Virtually all sports drinks are carbohydrate based, but not all carbs are equal. Complex carbs allow you to perform better by delivering more energy to your working muscles. This is important to understand because the most popular drinks are loaded with sugar with little to no complex carbs (see chart below).

Here’s how it works:

If you recall learning about osmosis in science class, it’s the way a fluid crosses a membrane. In order for the fluid to cross, it has to be an equal or lower concentration than the fluid on the other side of the membrane. A good drink is isotonic (the same concentration as your cellular fluids). When an isotonic drink gets to your small intestine, fluids are absorbed and the carbohydrates are transported by energy transporters (SGLT1 and GLUT5).

What’s interesting is that the concentration of a fluid (also called the osmolality) is largely dependent on the NUMBER of particles in the fluid, and less dependent on the size of the particles. Complex carbs by definition have a larger molecular structure than simple sugars, basically they have more glucose molecules stuck together. But remember, it’s the number of particles, not the size that matters most. What that means is that an isotonic drink with complex carbs can contain nearly twice as much energy compared to one with simple sugars.

This isn’t something that we’ve invented here a Crank Sports, it’s proven science. Many sports drinks (including e-Fuel) use at least some complex carbohydrates for this reason. Maltodextrin is a complex carbohydrate with an extremely large molecular structure. Where e-Fuel sets itself apart from other products is that we use much more complex carb and less sugar. This allows you to get more energy when you use e-Fuel compared to our competitors. e-Fuel derives 71% of it’s carbohydrate energy from complex carbs. Compare this to drinks like Tailwind, Skratch, etc. that are virtually all sugar and no complex carbs. Because of this, e-Fuel provides up to twice as much energy than other drinks.

Why do other companies use so much sugar? Simple, because it’s sweet and inexpensive, and sweet things sell. So if you want to sell a lot of something you make it sweet. But if you want to make the best PERFORMING product you use complex carbs.