Published March 14, 2026 03:31AM
You know the moment: standing in a convenience store forty minutes before a long run, lights humming overhead, staring at neon packets with names that sound less like food and more like tech startups. Or maybe you’re almost an hour into a trail run, ripping open your first gel packet. Somewhere between the artificial raspberry flavor and the sugar spike, a small, inconvenient thought surfaces: What is this stuff actually doing for me…and to me?
The truth is, sports gels, electrolyte-infused sports drinks, and protein bars are engineered to supply nutrients for better performance. They deliver on that front. But they’re also categorized as ultraprocessed foods or UPFs—items that are packed with preservatives, emulsifiers, colorings, and flavorings all in the effort to increase their shelf life, make them addictively delicious, and easy to digest. Despite those attractive traits, UPFs have been linked to cancer, obesity, cardiovascular disease, depression, and even low muscle mass.
I’ve consumed enough gels and protein powder to fill a small landfill. I’m kidding (I think). My grandmother certainly wouldn’t have called them food. Some days, I’m not sure I do either.
Elite athletes have fueled on this stuff for decades. So, what’s the real trade-off?
The Panic Over Ultraprocessed Food Feels Contemporary—But It Isn’t
The term “ultraprocessed food” gained traction in the 1980s. However, the opposition for them came earlier. In the seventies, health critics were already raising alarms but were often dismissed as “food faddists” or “pseudoscientists.”
Artificial flavors and chemical additives entered the American diet in the 19th century, when saccharin (a zero-calorie sugar substitute like Sweet N’ Low) and the ever-popular bubbly Coca-Cola showed up.
Hydrogenated oils stepped onto the scene in 1901. They were injected into foods to make them last longer, but the hydrogenation process creates trans fat, the kind of fat that increases “bad” cholesterol.
After World War II, food engineering accelerated as the military needed large quantities of food that could be transported and remain fresh when shipped.
By the sixties, processed food wasn’t a compromise. It was progress. In 1965, University of Florida physician Dr. Robert Cade developed a drink to replace the electrolytes football players lost through sweat. Within a few years, Gatorade was everywhere. By the late nineties, engineered sports fuel was mainstream.
How We Categorize Processed Foods
In 2009, Brazilian epidemiologist Carlos Monteiro introduced the NOVA classification system, grouping foods by degree of processing. These four categories are: no processing/minimal (fruits and veggies), processed ingredients like sugar or butter, processed foods such as cheese or canned goods, and ultraprocessed. His argument challenged nutrient-only thinking, instead suggesting that how our food is made may matter just as much as what’s in it.
Some researchers have pointed out that NOVA paints with a pretty wide brush. Cheerios, for instance, technically qualify as ultra-processed under the system, despite being made from whole grain oats and containing relatively little added sugar. It’s clear that not all ultraprocessed foods cause the same damage, so the system may need more nuance.
But for athletes, the question of what matters more becomes a practical one: Does the processing matter, or what the processed food replaces?
Elite Athletes Rely on Whole Foods and Some Ultraprocessed Products
To find out what elite athletes really used to fuel themselves, I reached out to Siri Lindley, a 2X World Champion Triathlete who was named the top triathlete in the world in 2001. But her daily diet looked nothing like what the industry was selling.
At her peak, while living in Switzerland, she ate fresh meats, vegetables, dairy, whole breads—food without labels. “In Switzerland, food culture is very different,” she tells me. “Very little processed food. That’s how I lived, and that’s when I was performing at my absolute best.”
On Olympic-distance race days—roughly two hours of high-intensity movement—she used one gel and a diluted electrolyte mix. During training, she leaned on bananas and peanut butter sandwiches. Processed bars appeared only occasionally. However, Lindley says that sponsorships often influence athletes’ use of sports nutrition foods. “If a company sponsored you, you used their products. Magazines promoted them. It became normalized,” she says. But gels and electrolyte mixes weren’t the reason she became a world champ. “The reason I performed at my best was because my daily life was built on real food, consistent training, recovery, and emotional well-being.”
After surviving cancer, Lindley’s perspective sharpened. “Performance and health are not separate systems,” she says. “They are deeply connected.”
As a triathlon coach, she now teaches athletes to think in two layers: build the foundation with whole foods and use sports products as tools when the workload demands it. As an example, for Ironman athletes training four to six hours at a time, she acknowledges that rapid delivery of carbs sometimes becomes necessary. However, for most recreational athletes, it isn’t, says Dr. Christine Fray, an associate professor of dietetics and nutrition at the University of Technology in Jamaica.
How Bad Are Ultraprocessed Sports Foods, and Do They Have a Place in Our Diets?
Fray has worked extensively with elite athletes—including Team Jamaica—and her research focuses on the intersection of obesity, chronic diseases, and sports nutrition. She agrees that sports gels and drinks are technically UPFs.
Fray conveyed that among the general public, ultraprocessed foods often displace whole foods and dominate daily intake. For athletes, sports products are designed to support prolonged effort, not replace meals. A diet high in UPFs has also been associated with gut inflammation and less water consumption.
“The bulk of the diet should consist of healthy, whole foods,” Fray says. She says that duration is the key variable. “Sports nutrition products can be useful for endurance sports like marathons and Ironman events. They are not necessary for sports of shorter duration.”
But for activities that involve roughly 90 minutes of continuous effort, according to Fray, rapid carbohydrate and electrolyte delivery can help delay fatigue. Below that 90-minute mark, Fray says most recreational runners can save their money instead of buying sports drinks or gels. “A normal diet, along with training and proper hydration with water, will go a long way.”
Can peak performance and long-term health coexist? Fray is direct: They can. “Several of our Jamaican athletes have performed for years beyond the usual age 30 retirement age and have done well,” she says. “Our athletes use whole foods for the most part.”
The message is clear: Whole foods are the foundation, and sports products can be a helpful tool under specific circumstances.
Consider This Before Buying Your Next Energy Gel or Electrolyte Mix
Where does that leave the rest of us—not world champions or Olympians—who want to move well and not wreck ourselves in the process? The answer may be proportion. As Monteiro argued and as Lindley’s career illustrates, what matters isn’t just what’s in your food. It’s what’s been done to it, and what it replaces.
Processed fuel has a role. Long races, sustained high intensity, and extended sessions are moments when rapid nutrient delivery makes physiological sense. But those moments are infrequent for most of us.
Convenience should not replace the nutritional complexity of whole foods, such as fiber and micronutrients that build resilience, support recovery, and contribute to long-term health. The question isn’t whether to eliminate ultraprocessed foods entirely. It’s how much space they should occupy in your daily life.
Maybe the next time you’re standing in that convenience store staring at puffy packets, the question isn’t simply what to buy. It’s whether you need to buy anything at all.
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