Maurten Solid Energy Bar Review

Among the well-known brands in the world of sports nutrition, there is one that has experienced a real success story in recent years… Indeed, is there still a cyclist who hasn’t heard of Maurten? Maurten is the fuel of champions… Inside, a substance so rich that it optimizes energy intake far beyond anything we thought possible in the past. We already knew about the gels and the drink; this time, back to basics, 3bikes.fr tests the latest novelty from the Swedish brand for you. A bar simply named Solid!

By Jean-François Tatard – Photos: All rights reserved

Maurten entered the sports nutrition market with an innovative solution designed to push boundaries. The brand’s adventure began recently, in 2015. The story starts with Mårten Fryknäs. Of the two co-founders, Mårten Fryknäs is the scientist. And in his spare time, Mårten is a triathlete who, like many, experiences gastrointestinal problems during exercise. This is how he began to look into this problem and realized that one of the solutions would be to encapsulate carbohydrates in hydrogels. This principle is the foundation of Maurten; all the brand’s products and technologies then followed this process…

For an athlete, maintaining a high glycogen level is very often a mandatory condition for performance. And while the subject may seem well understood, another problem is that many of us still suffer from gastrointestinal pain when consuming this type of product.

After the gel and drinks, let’s test Solid

What interests us in this article is to verify whether this new product in the range is merely (once again) a very well-thought-out communication, or if, beyond this brilliant example of marketing, this new bar can truly convince all athletes?

We know it. We know the reputation. Maurten products are expensive and therefore less accessible to the general public. This is the most common criticism of the brand. But it is justified by the innovation present in the products. This question of a product’s price is always delicate to address. How do you define whether a product is expensive or not? Compared to the competition? But are Maurten products really competitors to those offered by other sports nutrition brands? We can also imagine using these products sparingly, occasionally during training to get used to them and test them, and generally using them for our objectives.

We thus tested this bar in different conditions… And it is important to emphasize that we are in the category of people who often have digestive problems with this type of product. However, we must admit that the Solid bars worked perfectly for us. Some interesting points to mention: the taste (very little – or not at all – sweet) which considerably delays sickening, the pleasant and easy-to-ingest texture.

Back to basics

Solid reinvents the nutritional bar by removing everything but the essentials. The result is a product, this time in solid form, based on oats and rice. A priori, an optimized recipe for performance. And although the product may look like a bar. But also feel like a bar. And taste like a bar. It’s not just a simple bar. Solid is the first non-Hydrogel product, developed according to Maurten’s founding principles. Solid 225 and Solid 225 C are fast and light fuel sources, rich in carbohydrates and low in fiber – the perfect complement to what we had already tested with Hydrogel.

In detail

Solid 225 is neutral and natural. Solid 225 C contains cocoa, which offers a taste alternative or a flavor reset during training or racing. What’s interesting is that generally, most energy bars are designed to serve as a snack to curb a small hunger. As for Solid, it is designed to fuel both performance and aid recovery. These are two different worlds. The texture is really very pleasant. It is based on oats and rice, and its taste seems very natural. When you also check the list of ingredients, it seems minimalist. That’s reassuring. Solid provides visibly carbohydrate-rich and fiber-poor nutrition. Basically, the perfect combination.

Another thing, Solid contains a lot of carbohydrates. More than most other bars. Yet the taste offers sweetness. It is not at all off-putting, as can sometimes happen when you get tired of sugar.

Our opinion

The bar will not replace the brand’s gels and drinks that we had already stocked in our sports gear cabinet, but it is still a good complement – this time, solid – to Hydrogel. It can be consumed during races or training. But also as a recovery snack after a session or race, to restore carbohydrates. This bar also works as an alternative to pre-race snacks. In our opinion, Solid is an excellent fuel option for low to medium intensity workouts and as a pre- and post-workout snack. And for those doing ultra-endurance events or endless raids, our advice is to “eat something Solid” (editor’s note: easy pun) every 4 hours. And precisely, the salt content of this bar seems to be a real advantage for also restoring sodium levels during long training sessions and competitions.

Advantages and benefits

The substance of this bar is so rich that it optimizes energy intake far beyond anything we thought possible in the past. And it’s ultra-digestible too! That’s actually the first word that comes to mind to summarize the effects. No bloating, no stomach aches either. It really does the job! On the bike and especially in competition: it’s always complicated with solutions that are too rich in carbohydrates. There is a limit to what we can tolerate, by the way, and it’s difficult to find examples of sports nutrition containing more than 7% carbohydrates. Sports nutrition specialists thus consider this limit to be completely impossible to push back.

Well, that’s where everything begins for Maurten… Beyond the limits! This is where the brand’s technology is innovative. It indeed pushes what was tolerable this time to more than 14% carbohydrates. This is simply the greatest tolerance in carbohydrate intake that exists on the market.

To conclude

Even if we appreciated the Solid C even more, where most competitors innovate with their range of flavors, this time, it’s not a product offered for its taste. It’s a product offered for its exceptional energy contribution. And of all that I have tested in my life, it is the one that tolerates the greatest carbohydrate intake I have ever seen in almost 30 years of experience in sports. Solid, like the other products in the Maurten range, are products that sponsored athletes or those under contract with other nutrition brands order discreetly and at their own expense. “Great achievements are built on solid foundations,” as the saying goes, so after this test, we couldn’t agree more with the old adage today…

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