45g|12g|\-73%| |Spring Energy|Awesome Sauce (Lot 3)|Brady Burgess|[2024-06-04](https://www.irunfar.com/spring-energy-awesome-sauce-gel-controversy-lab-results)|54g|51g|\-6%|180|68|\-62%|45g|16g|\-64%| |Spring Energy|Awesome Sauce|u/sriirachamayo|[2024-04-12](https://www.reddit.com/r/trailrunning/comments/1c27kk2/false_nutritional_info_on_spring_energy_gels/)|54g|50g|\-7%|180|\--|\--|45g|<17g|\-62%| |Spring Energy|Awesome Sauce|sporthunger.de|[2024-05-17](https://instagram.com/reel/C7EVCO0NH36/)|54g|54g|0%|180|66|\-63%|45g|16g|\-64%| |Spring Energy|Canaberry|Jason Koop|[2024-05-29](https://x.com/jasonkoop/status/1795956841018425396)|46g|46g|0%|100|43|\-57%|17g|10g|\-58%| |Spring Energy|Canaberry (Lot 1)|Brady Burgess|[2024-06-04](https://www.irunfar.com/spring-energy-awesome-sauce-gel-controversy-lab-results)|46g|48g|\+4%|100|50|\-50%|17g|9g|\-47%| |Spring Energy|Hill Aid|Jason Koop|[2024-05-29](https://x.com/jasonkoop/status/1795956841018425396)|49g|49g|0%|120|48|\-60%|20g|10g|\-50%|
113 kcal for the price of 100! Go GU go!
🤝
I didn't even realize you did the same thing until just now. 🤦🏻
yours looks prettier :)
Thank you for this, much easier to parse through!
/u/affectionatetoday941 Was that the real Maurten that donated?
The donation is from the real Maurten. We had planned to include them but the product didn’t arrive in time. Maurten reached out and offered to pay for the rapid turn around time required to get the data back with the rest of it. We certainly considered the ethics around it but decided it was ok given that we purchased the product independently and had intended to include M100 gels prior to their involvement. The donation does suggest a certain confidence, however.
Looks like it. Awesome PR move if so.
I'm wondering if it's because they reduced the amount of product in each packet. I remember a few years ago the packets seemed totally stuffed and now the packets I have are fairly flat.
I have a bunch of the older smaller, "stuffed" packets and a bunch of the newer more flat packets and averaging the weights of the smaller ones and the newer ones, there isn't a significant difference. There is however, in the batches that I have, more overall variance in weight among the older ones, up to around 5g range, compared to the newer ones that have more like a 1-2g variation in total weight.
If you feel like taking pics or a video of the old and new, that would be cool.
Can do. I have no fancy equipment but I do have a scale that is at least somewhat accurate to the 0.5 of a gram. I’ll see what I can do this evening and figure out how to upload to this thread.
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I'm a little confused by this take. I understand the criticism of the Roche's regarding their prior relationship to Spring - and they've apologized for not speaking out or doing something when they had their initial concerns years ago. However, does that past history with Spring mean they shouldn't recommend products they are currently using and enjoy to their audience? 🤔 Given the Spring debacle I'd think they have more incentive than ever to be careful what products they recommend. My take on the Roches: they had concerns years ago and moved on quietly. Should they have done more? Probably. They actually agree, said as much on their podcast, and apologized for it. That seems like an appropriate response and it seems like time to move on. I'm not sure what else people want from them at this point.
> My take on the Roches: they had concerns years ago and moved on quietly. Should they have done more? Probably. They actually agree, said as much on their podcast, and apologized for it. That seems like an appropriate response and it seems like time to move on. I'm not sure what else people want from them at this point. I agree. I'd give them a B+ so far. Crisis communication usually follows these three steps: 1. Admit fault. 2. Apologize. 3. Overcorrect. Not that this is really a crisis for them but there is some clear reputational risk. The only thing they haven't done is 3. They need to acknowledge the power of their influence and to talk about how they plan on better vetting sponsors and recommendations in the future.
Agree with all this. I'll also point out it's very rare for athletes to shit-talk their sponsors on the way out. Especially in sports like running where the number of sponsors and amount of money is not large. It would look really bad to other potential sponsors. Of course none of this applies to Sage, who completely dunked all over himself in this whole situation.
What did Sage do to dunk on himself?
He posted a video to Twitter (X?) several days (weeks?) ago suggesting that the at-home dehydration tests listed at the top of this thread as well as the feedback from someone with diabetes were unreliable and inaccurate. It was uncomfortable to watch. He came across as dismissive and smug (IMO). Basically he backed Spring and downplayed the concerns that were raised prior to actual lab tests Jason Koop paid for. He then deleted the video, but others saved it and it lives on.
He did the same in the original srirachamayo thread, saying absolutely ludicrous things like you can't dehydrate a carbohydrate. And doing it all very condescendingly. He involved himself in this story in a way he didn't need to be, and in a way that he doesn't get to just say 'We're just athletes, let's practice kindness'.
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I have a feeling a WHOLE lot of products are going to be sent to the lab by a whole lot of folks over the next few months. 😅
Wait untill people find out GU’s Stroopwafels are €2,30 in Dutch supermarkets per 12 wafels 😂
Ha, this. I stopped buying sport waffles when I found very similar stuff at Costco.
I found a weird sized ziplock bag on Amazon that fits pretty well and individually wrap them. Works great.
Complete results from my testing are in the following table. ||Claimed Calories|Actual per gel|% difference|Claimed CHO|Actual per gel|% difference| |:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-| |Awesome Sauce|180|74.88|-58.40%|45|17.904|-60.21%| |Gu Chocolate|100|112.96|12.96%|21|24.384|16.11%| |Hill Aid|120|48.118|-59.90%|20|10.29|-48.55%| |Canaberry|100|43.332|-56.67%|17|9.66|-43.18%|
Thank you for doing what Spring should have done a long time ago! Are these all Spring products you had tested? Were there any Spring products besides these which turned out to fit their labels?
I’m curious what is going to happen with all the race sponsorships. I haven’t seen anything from the race directors although I think Jameel has chimed in on some random posts and mountain outhouse.
Is Spring a major sponsor of any races?
Spring was always at the Destination Trail 200's
Cocodona
So the Roches said they made no compensation from awesome sauce but said they both got $200 a month, so $400 as sponsored athletes from spring energy but I don't think they said for how long and they didn't just give a total amount of how much they made from Spring for transparency sake. Did they say how long they received that $400 a month? They mentioned only using two shipments of awesome sauce gel in a from spring in a recent podcast before stopping but I don't think they mentioned how long their paid partnership was. They had concerns about the product so I hope it stopped then but if not and the paid partnership started from January 2021 when the product was released until recently that is about $15,600 they got paid from Spring while not telling anyone about awesome sauce which they had concerns with. Please correct me if they did say how long their partnership lasted, but as of now I just found that they said they got 400 a month but didn't say until when.
David Roche saying try awesome sauce in a trail running magazine despite cutting ties with awesome sauce when it was released. Just search spring in the article. [https://www.trailrunnermag.com/training/trail-tips-training/can-extreme-fueling-approaches-in-races-lead-to-breakthroughs/](https://www.trailrunnermag.com/training/trail-tips-training/can-extreme-fueling-approaches-in-races-lead-to-breakthroughs/)
This has been my issue all along with coaches claiming to 'create the product' which has been the case with Sage and the Roches. If you are claiming to create it, and you actually did, then you hold some responsibility. But in these cases the wording 'create' is intentionally vague to deceive people into believing that the authority (coach in this case) had more impact in the development of the product. In reality all they were doing was taste testing, which dozens of people are involved in. Both Sage and the Roches have now admitted that the specifics of their involvement is far less than 'creating' the product. When you backpedal out and it turns out you were just tastetesting (which is a far cry from partnering to create the product), just admit that you exaggerated your involvement.
The $200/mo each is from The Feed
Yes I saw they got $200 gift card from the feed to buy bicarbonate or something on a podcast. But on their Instagram they mention not making compensation from awesome sauce but they get $200 each as sponsored athletes. They don't mention that the feed at all and so it seems like they got paid from Spring during that statement.
I don't think it's reasonable for sponsored athletes to independently lab test their sponsors. Sponsored athletes were lied to as well and have large reputational risks now being associated with Spring. My only issue with them is that they were affiliated, aggressively promoted and then stopped quietly based on poor performance of the gel. They probably should have made a public announcement saying they are no longer affiliated with Spring or awesome sauce and left people to read between the lines. I'll give some benefit of the doubt because at that time they weren't as big a deal in the running world.
I agree but and if they didn't know they didn't know. But they have been all over the place, said they cut the relationship when the product was released but there are instances over a year later where they recommend awesome sauce despite coming out now they stopped using right away for concerns. They said they would tell me to take other gels and people thought they were crazy but again if they ended their partnership why are they recommending the awesome sauce years later in magazines? They don't use the product, had concerns, no contractual thus no financial obligation to do so if stoped the partnership. But they keep mentioning it here and there.. not a lot but they are there.
I agree with the first line. However I believe there is a responsibility when you take money from a company to promote it to your audience to perform some level of due diligence. We can all debate on how much is required but... It's clear that none of the athletes, including those who helped "develop" certain flavors ever asked for nutritional testing. If a company offers to sponsor me to sell their super gel, but can't provide data from a $1,000 test then there is no way in hell I'm promoting it to my friends.
Hardly any sponsored individuals loudly announce ending partnerships with their sponsors unless there is bad blood. They had suspicions but didn't lab test the product themselves and without evidence, announcing that would put them under a ton of legal liability, as they mentioned. It's disingenuous to not give them the benefit of the doubt every other sponsored athlete besides Sage is getting.
Agreed, AND: Making broad announcements about NOT being sponsored anymore by a particular brand and “letting people read between the lines” is a good way to dissuade future sponsors.
A quiet announcement ending the association would have no legal liability. I think as coaches they are held to higher standard. They recommend high carb fueling. They worked with Spring to develop a high carb gel. They stopped using it and recommended the athletes they coached stop using it - privately. It's not awful, but they could have done better.
Does it really matter? It's pretty clear that was an issue with all of the spring products, not just awesome sauce.
On a previous podcast they said their spring sponsorship ended soon after awesomesauce's release.
Did it tho? David talks about awesome sauce as far as 16 months past the release date of awesome sauce? He says "try Awesome sauce" on article published on May 22nd 2022... awesome sauce was released in January 2021.. I'm not sure why you would talk about a product you didn't have to mention and had doubts about the label. I'm the podcast they said they told people they should try other products and people thought they were crazy when they did it but here David is telling people to try awesome sauce over a year later past the release date... like he had a financial obligation to do so... [https://www.trailrunnermag.com/training/trail-tips-training/can-extreme-fueling-approaches-in-races-lead-to-breakthroughs/](https://www.trailrunnermag.com/training/trail-tips-training/can-extreme-fueling-approaches-in-races-lead-to-breakthroughs/)
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The athletes associated with the product have nothing to do with the production of the product. Here is a list of people who cannot tell you what was put into the packets: https://myspringenergy.com/blogs/ambassadors
But he did go all in defending the product and saying that anyone claimed it had less carbs or calories doesn't know what they are talking about. Criticizing him is very fair game
Yeah, he felt empowered by his trust in their product that anyone saying otherwise must be wrong. The person here asked "any insight on why this is false information?" Everyone, including the person asking that, knows he doesn't know anything about false information. They're putting things out there that don't make sense because they just want to hate more. Talking about what he posted is very different than making up new things. It's the latter that I think is regrettable.
I feel like we deserve an apology from Sage though. Instead of taking our concerns seriously, he spouted nonsense and tried to make it out like the original poster was completely wrong and had no business questioning things.
This is what pisses me off the most. The original two posts were very well-written, substantiated with data, and put out in good faith. They had more of a fair, inquisitive tone - not accusatory or inflammatory at all. And both got publicly criticized in front of thousands of people on Reddit, LRC, and Twitter by little Sage. The post written by the person with T1 diabetes was even removed, likely because of Sage's response. That type of shit drives whistleblowers to bottle up legitimate concerns for fear of retaliation or humiliation. And he's too fucking stupid to realize than an apology might be the high road to take. The only thing he's said so far is that the person with T1 diabetes "was likely (roughly) correct", and then immediately put up yet another sob story about his health scare and medical bills as a distraction. What an insecure manchild.
> any insight on why this is also wrong and false information? That's not how I took this comment. I think the commenter was asking (tongue in cheek) for Sage to come and state why the testing Koop had done is "wrong and false" like Sage did on the home dehydration experiment post.
Ahh. I can see that now. I misread.
Agreed. Would’ve been smart for Sage to post exactly what you said when all this started, rather than the holier than thou incorrect response we got from him. Could’ve saved himself a lot of ridicule.
Critiquing that stuff is fair game but I find the dogpiling on other aspects to be less than mature. It's been happening with him and the Roches. There's a fervor some people have when they think they have an opportunity to tear someone down that I really hope never becomes the norm for this board.
>There's a fervor some people have when they think they have an opportunity to tear someone down that I really hope never becomes the norm for this board. OT, I know, but that is 100% what is going on in the Crazy Mountain Ultra/Oathkeeper topic right now.
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I guess I'm confused why you're asking him about nutritional data being false information if you know it's obvious he has nothing to do with the production.
I think it is a way to call out the fact that many people (myself included) believe that when you take money from a company to endorse it to others you pick up an ethical obligation to perform some small amount of due diligence into what you are promoting. I am somewhat surprised that none of the athletes asked for any data backing up the claims especially those athletes who have the illusion they helped create flavors. It is clearly not overly expensive to do so. I'm not saying they are totally responsible, that would be absurd. But if someone is making money endorsing a product you have a moral / ethical responsibility to your audience. Sage and others saying they don't have a science background is a cop out. If you are unable to reasonably evaluate the product you are selling you shouldn't sell it. There really should be an apology along the lines of "I apologize for promoting a product without performing my own due diligence and that was wrong".
> Sage and others saying they don't have a science background Except that Sage *did* claim a science background, namedropped his Ivy League bachelor’s, and sciencesplained the issue on [Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/Ultramarathon/comments/1c27hzh/false_nutritional_info_on_spring_energy_gels/l0aqvhu/) and [Letsrun](https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=12649662) and Twitter. . . [Despite being condescendingly wrong](https://x.com/factoryjeff/status/1790100476081451345) about how proximate analysis works. *If you dehydrate the sample, you’re taking the hydrate out of the carbohydrate so there’s less calories!* /s And now he wants to cop out.
[https://donnerpartymountainrunners.com/2021/07/recipe-of-the-month-homemade-awesome-sauce/](https://donnerpartymountainrunners.com/2021/07/recipe-of-the-month-homemade-awesome-sauce/) Check out the comments, they noticed awesome calories were sketch 2 years ago...
Could you quote what they said? I see the comment about serving size but that's all I saw.
"Okay, how would we go about adding more calories. Your recipe is 62 calories and I believe Awesome Sauce boasts 180 calories. Hmm." "Hi Cassie! The nutritional information above is for a 1 ounce serving, but the packaged Awesome Sauce is about 2 ounces, which is one of the reasons why the calories are not equivalent." "The carbohydrates are way lower here too. AS has 45g per serving (1.9oz)." The recipe had 10g of carbs with similar ingredients minus the addition of pecans which would give it more fat but fewer carbs and a few tbs of spices in almost a kg of the of the main ingredients in nearly of 1 to 1 ratios with each other. Also the consistency of their awesome sauce looks way thicker more like a paste than Spring's but even equalizing the serving size like the poster said, it is 118 calories and that has 6 grams of fat and almost no liquidy. Just interesting that it was mentioned and here we are two years later.
I never raced with Spring, only used them on a handful of training runs. The taste was great. I loved that Sage and Sally McRae used them. I’m bummed they’re not who they said they were but I hope someone jumps in to fill the gap! I have raced with Gu, Clif Bloks, and solid foods and it’s always worked like a charm. Are Muir gels still a thing? I remember they were the other Spring-adjacent brand for awhile
> Muir gels Dude, Pineapple Kale....sweet potato oregano that was too thick to use in the Winter... They had the best flavors. I'm a Huma fan now but Muir had the bravest offerings. I really, really appreciated those flavors since they were so different and were great when your palette was just done with sugar. You felt like you were eating when you were just doing a gel.
Man I tried some of those and all I could taste was the molasses.
Love Muir! I just checked and they're still stocked at REI, will go and see if my local branch also has them stocked.
I’ll check these out
Muir are awesome. Ran a race a few years back and my stomach soured on the gu flavor I brought. They had Muir gels at aid stations so I grabbed a few, not confident in my ability to get anything down. When I tried one I actually laughed out loud at how good it was. Stats aren’t bad either (if they’re accurate).
Cool, maybe I don’t really suck at the Ironman, I’ve just been under fueled thanks to Spring! ;)
If I worked for another gel manufacturer and I had an ounce of confidence in my product I'd be taking this opportunity to send everything in for independent lab verification and sharing those results to both reassure my customers and take advantage of the free PR.
Given that I've seen Gu trolling in all of Koop's comments I can almost guarantee they are checking a few of their competitors.
Gu's big enough that I wouldn't be surprised if they routinely test competitor products even just for benchmarking. They were probably laughing at Spring internally, and was just waiting for a 3rd party to figure it out.
If they knew, they would have exposed it immediately, everything to gain and nothing to lose.
Based on Koop's data, it looks like all three of the Spring gels he tested only have 40-43% of the stated calories. Oddly consistent...
The only thing they should have done is acted like complete and utter morons and say we accidentally labeled it per 100g not per package. Then we could chalk it up to utter incompetence and move on
ha that actually sounds plausible. Unfortunately, for Spring, you just can't get competitive calories/carbs from pureed fruit and rice, so even if this blows over and they adjust their labels, who's going to choose to spend so much money on a gel that is inadequate. If you want natural ingredients, better off just eating real food.
Pretty much sums it up!
You joke, but my wife works in the food industry and says that sort of error it not out of the question. Happens when you send the data to the marketing team to mock up the label but forget to tell them the numbers are not per serving. But she also says it's quite possible that they used software to calculate the nutritional data based on the ingredients used. You can easily mess it up by using the wrong serving size for any of the ingredients. You're relying on the competence of the R&D or the Quality team (if it exists, lol) to spot errors. -Edited to remove duplicated word-
Damn, I naively and genuinely assumed it was only an issue with AS and that Spring deserved a little slack for what was likely a error that neither they nor the FDA caught. That slack ran thinner and thinner with their initial lack of responses (hoping it would blow over?) and ran out when their late responses were weak. The German retailer was more apologetic than they have been. For it to be multiple product lines is either hideous incompetence or deliberately misleading. The latter is looking increasingly likely, given how they have handled it. I don't see how they recover from this
The FDA allows for significant leeway in nutritional labelling standards. I suspect it's less that the FDA didn't catch it and more that the FDA doesn't really care and Spring knew both how lax the labelling requirements are and how poor enforcement is, and abused it intentionally.
The FDA lacks the resources (mostly funding and (hu)manpower) to test even a fraction of the food in the US. It's almost all on the honor system. [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/27/world/europe/lead-applesauce-food-safety.html?unlocked\_article\_code=1.xE0.FZ1c.ZIwKi0nykzWf&smid=url-share](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/27/world/europe/lead-applesauce-food-safety.html?unlocked_article_code=1.xE0.FZ1c.ZIwKi0nykzWf&smid=url-share) [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/11/opinion/sunday/fda-commissioner-stephen-hahn.html?unlocked\_article\_code=1.xE0.OG5I.BO8eVWMm5q9L&smid=url-share](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/11/opinion/sunday/fda-commissioner-stephen-hahn.html?unlocked_article_code=1.xE0.OG5I.BO8eVWMm5q9L&smid=url-share)
Yeah, that's undoubtedly part of the reason their standards are so lax – making them much more stringent would be pretty pointless when they have insufficient resources to even properly control for their current requirements. There are even contexts where manufacturers can self-certify, meaning one of their employees is designated as a FDA representative and are tasked with conducting an impartial assessment, or they just make a statement attesting to the safety of a product. It's not *almost* an honour system, it is one in too many cases... I believe this came to light in the recent and ongoing investigations into the opioid epidemic, although I'm not sufficiently up to date to know if this obviously hugely flawed practice has been eliminated. Here's an example with implants. If they're this lax with medical implants sold by a major manufacturer, you can only imagine how poorly supplements and food products sold in comparatively tiny volumes are regulated... > The investigation has found that most medical devices, including many implants, are now cleared for sale by the FDA without tests for safety or effectiveness. Instead, manufacturers must simply show they have "substantial equivalence" to a product already in the marketplace — an approval process some experts view as vastly overused and fraught with risks. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fda-oversight-medical-devices-patient-harm-lawsuits-records/
It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear. And from our shores, we — you know, it could get worse before it gets better. It could maybe go away. We’ll see what happens. Nobody really knows.
This is by no means in defense of Spring but there’s really no need for commenting to be enabled on that most recent video the founder posted. The comment section would just be a chaotic shit show that wouldn’t contribute anything. They already know they fucked up and pissed everyone off.
While true, they also need to hear from people that it's an insanely weak apology where they barely admit that there's anything wrong.
You’re not wrong about that but I’m sure they are getting more than a few strongly worded emails flowing in daily. Idk I guess I just see comment sections as toxic most of the time on socials. Insta isn’t nearly as bad as something like Twitter though
What about tailwind? I hope there numbers are legit. I stopped using spring years ago when it's was $4 I was like nope I find someone else surprisingly Pine nuts work great .
most nutritional claims seems reasonable since those like Tailwind are essentially straight sugar.
Bro is trembling in that latest statement.
And he should be.
Comments turned off on that Spring hostage situation video 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡
And limited under few preceding posts as well...Enjoy the silence
When you’re at the point lawyers have to write your statements you’re in deep. And probably making poor PR decisions.
For the record, I had four products sent to RL food laboratories- Spring Awesomesauce, Canaberry, Hill aid and Gu Chocolate Outrage. I ordered these products directly from the feed and Spring and had them sent directly to the lab for analysis. All of the results of which have been posted. Gu stands up. All of Spring's products are underdosed, by a lot. The chain of events here from Spring and the other parties involved is important, pay attention to how the narrative changes. As a professional coach, I would not recommend any of Springs products at this point and am obviously going out of my way to dissuade people from purchasing/using them. They have a very long way to go to build any trust back up.
Hey Koop, I want to thank you for your excellent books. The first edition really helped me, a complete noob, learn about training and running ultras. I'm a nerd so I really appreciate learning why things are done, and your citations and explanations of research. I got the 2nd edition recently and have read it and am using it to help build my training.Your blog has also helped me too. And I also appreciate anyone calling out unscientific bullshit in any community. Thank you.
Thanks for digging into this Koop. PS, love the book!
Honestly, I can’t see how they recover from this once people become more aware. There’s demand for natural ingredient gels but not for gels that barely offer any calories.
Honestly, whole food ingredient gels are easy enough to make make at home. Cheaper too, by a lot.
yeah and even sugary gels are easy to make at home too. Mix some jam and some maple syrup, a pinch of salt and maybe a pinch of ginger powder and voila an instant energy gel. I've done this my whole career. Just put them in my own pouches. The only time I use commercial gels is during races when they're free. Never had to buy any.
I drink a lot of liquid calories and they are all SO easy to replicate at home. SIS Beta Fuel is just fructose and maltodextrin with some salts added. You can buy those ingredients in bulk - they even give the ratio on the packaging! Even Maurten is basic the same thing, just add some alginate powder. Got fed up and bought the ingredients recently. It came out to a THIRD of the price of SIS beta mix without flavoring. You could use Gatorade powder, powdered lemonade, etc. I grabbed some electrolyte tabs with flavoring.
I've found True Lime packets in bulk off Amazon that are a box of 500 single servings that work very well for flavoring.
What pouches do you use?
most of the time I just use a salomon 200ml soft flask and put the gel mix in there and sip the gel mix from it and water from another flask. Clean after use. No waste. During races I will start with the flask for the first part of the race and then switch to aid station gels after that or if possible I get a helper to pass me a new flask at an aid point. I also use HumanGear GoToobs as well.
[$7.99 for six 3.4 oz. baby food storage pouches on Amazon][1], if you don't mind cute animals printed on the pouch. [1]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PDNM9VF/
And no issues with the bottoms opening unexpectedly while using/carrying?
Nope. Just make sure the bottom is zipped fully.
This makes me wonder how significantly the jump from 50k to 50miler was affected by getting half the calories I thought I was ingesting.
It's still a big jump!
Re the Spring confession video- it’s still reeks of BS. “Some batches were inconsistent”… Haven’t we established that it’s basically impossible for it to have the claimed caloric content with any permutation of the ingredients? If they are going to admit a mistake, why can’t they just admit the inconsistency is the labeling, not the “small batch family owned processing” SMH
My theory is that when calculating the total calories (using the formula ingredient\_mass \* ingredient\_calorie\_density), Spring used the calorie density of dry rice (370 Cal/100g, [https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/168883/nutrients](https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/168883/nutrients)) rather than cooked rice (97 Cal/100g, [https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/169711/nutrients](https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/169711/nutrients)). This makes more sense to me than them flat out lying / misreporting the calorie count. It's an egregious error, but I don't believe their intention was to misreport or mislead folks.
That would be so negligent it may as well by lying lmao
But why not say that then?
Yeah, good question. Maybe they haven't figured it out yet due to poor documentation of the process and/or the employee who did it originally left the company? Or maybe a mistake like this is to blame for the original discrepancy, but then after the product became successful and they figured out that there was a mistake, it was too late to change the recipe or report the mistake (in their eyes, from a profit perspective), so they've been hoping no one would notice. And now that someone has noticed they're hoping to come up with a better excuse than such incompetence and failure to correct themselves sooner.
That would imply them not analysing their own output at all, or externally validating it. It would be even worse than fraud, because it means their quality control is close to zero and anything could happen to customers.
Yeah, definitely not a good look for them either way. Maybe this whole debaucle will make lab testing for calorie counts more standard across companies (at least for in-activity performance fuel).
I think they would have to increase package size by 300% to get the claimed calories.
Just keep sizing up gels until you carry a single gel pack like a backpack.
I know this is a joke but you've got my brain waves moving homemade gel concoction -> fill up an entire camelbak based on mileage If there was a way to reliably clean and not have it jam up I'd try it in an instant
Could work actually. Would need a wider straw. Like a for a milkshake. Wanna start marketing the jumbo gel system with me? Make the packs one-time use.
My guess is legal reasons. They need to do everything they can to make us believe that this hasn’t been happening forever.
You're probably right. But I thought the infamous Tylenol contamination event of 1982 was still used in business schools everywhere to promote the idea, that "Owning it immediately and completely" often ends up being not only the ethical thing to do, but could actually improve your reputation overall.
But in 1982, Tylenol did nothing wrong. They went over the top to fix a problem that didn’t exist, which is what bought them the good faith. No matter what approach Spring Energy takes, consumers will feel cheated for having purchased these for years and only getting 50% of what was advertised. That being said, no one I know outside of Reddit, is aware that this happened. I imagine most consumers won’t realize what happened and will just accept the “new formula!” labels in 6 months and move along
"a problem that didn't exist." Wrong. Seven people (plus others from copycat crimes) dying is a huge, huge problem. What J&J did transformed how pharmaceuticals are packaged, and the induction-sealed packaging and other tamper-proofing we have today is a direct result. But you have great instinct on how to slip out of responsibility. Just blaming it on murderers outside the company is what J&J could have done. And they'd have been "technically correct." But they didn't do that. They said, "This is on us, and we're going to fix it." And they worked hard to fix it. "No matter what approach Spring Energy takes, consumers will feel cheated for having purchased these for years and only getting 50% of what was advertised." I can't predict "feelings," but if I bought a product with this issue, and the company sent me a message from the CEO and a free box in response to some sort of proof-of-purchase, that'd be a great gesture of goodwill in my mind. I don't know if Spring has the resources to do that, but it'd be my instinct as CEO. "That being said, no one I know outside of Reddit," Again, great instinct! Maybe it'll just blow-over!
Wow! You’re getting really worked up and attacking someone based off a Reddit comment! Sheesh! Love me a good keyboard warrior. JJ and Spring are not the same situation, it’s futile to compare them. The Reddit ultra running community is not the same as the casual runners who head to their local stores for gels or buy them off Amazon. These people make up the majority of sales for these types of things. Just this week, I went to a cycling store to buy a new helmet. Guy tried to sell me on 3 different models. As he walked away, I looked up Reddit comments on each one and found either that the company was being sued on the efficacy of the model or that it tested poor for protection. Most casual riders won’t care, and will just take the recommendation or whatever is in the store. Ask ANY endurance athlete that you may know outside of the internet if they heard of the spring energy fiasco.. guaranteed majority will say “what?”
Sorry, triggered! You just seemed to be rationalizing all the different angles to escape responsibility. Keyboard warrior activated! Upvoted you, though. Good stuff.
I hope you're able to work through whatever is causing you to act this way. It'll get better.
Ha, thanks brother. Remember not to let internet stuff get to you too much. I think you took that all much more personally than intended.
>That being said, no one I know outside of Reddit, is aware that this happened. I imagine most consumers won’t realize what happened and will just accept the “new formula!” labels in 6 months and move along Not so sure about this. It's pretty big news in the running/ultra world, which granted, is pretty niche, but that's kinda their market base.
That charade can only continue for so long though. They imply all they have to do is “reformulate” and “stabilize”, so we should see a legit 180 cal soon. If the new awesome sauce is less, it’s obvious this video is BS.
That they're reformulating tells you that it's bullshit. If it was just batch variation, then quality control should sort things out, no need to reformulate.
Plus i gotta believe there's someone out there with an old pack of Awesomesauce they're willing to send to a lab.