Honey Stinger Energy Chews

Honey Stinger Organic Energy Chews are great tasting nutrition boosts that tread the line between an energy bar and a gel. With multiple carbohydrate sources, they optimise the rate at which you can take on sugars, giving you a fast hit, and also provide you with a vitamin C hit for an extra health benefit.

Honey Stinger's chews are chewy sweets with a texture similar to Haribo gummy bears, yielding a nice bit of bite in the mouth. The beauty of a sweet is that it provides you with the feel of eating real food like a bar while also being a lot easier to get down than occasionlay dry or crumbly energy foods. The semi-solid texture means they can almost be compared to a gel, slipping down easily when working hard and breathing heavily.

Nutritionally, a packet of nine chews delivers a hefty 39g of carbohydrate, and 100% (60mg) of your recommended intake of vitamin C. Perhaps the key to the product is that the carbohydrate comes from multiple sources: glucose, fructose, maltose, sucrose. Using four sources of energy means that your body can take in the sugars through various digestive pathways, so you can take on the energy super-quick, for a near-immediate energy boost.

Having tried the chews on a couple of rides, the best way to describe them would be giving an impact akin to a cross between a bar and a gel. As mentioned, they deliver a quick hit thanks to those multiple sugar sources, but they also seem to sit longer in the stomach than a gel, and give a little more of the feel of a 'brick' in the stomach than solid bars or bananas and so on provide.

Honey Stinger makes a big deal of the fact that the ingredients are all organic, gluten free, and naturally flavoured. It does make a refreshing change when reading the top ingredients to see items that don't sound like the contents of a science lab – tapioca syrup, sugar, honey, grape juice – and I do think that a focus on natural ingredients can help with digestive issues some people encounter with sports nutrition, particularly gels. The addition of the vitamin C is a definite bonus, though not something that would sway me to this product over others.

I tried two flavours, Grapefruit and Pink Lemonade. They were both bright and zingy in the mouth, almost kind of refreshing. You couldn't say they highly accurately convey the flavour that they claim to be, but are close to it, and neutral enough to be pleasant without overpowering. I can't really see them being flavours that anyone would dislike.

> How to fuel your sportive or big ride

My only gripe is that the chews come in a packet, much like a bag of sweets, and it's not that easy to get into on the move. If you are intending to use them on a hard ride or race, where you may have limited time to take both hands off the bar to get into the packet, you'd best get it open before you head out; even then it's not that easy to dig a chew out. The 'tube' system used by Clif with its Shot Bloks is preferable here.

The chews come in boxes of 12, with an RRP of £31.80 – working out at a fairly hefty £2.65 per 50g packet. Although this initially seems pricey, it isn't far off Clif's Shot Bloks, also £2.65 but for a 60g tube, or Powerbar's Powergel shots, which are £2 per 60g packet.

So, these chews give you a great energy release and provide a nice middle ground between a bar and a gel, albeit in slightly awkward packaging. With natural ingredients and being gluten free, they sit easy on the stomach – but at £2.65 they sit a little less easy on the wallet.

Verdict

A tasty sweet delivering fast energy, but they aren't that easy to get out of the packet and are quite pricey