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About Skratch

Skratch Labs has its roots in two key ideas that form the pillars for who we are today.

The first idea is that food and drink are better when it's made from scratch.
When Dr. Allen Lim, our founder, was working as a coach and sports scientist on the Pro-Cycling Tour, the single biggest complaint that athletes had was that conventional sports nutrition left a bad taste in their mouths and an even worse feeling in their guts. It's a problem that's not limited to world-class athletes, but an issue that almost anyone who has consumed highly processed sports drinks, bars, chews, or gels, under the guise of performance, has ironically experienced. To remedy this problem, Dr. Lim began literally making the food and drink he gave to riders, in races like the Tour de France, from scratch. He started blending a simple sports drink with less sugar, more sodium, and real fruit to keep athletes better hydrated. At the same time, he prepared delicious recipes like savory rice cakes, parmesan potatoes, and freshly baked cookie bars to fuel his team. While it may not have always been easy or convenient, this return to real food and drink was based on evidence-based problem-solving – on relentless experimentation and critical feedback from some of the best athletes in the world.

The second pillar for us at Skratch Labs is the belief that no matter where you find yourself in life, it's never too late to start from scratch.
When we first started Skratch Labs, we just wanted to help people solve problems. But doing so meant we had to solve a lot of our own problems, both personally and professionally. We literally had to start our lives over from scratch – a new beginning that is very much our own American Dream. Fortunately, the same problem solving skills that we used to create our products, allowed us to learn quickly. We pulled ourselves up from our bootstraps and got to work, adapting through creative innovation. It's this innovation and the basic belief that we can transform for the better that forms the basis of our mission. A mission to provide people, regardless of where they find themselves, with the inspiration, life skills, and products so that they can take better care of themselves and their families through real nutrition created for a lifetime of physical activity.

For more info see the about us page

Products

For years, Skratch has preached fueling athletes with real food, like our famous rice cakes and delicious Energy Bars.

Why? Because traditional fueling gels and high-calorie carbohydrate drinks are too concentrated or use carbohydrate sources that digest too fast for athletes to tolerate, causing gastrointestinal distress.

But we know athletes can’t always make, carry, or eat real food. They want convenience and calories in a bottle that won’t make them sick. To that end, our founder, Dr. Allen Lim, developed a solution with a formula using Cluster Dextrin - an extraordinarily complex carbohydrate that is highly soluble but digests steadily like real food.

Our Super High-Carb Sport Drink Mix is a liquid carbohydrate source with over 20 months of testing with Gold Medalist Gwen Jorgensen as well as the Education First Pro Cycling Team. It has effectively allowed these athletes to drink their fuel during some of the longest and most intense events in the world when they can’t eat real food, without causing the gastrointestinal distress common to highly concentrated carbohydrate solutions. What makes it such a great tool in their fueling arsenal is that it can be consumed rapidly, allowing a large number of calories to be consumed during the unpredictable stress of competition. At the same time, once consumed, it provides a steady and long term source of energy that the athletes describe as a continuous drip of constant fuel.

For more information on this product check out: Super High-Carb Science + Practice.

Why is the serving size for the super high-carb drink mix’s 840g bag a 105-gram serving, but the portable single serving pouch for the same product is only 53 grams? Why 200 calories in a single?
Everyone is their own experiment with nutrition requirements. Our 200-calorie packet allows for an easier way to customize caloric needs. It also allows for better portability and product portion testing in training.

Can I use more than one 200-calorie serving pouch in a single bottle?
Sure can! The flexibility of the single pouch allows you to increase or decrease the amount depending on weather, activity, and intensity.How you use it all depends on how many calories you need to take in, and how much water you want to drink to get those calories. Think of it as food when you don't have (or can't chew) food. To learn more about best practices head to our Super High-Carb Science and Practice Blog.

I’ve used the scoop from the super high-carb drink mix bag in the past to prepare my bottle. How many scoops are equal to the new portable single-serving pouch?
Our High-Carb Drink Mix 200-calorie pouch contains the equivalent of 3.5 scoops of High-Carb Drink Mix.

3.5 scoops or 1 x 53g packet Super High-Carb Drink Mix = 200 calories and 190mg of sodium

7 scoops or 2 x 53g packets Super High-Carb Drink Mix = 400 calories and 380mg of sodium

You can always start with less and add more as needed, based on your caloric and electrolyte needs.

How many calories do I need in my bottle? 400? 200? Another amount?
Think of Super High-Carb as an easy way to carry a lot of calories to meet your needs. Ultimately, we recommend that you replace about 1/2 the calories you burn per hour to maintain your blood sugar levels and to make sure you don't run out of carbohydrate in your muscle (glycogen). Depending upon your fitness and intensity, 200 or 400 Calories may or may not be enough for you. So you can think of Super High-Carb Drink Mix as a convenient way to get what you need without upsetting your gut. Don't think of this as what you have to consume. Consider starting by testing 1 to 1.5 pouches (or if using a Super High-Carb bag 3.5-5 scoops) in 500ml of water and go from there.

Do I need a separate bottle of Sport Hydration Drink Mix?
One serving of Super High-Carb provides the equivalent amount of hydration as one serving of Sport Drink Mix. That said, 1 bottle or about 1/2 liter may not be enough to replace your fluid losses from sweat. So if you do need more hydration beyond one bottle, then our Sport Drink Mix still fits the bill. Realize that optimal hydration and optimal fueling are not the same thing. We don't always lose calories in proportion to the fluid we lose. On hot days, you may not even need Super High-Carb if you are using our Sport Drink Mix at a rate that matches your fluid losses, and therefore getting enough fluid and calories to meet your needs. On cooler days, you may find that you're burning the same amount of energy but not sweating as much, so based on your increased fuel needs and lower fluid needs, a higher calorie Super High-Carb bottle is a better solution. Think of Super High-Carb and our Sport Drink Mix as two very different types of tools. It's not that one is better than the other. One is a big hammer without a lot of fluid. The other is a little hammer with a lot more fluid.

You can mix High-Carb with our other hydration mixes into one bottle but you’ll want to do some math and make sure you are getting an appropriate combination of carbs, sodium, and liquid to your needs and to avoid GI distress (too many carbs in too short of a period and you’ll be busting your gut…). This ratio can change depending on the weather, effort, and other factors, so test things in training and if you have questions, hit us up: info@skratchlabs.eu

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Science + Performance

Yes, water is fine if the activity is short, the temperature is moderate and sweat rates are low. But remember that sweat isn't just water, it's also made up of electrolytes, especially salt or sodium chloride, which makes up about 90% of the electrolytes we lose. Of these electrolytes, it's the loss of sodium that can potentially hurt our performance the most. Thus, if you're just drinking water, you're not putting back everything you're losing.

In fact, if you're just drinking water and relying on your thirst, it's unlikely that you're even putting back all of the water you're losing. Although this may negatively impact performance in the long term, this isn't necessarily a bad thing in the short term because losing water is actually one of a few mechanisms the body has to protect the concentration of sodium in our bloodstream. This is because one signal for thirst is an increase in the sodium concentration of blood – something that happens as we sweat and lose fluid from our body. Since thirst is in part driven by sodium concentration and because some sodium is lost in sweat, in theory, it doesn't take as much water to quench one's thirst as was lost. This under-drinking protects us because if we drink only water beyond thirst, we might run the risk of diluting our blood's sodium concentration – a situation called hyponatremia and that can lead to a number of negative performance and health consequences. So, while drinking plain water may be fine in theory, make sure not to drink beyond thirst, even if that means you're losing water weight that may eventually impair your ability to perform at your best.

Of course, this scenario can be avoided the closer one gets to replacing both the water and sodium lost in one's sweat. In fact, even if you're not exactly matching the sodium lost in your sweat, during prolonged exercise in the heat at moderate to heavy sweat rates there is no situation where drinking water alone is better than a sports drink that contains a little bit of sugar and plenty of sodium like our Hydration Sport Drink Mix.

Ultimately, your sweat contains a lot of sodium, (500-2000mg per liter). Using a drink that doesn't contain sodium while the body is losing sodium can throw off our thirst mechanism and keep us from replacing all of the water we are losing. More importantly, sodium plays a critical role in almost every cell function, so keeping it in balance along with water is key to our performance. Thus, a drink with a sodium content similar to what you lose in sweat along with a little bit of sugar to help transport water and help maintain blood sugar levels is always better than water alone during strenuous exercise in the heat. You have to replace everything you're losing, not just the water.

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Food + Recipes

The short answer is they are all full of super yummy deliciousness with recipes that are both easy to make and good for you.

The slightly longer answer is that all three are written by Skratch Labs' very own Dr. Allen Lim and Chef Biju Thomas after the athletes they cooked for and helped teach cook started asking them for the recipes they used. They wanted the book to be a reference for them so that they would have one of the essential life skills they needed to take better care of themselves – cooking. But, they also knew that if they could write a simple and practical book for the athletes they worked with – many of whom were very young and living on their own for the very first time – they could help a lot of people who had the same questions and concerns about performance and nutrition. For us, the answers to those questions start in the kitchen, not in a textbook or sterile laboratory, so the Feed Zone Cookbook series was our way of motivating others to get in the kitchen and take action.

The first cookbook in the series is the Feed Zone Cookbook. It takes athletes through a complete day of eating. From breakfast, portable ride food, recovery food, dinner, and even a little bit of dessert.

People were so interested in the "portables" section of the Feed Zone Cookbook, that our second book – Feed Zone Portables – focused on just that. It begins with an in depth introduction on the science and practice of fueling while on the go, making a strong case for solid foods for fuel and less caloric drinks for hydration. Feed Zone Portables is filled with a wide variety of simple, delicious, and effective recipes to give athletes alternatives for dry energy bars.

Finally, Feed Zone Table brings the focus back to dinner with a specific emphasis on family style meals. Despite of or perhaps because of all of the science written about optimal nutrition, it's sometimes hard to remember that optimal nutrition doesn't happen in a bubble. It actually happens when we share food with those who matter to us. Feed Zone Table takes the stand that social fuel is just as important as chemical fuel and was written so athletes remembered to include those they love in their pursuit to be better.

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