The back of the packet tells you everything. Here is how to actually read it.
Most athletes spend hours researching training plans, race strategy, and gear. They obsess over split times, heart rate zones, and weekly mileage.
Then they grab a gel off a shelf because the branding looks fast and the flavour sounds good.
The back of the packet is an afterthought. Which is exactly what the brands making those gels are counting on.
Reading a gel label is not complicated once you know what you are looking at. This guide will walk you through exactly what everything means, which ingredients to look for, which to avoid, and why 2THRV holds up under the scrutiny that most gels quietly hope you skip.
Rule One: Ingredients Are Listed by Weight
This is the most important thing to understand and the most consistently overlooked.
Ingredients must be listed by weight in descending order. Whatever appears first on the list makes up the largest proportion of the product, and so on down to the smallest. Nutritiontriathlon
This is why the first ingredient on a label tells you everything about what a product actually is.
If the first ingredient is maltodextrin, you are holding a maltodextrin product with some other things added. Full stop. Everything else on the label is secondary to that core reality.
GU Energy Gel lists maltodextrin as its first ingredient across every single flavour in its range, followed by water, then fructose. Running Warehouse The product is primarily a processed starch derivative. The branding about amino acids and electrolytes is real but those ingredients are present in tiny amounts compared to the maltodextrin that makes up the bulk of what you are swallowing.
2THRV lists organic maple syrup first. Because that is what it primarily is.
Rule Two: "Natural Flavors" Means Almost Nothing
This one catches almost everyone.
"Natural flavors" sounds wholesome. It sounds like fruit. It sounds like something from a garden rather than a factory.
Under FDA labeling rules, the term "natural flavors" can legally describe over 100 different chemical compounds, as long as the original source material was at some point derived from something found in nature. Fleet Feet The processing that happens between that natural source and the final compound can be extensive. The end result can be far removed from anything you would recognise as food.
When a brand writes "natural flavors" instead of simply listing the actual ingredient, it almost always means the flavor is not coming from the real food it implies. If the gel tasted like strawberry because it contained actual strawberries, they would say strawberries.
2THRV does not use natural flavors. The flavor in the product comes from organic berries and organic lemon juice. Those words are on the label because those are the actual ingredients.
Rule Three: Preservatives Tell You Something Important
If a gel contains sodium benzoate or potassium sorbate, it tells you one specific thing: the product was designed for a long shelf life.
That is a manufacturing and retail decision, not a nutrition decision. These preservatives exist so the product can sit in a warehouse, travel across the world, sit on a store shelf for months, and still be safe to consume.
Some brands use a proprietary blend label structure specifically to avoid disclosing the exact amounts of certain ingredients, listing total blend weight rather than individual amounts. This is a legal way to obscure how much of each ingredient is actually present in the product. Scientific Triathlon
Sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate appear in GU, PowerBar, and most mainstream gel brands. As covered in previous articles, independent research has linked both to oxidative stress and inflammatory responses in cell studies, and sodium benzoate can react with acidic ingredients to produce benzene, a known carcinogen.
A gel that does not need preservatives is one that was not designed to sit on a shelf for 18 months. That is worth paying attention to.
Rule Four: The Nutrition Panel Is Not the Whole Story
The front-facing nutrition panel tells you calories, carbohydrates, sodium, and protein. Those numbers matter and you should check them.
But the nutrition panel tells you nothing about the quality or source of those numbers.
Twenty grams of carbohydrate from organic maple syrup and dates is a fundamentally different thing to 20 grams of carbohydrate from processed maltodextrin. Both will show up identically on the carbohydrate line of the nutrition facts panel. The panel cannot tell you which one comes with natural antioxidants, minerals, and co-factors that support absorption and reduce inflammation. It cannot tell you which one has been linked to gut damage in peer-reviewed research.
The ingredient list tells you that. Which is why you read the ingredient list first and the nutrition panel second.
Rule Five: Count the Ingredients
This one is simple but revealing.
Pick up any mainstream gel and count the ingredients. GU has 17 in a standard flavour. PowerBar Gel has around 14. SiS Go Isotonic Gel has over 10.
Now read 2THRV.
Organic Maple Syrup. Organic Dates. Organic Berries. Organic Lemon Juice. Mineral Salt.
Five ingredients. Every single one of them a whole food. Every single one with a clear, measurable, performance-relevant purpose.
When a label has 15 or more ingredients, most of them are not there for you. They are there for the manufacturer. Texture agents, emulsifiers, flavor compounds, colorants, preservatives. These are production and shelf-life decisions dressed up as a product.
Nutrition guidance for athletes consistently recommends prioritising high-quality carbohydrate sources from identifiable whole food origins, with minimal processing and no unnecessary additives. Maurten That advice applies to everything you eat, including what you eat at kilometre 25 of a marathon.
The Two-Minute Label Test
Next time you pick up a gel, run through this quickly.
What is the first ingredient? If it is maltodextrin, you are holding a processed starch product regardless of what the front says.
Does it list "natural flavors"? If yes, you have no idea what the actual flavor source is.
Does it contain sodium benzoate or potassium sorbate? If yes, it was built for a shelf, not for your body.
How many ingredients are there total? More than eight and you are looking at a product with significant manufacturing additives alongside the fuel.
Can you name every ingredient and explain what it does? If not, your gut is going to be processing things mid-race that serve no performance purpose whatsoever.
2THRV passes every point on that list. We built it to.
[Try 2THRV — five ingredients, nothing hidden, everything earned.]
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