Best Energy Gels for Runners (and the Real Food Alternatives That Actually Hold Up)
August 7, 2026
If you have spent any time on Instagram lately, you have seen the take. Some influencer holds up a gel packet, makes a face like they just licked a battery, and tells you that “real athletes fuel with real food” and that gels are processed garbage the industry wants you hooked on. Cue thousands of comments from people swearing off gels forever and packing their race vests with dates and boiled potatoes.
I get why it lands. It feels wholesome. It feels like a secret the big brands do not want you to know. And here is the part that will annoy the purists: the research does not actually say gels are worse than real food. It says something much more useful, and much more nuanced, than either camp will admit.
So let me walk you through what the literature really shows, where real food genuinely wins, where gels earn their spot in your kit, and how I help the endurance athletes I work with stop overthinking this and just fuel.
First, the number that matters more than the source
Before we argue gels versus gummies versus mashed sweet potato, we have to talk about the target, because the target is where most people actually go wrong.
For efforts under about 90 minutes, you can get away with 30 to 60 grams of carbohydrate per hour, and honestly for a lot of athletes water and a little something is fine. But once you are going long, roughly 2.5 hours and up at a hard effort, the evidence supports pushing toward 90 grams of carbohydrate per hour, delivered as a mix of glucose and fructose (Jeukendrup, 2014). The reason is a genuinely cool piece of physiology: your gut contains two different receptors to absorb the carbs you eat, the SGLT1, absorbs glucose molecules GLUT5 absorbs fructose so combining the two lets you oxidize up to about 1.75 grams per minute instead of 1.0 (Currell and Jeukendrup, 2008).
One thing worth clearing up, because the internet loves to fight about it: there is no single magic ratio. The classic recommendation is 2:1 glucose to fructose (Jeukendrup, 2014), but the newer high carb products and a chunk of the literature use ratios closer to 1:1, and you will also see 1:0.8 cited as a sweet spot for oxidation and comfort at very high intakes (O’Brien and colleagues have reported the 1:0.8 work in trained cyclists and runners). The honest takeaway is a range, roughly 2:1 down to about 1:1, not one commandment. Higher relative fructose can help when you are pushing 90 or more grams per hour, but it can also bother some stomachs, which is exactly why you test it in training first.
Big caveat before you go chugging 90 grams tomorrow. That landmark work was done mostly on well trained male cyclists riding at high, steady power outputs (Currell and Jeukendrup, 2008). Running jostles your gut far more than cycling, women are underrepresented in this literature, and 90 grams per hour is a ceiling you train up to, not a starting line. If you are a 130 pound recreational runner doing a two hour long run, forcing 90 grams for the first time ever will probably just make you nauseous. More on that in a second.
Here is the thing the “just eat real food” crowd misses: hitting your carbohydrate number, with some glucose to fructose mix in that 2:1 to 1:1 range, is the actual goal especially if your goal is performance focused vs an active recovery training session. The delivery vehicle is secondary. Which is exactly why this is not the black and white fight the internet wants it to be.
Where real food genuinely wins
The pro real food argument is not wrong, it is just oversold. There is real evidence here.
The best study to point to is Too and colleagues (2012), who took trained male distance runners through 80 minutes of submaximal running followed by a 5K time trial, comparing raisins, chews, and water. Raisins performed just as well as the commercial chews for time trial performance (Too et al., 2012). A separate group found that raisins matched sports gels on carbohydrate oxidation, fat oxidation, and energy expenditure in cyclists, with raisins actually scoring higher on how pleasant they were to eat (Kern et al., 2007). Jelly beans have held up in similar comparisons too.
So if you love your dates, your raisins, your banana, your rice cakes, they work. They deliver carbohydrate, they are cheaper, and for a lot of stomachs they feel better than syrup. Louise Burke and the sports nutrition researchers I follow have been clear for years that everyday whole food carbohydrate sources can absolutely fuel training. This is not fringe. Real food is legitimate.
And real food has one advantage a gel cannot match: it comes with micronutrients. Dates, bananas, dried fruit, and rice-based options bring potassium, some magnesium, antioxidants, and other compounds along with the carbohydrate, where most gels are essentially just refined sugar in a pouch. For day to day training fuel, and for anyone who would rather eat food than engineered products, that is a real point in the real food column.
But notice the pattern in those studies: they are mostly shorter efforts, moderate carbohydrate targets, and pre-exercise or lower rate feeding. Whole foods are fantastic at 30 to 60 grams per hour. The trouble starts when you scale up, and it starts for a reason that has nothing to do with whether food is “natural.”
Where gels earn their place
Try to hit 90 grams per hour of a 2:1 glucose to fructose blend, at mile 20 of a marathon, running hard, using only whole food. Go ahead and do the math on it. That is roughly the carbohydrate of five or six medjool dates every single hour, chewed while gasping, with a fructose ratio you are basically guessing at. Your jaw gets tired. Your stomach sloshes. Your race brain does not want to do fraction problems. Not only that you will be getting some fiber with real food source which for some can lead to more GI issues, such as bloating, gas, bathroom urgency and nausea to name a few.
This is the honest case for gels, drink mixes, and chews. They are not magic and they are not “better” than food nutritionally. They are engineered for a specific job: dense, measured glucose to fructose blends, mixed somewhere in that 2:1 to 1:1 range, that you can get down fast when the effort is high and your gut is already under stress. Modern high carb products like SIS Beta Fuel and Maurten’s higher ratio gels are built around exactly that science, so you are not left doing fructose math mid race. For long, hard efforts where precision and packability matter, that engineering is the whole point.
And here is the part the “real food only” crowd never mentions: the very things that make whole food nutritious can work against you when the goal is race performance. Protein, fat, and fiber all slow gastric emptying. That is lovely at the dinner table and genuinely useful for everyday fueling, but at mile 20, with blood shunted away from your gut and your stomach already stressed, slower emptying means food sitting longer, which is a setup for the cramping, sloshing, and bathroom emergencies that wreck races. Gels, chews, and drink mixes strip most of that out on purpose. They are close to pure, fast-emptying carbohydrate. If your one job in the back half of a race is to get carbohydrate in without triggering GI distress, then minimizing protein, fat, and fiber genuinely helps the performance outcome, and leaning on the easier to digest option is the smarter call. Big asterisk: that only holds if your gut is trained for it, which is the whole next section.
So the real pros and cons shake out like this. Real food wins on micronutrients, cost, palatability, and how normal it feels to eat, and it is plenty for easier and moderate efforts. Engineered products win on carbohydrate density, a dialed-in glucose to fructose ratio, packability, and low GI risk because there is little protein, fat, or fiber to slow things down. Neither is morally superior. They are tools, and the hard, high-carb end of racing is where the engineered tools start to earn their price.
If you want to build a race kit, these are the categories I have runners test in training (never new on race day):
- A standard glucose-fructose gel for the workhorse of your fueling, like Neversecond gels or Maurten Gel 100
- A high carb option for long course and marathon efforts, like SIS Beta Fuel or Precision Fuel gels
- Chews if you prefer to bite rather than slurp, like Precision Hydration chews
- A drink mix so some of your carbohydrate comes in fluid, like Tailwind
And your real food options cost pennies and live in your pantry already: medjool dates and raisins are two of the most studied. Full disclosure, those are affiliate links, so if you grab something to test I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.
The variable nobody on Instagram mentions: your gut is trainable
Here is the pattern I see over and over with the endurance athletes I coach. Someone comes in convinced gels “destroy their stomach,” so they have sworn off them and are underfueling every long run as a result. When we dig in, the real problem was almost never the gel. It was that they were trying to take in race level carbohydrate with a gut they had never trained to handle it, usually only on race day, usually dehydrated, usually way too much too fast.
Your intestinal transporters and gastric emptying adapt to what you regularly ask of them. This is the “train the gut” work that Asker Jeukendrup and researchers like Trent Stellingwerff and Jamie Whitfield have pushed into the mainstream, and it changes everything about this debate. GI distress is not proof that a product is bad. It is usually proof that the dose was untrained. When we spend a few weeks practicing fueling on long runs, slowly walking the carbohydrate rate up, most of the “I can’t tolerate gels” stories quietly disappear.
That is the injustice in the influencer take that actually bugs me. Telling a nervous new marathoner that gels are poison does not free them. It scares them out of practicing the one skill, fueling under fatigue, that most determines whether they blow up at mile 20. Real food versus gels is not the fight. Underfueling is the fight, and both sides of the internet argument are losing runners to it.
So what should you actually do?
Stop treating it as a loyalty test. Use this instead:
Short and easy efforts, under 90 minutes: fuel to taste, real food is great, do not overthink it.
Long and moderate, roughly 60 grams per hour: mix and match. Dates, banana, a gel, a chew, whatever your stomach likes. Whole food shines here and the research backs you up (Too et al., 2012; Kern et al., 2007).
Long and hard, 2.5+ hours, or performance focused events chasing 90 grams per hour: this is where engineered products earn their keep, because hitting that number and that glucose to fructose ratio with pure whole food while running hard is genuinely difficult (Jeukendrup, 2014). Most of my athletes land on a hybrid, gels and drink mix for precision, a few bites of real food for morale.
And whatever you choose, train it. Practice your race fueling in training, at race intensity, for weeks. Your gut is an adaptable organ, not a fixed personality trait.
If you want help building a fueling plan that fits your body, your sport, and your actual stomach instead of a stranger’s hot take, that is exactly what we do inside Nutritional Revolution coaching. And if you just want to start dialing in your numbers today, grab our free fueling guides and cheat sheets, including race day carbohydrate targets you can actually use.
Fuel your sport. Both kinds of fuel are allowed and have a place.
References
Currell, K., and Jeukendrup, A. E. (2008). Superior endurance performance with ingestion of multiple transportable carbohydrates. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 40(2), 275 to 281. Study population: trained male cyclists at high steady power output. Caveat: results may not translate directly to runners, to women, or to recreational athletes.
Jeukendrup, A. E. (2014). A step towards personalized sports nutrition: carbohydrate intake during exercise. Sports Medicine, 44(Suppl 1), S25 to S33. Basis for the up to 90 grams per hour and 2:1 glucose to fructose guidance. Caveat: 90 grams per hour is an upper target for long, hard efforts and must be trained up to, not applied to short or easy sessions.
Too, B. W., et al. (2012). Natural versus commercial carbohydrate supplementation and endurance running performance. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 9(27). Population: trained male distance runners, 80 minutes submaximal running plus 5K time trial. Caveat: male only, moderate carbohydrate rate, does not test very high intake rates.
Kern, M., et al. (2007). Metabolic and performance effects of raisins versus sports gel as pre-exercise feedings in cyclists. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 21(4), 1204 to 1207. Population: trained cyclists, pre-exercise feeding. Caveat: pre-exercise, not sustained high rate mid-race fueling.
O’Brien, W. J., Stannard, S. R., Clarke, J. A., and Rowlands, D. S. (2013). Fructose-maltodextrin ratio governs exogenous and other carbohydrate oxidation and performance. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 45(9), 1814 to 1824. Basis for the roughly 1:0.8 glucose to fructose observation. Population: trained cyclists and triathletes at high carbohydrate intakes. Caveat: high intake, well trained athletes, so the specific ratio is a guide, not a rule for everyone.
Gatorade Sports Science Institute. Multiple transportable carbohydrates and their benefits (Sports Science Exchange 108). Note: much of the underlying research used relatively well trained cyclists at high power outputs, which limits generalizability to recreational athletes and distance runners.
Note: This blog references training and fueling patterns commonly seen across our coaching practice, described in general and anonymized terms. No individual client information is included.
