While many of us perform better when we eat real food during training or even during a race, it’s not always easy to make happen. It can be hard enough to find the time to cook ourselves healthy meals every day, let alone workout snacks. Southern California-based MODe wants to help. No, not by offering some sort of food delivery program like Blue Apron, but by condensing all the nutrients you need before, during, and after a workout into a line of all-natural sports drinks. It’s like juice on steroids.
I had a chance to chat with the two founders of MODe at Sea Otter last month. Athlete Tammo Walter teamed up with successful beverage entrepreneur Nikki Halbur to launch this line of what they call cold-pressed sports nutrition beverages. Targeted at increasing your performance, these all-natural drinks utilize a blend of fruits, vegetables, and natural extracts to deliver a wide spectrum of general nutrition as well as exact dosages of active ingredients for scientifically proven performance and health benefits — dosages you would never be able to achieve through eating alone. Take curcumin, the active ingredient of turmeric. You’d need to consume several pounds of fresh turmeric to gain the same anti inflammatory benefits as you’ll get with one bottle of MODe.
MODe currently offers three products — a pre-workout beet and pomegranate booster to increase endurance and power; a mango and ginger intra-workout shot to prevent cramping and increase energy levels; and a cucumber, kale, and spinach booster that decreases inflammation and speeds up the rate of recovery. I have tried them all and they are all surprisingly delicious.
You can order the super juices online from MODe — they cost $54.99 per case of 6-10 bottles. The bottles need to be refrigerated but the intra-workout mango + ginger drink, for example, will do just fine stored in your jersey pocket or running vest until you need that pick-me-up.