Cycling Gels vs Real Food — Which Is Actually Better for Performance?

The cycling gels vs real food performance debate has been running for as long as PowerBar has been charging four dollars for something that tastes like chocolate-flavored caulk. I’ve ridden both sides of this argument — literally. Early in my cycling life I went full gear-bro, pockets stuffed with SiS Beta Fuel and Maurten 100s, convinced that engineered nutrition was the only serious option. Then I did a 200km audax where a guy in his sixties offered me a homemade rice cake somewhere around the 140km mark and I nearly wept with gratitude. That rice cake outperformed every gel I’d eaten that day. Or at least it felt that way. So which approach is actually right? The answer is less satisfying than either camp wants to admit.

What Gels Actually Are — and Aren’t

Sports gels are concentrated carbohydrates in a semi-liquid suspension. That’s it. There’s no secret performance compound, no proprietary delivery matrix that defies human physiology. Strip back the branding on a Gu Energy Gel or a High5 IsoGel and what you’re mostly looking at is maltodextrin — a long-chain glucose polymer — combined with fructose in varying ratios. Some gels use a 2:1 maltodextrin-to-fructose ratio (which Maurten and SiS market heavily). Others lean almost entirely on maltodextrin.

The 2:1 ratio matters because the gut uses two separate intestinal transporters to absorb glucose and fructose. SGLT1 handles glucose, GLUT5 handles fructose. Using both simultaneously increases the total carbohydrate absorption ceiling — research suggests somewhere around 60g per hour for glucose alone, up to 90g per hour when fructose is added. That’s the actual science behind the premium gel pricing. Not magic. Parallel plumbing.

Beyond carbohydrates, gels typically contain a small amount of sodium — usually 50–100mg per sachet — to support electrolyte balance and, in some formulations, assist absorption. Some include caffeine (Gu Roctane has 35mg per gel, their standard Espresso Love has 40mg). A few throw in amino acids. These additions are mostly marginal at the doses included.

What gels aren’t: a superior food source, a replacement for training adaptation, or necessary for rides under two hours for most people. The marketing suggests otherwise. The physiology doesn’t support it.

Absorption Speed — Gels vs Banana vs Rice Cakes

Probably should have opened with this section, honestly, because absorption rate is the actual hinge point of this whole debate. Not cost. Not taste. How fast carbohydrates become available to working muscle is what separates a gel from a banana during a criterium versus a long Sunday ride.

Glycemic index gives us a rough map here. Pure maltodextrin has a GI of around 85–105 depending on chain length — essentially equivalent to glucose. A ripe banana sits around 51–62 GI. White rice comes in around 72. A homemade oat-and-honey bar lands somewhere around 55–65. The lower the GI, the slower the glucose release into the bloodstream.

Digestion rate also depends on food form. Liquids and gels bypass a significant amount of mechanical digestion that solid food requires. Chewing, salivary amylase, gastric breakdown — gels skip most of this. From consumption to bloodstream, a gel can deliver usable glucose in roughly 15–20 minutes under exercise conditions. A banana takes longer, partly because of its physical structure and partly because fructose metabolism routes differently through the liver before reaching circulation as glucose.

Rice cakes — the compressed white rice and salt blocks made famous by the Rapha crowd and Allen Lim’s cookbook — sit interestingly in the middle. They’re easy to digest, low in fat and fiber (which slow gastric emptying), and deliver carbs at a moderate speed. Homemade versions using sushi rice with a pinch of salt and some coconut oil can pack roughly 30–35g of carbs per 60g portion. Easy to make the night before. Genuinely palatable on the bike.

Speed of absorption matters most when intensity is high. During VO2max efforts, during criterium racing, during hard climbing — you want carbohydrates available fast. At endurance pace, that urgency largely disappears. A banana eaten 20 minutes before a climb will do the same job as a gel eaten 10 minutes before it.

Stomach Tolerance on Hard Efforts

Here’s where real food starts losing ground for some riders. Trained by personal experience after a deeply unpleasant incident on a mountain sportive — I ate two mini croissants from a feed zone at high effort and spent the next 30 minutes regretting it — I now take gut tolerance at intensity seriously.

During hard exercise, blood is redistributed away from the digestive system toward working muscle. Gastric emptying slows. Splanchnic blood flow drops by 60–70% at near-maximal intensities. Solid food sitting in your stomach during a hard effort doesn’t process efficiently. It sits. It sloshes. For some riders, particularly those sensitive to GI distress, this triggers nausea, cramping, or worse.

Gels win here. Their liquid consistency means they enter the small intestine faster than solids. Lower fiber and fat content compared to real food means less to process. Most isotonic gels (SiS Go Isotonic, for example) are formulated to be taken without additional water, reducing the osmotic load on the stomach. This matters. Hypertonic gels taken without water actually draw fluid into the gut, which can cause cramping — one of the most common gel mistakes people make, including me, multiple times.

The crossover point is roughly around 75–80% of FTP. Below that threshold, a well-chosen real food option — rice cake, banana, a Nakd bar, even a Jaffa Cake — causes minimal GI distress for most riders. Above that threshold, especially sustained efforts over 20 minutes, gels present a lower risk option. Not zero risk. Some riders have GI issues with gels too, particularly high-fructose formulations. But lower risk.

Long-distance endurance riding creates a different problem. Extended time at moderate intensity — think a 300km randonneur brevet or a full-day gran fondo — actually increases appetite for real food. Your brain rebels against sweet gel flavor after hour five. Palate fatigue is real and it causes riders to under-fuel. Mixed feeding strategies — real food in the first half, gels for intensity spikes or late-ride fueling — solve this practically.

Cost Per Gram of Carbs

This is where real food wins, and it’s not particularly close.

The homemade rice cake is the clear winner on cost. Sushi rice bought in a 1kg bag from any supermarket costs roughly £1.50–2.00. Add a pinch of salt, a tablespoon of coconut oil, compress into a baking tray, refrigerate overnight, cut into portions. You’re paying around 14–15 pence per 30g carbs delivered. A Maurten gel delivers the same carbohydrates for nearly 27 times that cost.

For the average club rider doing 10 hours of training per week and targeting 60g carbs per hour for moderate-intensity sessions, the cost difference over a year is genuinely significant. Running gels exclusively could cost £300–400 annually on fueling alone. A mixed real food strategy with occasional gel use for races or hard sessions might run £60–80.

The counterargument is convenience. Gels don’t require preparation, don’t spoil, and fit in a jersey pocket without creating a sticky mess three hours into a ride. Both true. But convenience has a price, and £3.84 per 30g carbs is a steep one.

The Verdict by Ride Type

There isn’t one universal answer. Stating definitively that gels are better or real food is better requires ignoring duration, intensity, individual gut tolerance, and budget. Here’s the honest breakdown.

Rides Under 90 Minutes

You don’t need either, physiologically speaking. Glycogen stores from a normal pre-ride meal cover this duration for most efforts. If you’re riding hard intervals under 90 minutes and want to top up, a banana before you leave and water on the bike is sufficient. Spending money on gels for a sub-90-minute ride is mostly unnecessary.

Rides of 2–3 Hours at Moderate Intensity

Real food wins. Bananas, rice cakes, a couple of Medjool dates, a homemade flapjack. Your gut is working fine at this intensity. Palatability matters more than absorption speed. Real food is cheaper, more satisfying, and creates less packaging waste. Save the gels for emergencies if you bonk unexpectedly.

Races or High-Intensity Rides Over 2 Hours

Gels earn their place here. Hard efforts, repeated surges, criterium racing, competitive sportives with sustained high-intensity sections — these are the conditions gels were designed for. Stomach tolerance is compromised. Fast absorption matters. The convenience of a tear-and-consume sachet beats fumbling with a rice cake at 400 watts. Use them.

Long Endurance Rides Over 4 Hours

Mixed strategy. Real food for the first two-thirds, particularly if intensity stays below threshold. Gels or high-carb liquid mixes for the final portion when solid food becomes unappealing and fatigue accumulates. Adding caffeine gels in the final 60–90 minutes makes practical sense here — 40mg of caffeine has meaningful evidence behind it for late-ride performance.

Startled by how much money I was spending on Maurten products last season, I shifted to homemade rice cakes for all training rides and reserved gels exclusively for races. Performance didn’t drop. Gut issues didn’t increase. The grocery bill decreased noticeably. That’s the real-world experiment result after roughly eight months and somewhere north of 15,000km of riding on this protocol.

Gels are a useful tool. They’re not a superior technology that replaces food. A banana and a rice cake, chosen thoughtfully for the right ride, perform as well as a £3 gel for the majority of hours most cyclists spend on a bike. The gel brands benefit from conflating elite racing conditions with your Tuesday evening group ride. Keep those contexts separate and you’ll make better choices — and keep more money for the things that actually improve performance, like more riding time.