Spring Energy false nutritional info?

meanwhile it appears the CEO is out running around on strava testing new gels. I'm not expecting any type of response from them at this point - appears they let sage make a fool of himself. Spend your gel dollars elsewhere i guess.

I've learned two things from this post: (1) Sage is really not smart; and (2) Spring Energy has false nutrition info.

Maple syrup has 3cal (kcal) per 4 grams. The other gram is water. So, if you dried out The "calorie dense" maple syrup to 15 grams, then you'd have 60 calories. But, if you had 52grams of pure maple syrup (weight without the package) not dehydrated, you could get 156 calories... but, maple syrup is the 5th ingredient, apple juice is the second (which is much less calorie dense by weight than maple syrup) - being second means there is, by weight, more apple juice in there than maple syrup... there is just no way that label is correct. Sage would know this by just trying to do the very simple math, of which he is clearly incapable. See the first lesson I learned from this post.

Ok so I think this thing is about as dry as it’s gonna get within the limits of my patience. Dehydration method was just to let it sit out for a couple days spread thin in a wide glass container. The air is pretty dry here, so this tends to work well enough over a few days. Morning weight and evening weight today were the same, so I don’t think there’s a whole lot of water left. That said, no heat was applied. Anyway…

Start weight of gel contents = 51g

End weight of gel contents and Pyrex = 548g

Weight of empty Pyrex = 527g

Dehydrated gel weight = 21g

So the packet had around 30g of water evaporate. Dry weight of 21g and no fat (per label) means that maximum calories are 84kcal. This does not include a subtraction for the fiber in the product. This experiment probably isn’t needed… you can compare the calorie density to straight maple syrup (w/25% water content, about the driest you’d find according to a quick google search) and it doesn’t even get you to 180kcal. (51g x 75%) x 4kcal/g = 153kcal.

While not needed, it’s easy enough for anyone to do and verify themselves. The labeling on the package must be THAT far off

I get your typo - you mean 3 cal per gram when carbs are 4 cal per gram so the 25% difference is water. Except, that’s actually rounding up. Maple syrup is 2.6 cal per gram. So even if it were pure maple syrup it could only be 135 cal, not 180. But, it’s not pure maple syrup, it has more apple juice than maple syrup, so, the estimate of 60 cal is probably closer to the correct value than 180 cal.

Not a serious company with a response like that...

If there was ever a "we simply don't give an eff, just give us more money for misleading products and go away" response, this is it.
Unbelievable that they would respond like this.
This garbage isn't cheap either - It's like $8 AUD over here. If you're charging a premium there's a certain standard you expect.

Is this real? that can't be real, right?

Sage goes home devastated! Started with his typical bulling via cornel/science based nonsense (stripping H2O off the carbs, duh), then came it can’t be right (re the dry weight, which has now been repeated a few times with consistency), and now silence (and scrubbing comments). Adding insult to injury Spring Energy left him hanging after he assured everyone he’d work with them to get a response. What a fool.

I could be wrong, but I don't think you all are evaluating maple syrup's energy density incorrectly here:

Consumed from the jar, a serving of maple syrup is 200kcal for 1/4 cup (60mL). When we take away the water weight (substantial) you still have 200kcal per serving.

So your whole "52 grams yielding 156kcal" as a "wet weight" could be 34 grams of dry weight (some natural maple syrups are about 33% water)....and still yielding 156kcal.

Scaled down that is more like 4.6kcal/gram for Maple Syrup.

Well, Cornell is very similar to NAU in that they're the worst schools in their conferences

pt 2 obviously we can't get over 4.0kcal/gram for a carbohydrate (sugar) source but it's got to be close to 4 (instead of the "2.6 cal per gram") you cited

Yea but then it clearly won’t be liquid anymore… which the gel is. That’s the thing with carbs, they need water to be liquid

It's 2.6 cal/gram wet and is accurate (see below). If you removed all the water, then it would be close to 4 cal/gram. But, they didn't add dry maple syrup or dry apple juice did they? The 52 grams is the wet weight of the gel. Because there is more apple juice than maple syrup we know there has to be less than half the 52 grams as maple syrup (and even less than that as maple syrup is 5th). When you add it up the constituent ingredients, there is simply no way there is 180 cal in that package. You tried to walk back from your 4.6 cal/gram (which was the height of stupidity), but, you should just walk back from arguing against this at all.

(If you want to chime in again - to make Maple Syrup you have to boil down the sap until it gets to 66-67 degrees Brix. Which means it's about 66-67% sucrose and 33-34% water. That's where the 2.6 cal/gram comes from. You are not going to get manufactures of Maple Syrup boiling off more water than that from the sap as that causes other issues in the process, for example, the sugar will start to precipitate. You can disagree with the 2.6 cal/gram wet weight if you want, but you will be wrong.)

"Its not the crime, its the cover-up"

What a stupid way to completely destroy your brand's reputation with that terrible non-answer. The ultrarunning world is not particularly large, this will absolutely get around. Why should anyone trust any of their nutrition information?

Has anyone filed an FDA complaint yet?

Does it work? EU customers should also look into EFSA.

Cheers to Sage hoping this all fades away into the void. 'Have they been screwing their customers?' "I DON'T CARE! I need their support to make a living! Even if it means they lied to all of their customers. I will call out doping and everything else wrong with the sport EXCEPT for my sponsors."

You used to have my support sir. But I don't think I can any longer. Best of luck!

Sage has never been one to not drone on endlessly here or on twitter, so his one shot comment suggests he knows how off base his initial defense and Spring Energy's response has been. Curious if Sage might be more than just sponsored - i recall Spring Energy looking for investors a few years back and given his deep relationship, wondering if Sage actually has equity in the company (just speculating - I have no idea if he does, but might explain his all in defense and now silence). Sage - i know you are still reading, care to chime in on any of this?

Sage got spanked so hard on reddit it's not even funny. I even managed to snag a copy of the Twitter video he deleted where he humiliates himself and dear god was it horrific.

Don't know what happened to him. He used to be cool. In the past year, he's really gone off the rails. Accused Matt Carpenter (again) of cheating during his Pike's Peak record when everyone was praising SJF. Constantly insinuating that Nick Bare is on roids. And now this fiasco.

Is Sage really a grown man lol?

Can you post it up on YouTube? I think more people would like to see it.