Spring Energy Hit a Wall?
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Spring Energy, a well-known energy brand on the market, has suffered a major setback. They were found to be falsely advertising their product's nutrition panel, showing more carbs than they actually contain. This was discovered by the famous endurance coach Jason Koop.
Imagine you were training for months or years to enter a race. You plan everything, including your nutrition needs, down to the gram of carbs required. You put all your trust into the brand you have been using for months and years during your training. Normally, you don’t try anything new, including energy gels, on race day. You consume the gels from the brand you are familiar with, and your body has already adapted to them. Imagine you need 25g of carbs from a gel pack, but it ends up giving you only 10g of carbs. You might think your lack of energy is due to other factors, but in reality, you’re just not getting the carbs you need.
As a business owner myself, I understand there are things that may not be easily controlled, especially in food manufacturing. You need to find a trustworthy contract manufacturer unless you have your own manufacturing facilities. Not only that, but the supplier of the ingredients may have their own issues, which may not be easily detected by contract manufacturers unless they have a robust quality control system and process in place. I speculate that somewhere along the supply chain, problems occurred and were never detected or picked up by QA (if any at all).
The owner of Spring Energy publicly apologized and explained what went wrong and how they would rectify the issues. They are certainly doing the right thing, but their reputation has been ruined, and trust has been lost. Will they regain the trust of athletes? Time will tell.
The Future of Sports Supplements: Unlike natural sports supplements (e.g., Endu1's Honey Boost ULTRA or Honey Boost ENDURANCE), many supplements on the market have not undergone lab testing to prove their nutrient amounts. Should all sports supplements provide self-declared nutrient amounts to show their legitimacy? I think they should.