Mule bar

The good people at Mule bar sent over their energy range of products for me to review.

Over the last year, I've been trying to use 'real' food for fuelling on the run rather than the sickly sports drinks and gels that had become the staple runners source of energy when exercising. Sports drink I won't touch, 1) Because of what they contain, ie. bad sweeteners, too much sugar etc etc and 2) I find it disgusting how these companies know full well they are being consumed by children as a regular soft drink sold in fridges up and down the country in supermarkets and newsagents. Totally irresponsible in an age of obesity!

Sorry...rage over, back to the review.

You get the picture, I'm not going to review rubbish nutrition on this blog, so it was nice to receive some products that are promoted as natural, organic and fairtrade.

Mule bar are made in the UK and the energy range consists of: energy bars, protein recovery bars and energy gels.

The dominant ingredient in all the products is rice syrup, I'm no nutritionist but from what I've been reading on the Internet this appears to be one of the favoured natural sweeteners, if you've got to sweeten something.

The energy bars come in a range of seven flavours. I'll use the Mango Tango bar as an example of ingredients; Rice syrup 30%, Mango 28%, Oats 10%, Cashew nuts 9%, Rice crisp 9%, Whey protein 6%, Water 3%, Soy flour 3%, Amaranth (a healthy grain) 2% and Sunflower oil 1%.

Sugar and Glucose Fructose does turn up in small amounts in the choc/orange bars, but generally the above is a good example of the ingredients used across the bars.

I've used all the bars, they taste good ( with exception to the Summer pudding bar, sorry Mulebar, I didn't enjoy that one) and they work, I've used one bar before a range of runs from short fast 5k's to a long slow 13 miles and in both cases the one bar has proved adequate. Although for more intense longer runs I would take additional bars with me.

The refuel bars contain similar ingredients to the energy bars but have 20% Whey protein for muscle recovery, the chocolate and chocolate banana bar (25% banana) both tasted great.

I can't comment on the gels, because I don't use any form of gels anymore, I used to use them all the time but just didn't get on with them as I began to experiment using other forms of fuel on the run.

The gels vary in flavours, the sweetener being organic agave nectar and the electrolyte Himalayan crystal salt. The agave nectar gets mixed reviews as an alternative sweetener to sugar on the Internet, but again I'm not a nutritionist so cannot comment.

So overall, all good, I will definitely use these products again, and seem to tick all the boxes from what I'm looking for fuelling my running.