His own research shows otherwise, IIRC. Can’t recall the study(ies), but I’m reasonably confident he himself has produced research >10 years ago showing that sucrose worked great, at least as a large portion of beverage carb content.
Certainly there is growing evidence that that statement is not completely true, and may be substantially inaccurate.
Dr. Asker Jeukendrup is like a mountain. He’s produced massively valuable research, and loads of it. He’s shaped the field. But like the mountain of a man that he is, he’s very slow-moving.
Especially, in terms of becoming open to ideas that go against what his early research indicated, and what he (and Gatorade) broadly promoted. He’s whip smart, and his ability to communicate ideas is excellent. But he’s been cautious to the point of many of his public recommendations being sometimes 10 years behind what the newest research has pretty clearly indicated.
Some might argue that’s a good thing. And it has advantages for sure. Safety being one of them. And not being “wrong” another one of them. But I wouldn’t look to him for the newest ideas.
The real problem with the slow-to-adopt, and the “simplify at all costs” approach is that it’s not always a completely true assessment of the literature and it hides important inter-individual variation completely. His approach is more of a “this is what we can absolutely prove so far, and we don’t think you’re intelligent enough to weigh the tradeoffs effectively, so we won’t go into the nuance or any conflict within the body of research.” That’s pretty much what you want in a journal’s position stand, if you might be sued by someone interpreting your advice and having a bad outcome. Safety first.
But what that does is:
- Hides very revealing anecdotes, or entire studies.
- Overapplies subject population averages to each individual, completely masking individual variability which might be present and hugely meaningful in the population.
Example: Someone else does a study that uses people who happen to have been fueling with high carb intake regularly, and finds that they’ve got folks within that study metabolizing >2g/min exogenous carbs, and happily consuming 2.5g/min (150g/hr) carbs without GI issue. Those folks happen to be just folks with larger bodies or more muscle mass or just more well-trained cyclists.
Those folks are completely lost in the data. But those folks are often most similar to the people actually looking for information on the topic.
So, the slow-moving simplified approach to making broad recommendations is essentially blind to the future of research, which is often quite predictable and useful to predict. It’s short-sighted and narrow.
Thankfully, he’s now jumping onboard the “90-120g/hr” train of thought.
But let’s be real here, these round numbers in 30-gram steps are awfully convenient. They’re silly. I’d wager that over the next 2-3 years we’re going to hear broadly in the media, more about how 90-120g/hr may be possible in certain situations, and there won’t be much discussion of how to determine how to find the appropriate amount, between those numbers. It’ll just be 60, 90, 120, as the new numbers you know and love.
120 is going be thought of as the new “upper limit.” It’s not the upper limit.
I think the upper limit for the vast majority of people is below 150g/hr in most situations. Optimality is almost certainly in the 80-135g/hr range for most people, most of the time. There are 2 dozen factors influencing that.
But, importantly, I have a client who has enjoyed >170g/hr in some cases. He did it accidentally at first. Miscalculation. That’s very revealing.
Population variability is wide, and the variability wider at the upper limits, than the lower limits.
Check out that black data point out at 2.5g/hr (150g/hr). That’s at least indicative that we don’t know for sure that sucrose doesn’t work as well as glucose & fructose (or malto & fructose).
Notice there are no studies examining higher rates of intake.
The same was true back 20 years ago, but replace 2.5g/min (150g/hr) with 1.5g/min (90g/hr) or 1.75g/min (105g/hr).
Anyway… give it time.
yes, sorry! Edited. Thanks for catching that.