In the rapidly-advancing world of cycling and sports nutrition, where things like high carb fuelling have transformed performance over the last few years, there's a new trend emerging: juices.
You may already be familiar with the popularity of cherry juice – maybe you've seen practically every pro drinking a bottle of the crimson liquid at the end of a Tour de France stage.
Cherry may be the most popular fruit or vegetable juice product in cycling right now, but it's not the only one. One of the newest products to hit the market – and the WorldTour – is broccoli sprout juice, first developed and produced by Swedish brand Nomio.
Nomio is led by scientists who also discovered that dietary nitrate – most notably found in beetroot juice – helps improve the delivery of oxygen to the muscles, so they know a little something about harnessing the power of plants for sports performance.
After extensive double blind and placebo-controlled testing with endurance athletes, Nomio discovered that ITC use significantly improved how individuals responded to training.
Like cherry juice, the benefit of broccoli juice about oxidative stress. The power of ITC is in how it can help reduce lactate production by up to 12%, according to Nomio and a peer-reviewed study from 2023. This has the effect of reducing stress on the muscles, and allowing athletes to both tolerate higher intensities of training and recover faster, promoting improved endurance and performance.
"Our drink shifts the lactate curve to the right," Nomio CEO Oskar Holmblad explained to Cyclingnews. "Everything else is kept the same, but you can push a little bit harder at the same lactate level."
Though it does also aid with recovery, Nomio is not a strictly post-workout supplement like cherry juice – the brand suggests drinking Nomio before intense exercise to improve performance, or before bedtime to promote recovery during intense blocks.
For cyclists, it's clear to see why all these benefits might be attractive, given cycling is one of the toughest endurance sports out there, so it's no surprise to see how broccoli juice has made its way into the pro peloton.
Nomio did much of their early testing and development with the Swedish national orienteering team, and through them linked up with Swedish Lidl-Trek coach Mattias Reck, who suggested Nomio to Mads Pedersen.
Pedersen was first spotted using Nomio during the Spring Classics – where he claimed victory at Gent-Wevelgem – and has been key in Nomio becoming known in the world of cycling.
"Mattias also has his finger on the pulse, he knows what's happening and he wants the best for his riders, so he talked with Mads about trying the product," Holmblad explained. "And Mads wants to win. He puts in the hours and he feels like anything that can help him win, he wants to try."
As well as a benefit to Pedersen, Nomio have benefitted from the partnership too, learning a lot about the power of the product for cyclists through the Dane.
"We've done pretty extensive tests with Mads – he's been pretty generous with providing us with data – and he sees a 15 to 20 watt increase across all power zones, and he does that from one acute shot," Holmblad explained.
As well as the one-off use, Holmblad sees major benefits for cyclists using the product long-term, in a rare sport that has events as long as Grand Tours.
"You can also imagine that in the Giro or the Tour or the Vuelta, when riders are going on for 21 days, that the benefit of drawing less lactate is also that you use less glycogen. For the sprint part, that also means that you've consumed less of your power, and also that over the course of 21 days, you don't get as fatigued."
Nomio don't say that their product is cycling's next wonder fuel, but they're clear that it has proven, usable benefits for cyclists, especially those who are always looking for the next tiny gain.
"With Mads, we don't want to overstate what the drink does," Holmblad said. "Obviously it has great effects, but 99.9 per cent of what he achieves is obviously down to his own training and his own determination. But in terms of marginal gains, it's very interesting how our product works. Alongside other products like nitrate, bicarbonate or beta alanine, we can show from the data that the product actually works."
The appeal of natural performance enhancers
In a sport that has often been accused of being over-medicalised with synthetic drugs or supplements, there seems to be a growing interest in natural, food-based products right now. Whether that's cherry or broccoli juice, or the new salmon-based recovery product from Unbroken, these naturally derived products are gaining popularity in cycling.
There are probably many reasons for this – perhaps fear of contamination of supplements in pill form, or just pragmatic performance factors – but one is certainly how normal juices seem. Cherry juice products tend to be made up of a handful of ingredients alongside the fruit, and Nomio has just three: broccoli sprouts, lemon juice, and sugar.
This also helps the usability of Nomio, as they have found the product to be extremely easy to drink and digest, whereas even glucose gels take some getting used to for a person's GI system.
"I guess part of the appeal is that it's a tangent to a very regular diet where people eat broccoli, it's just that we jam-pack a small shot with lots of broccoli," was Holmblad's take on the rise of plant-based supplements.
"And it feels very natural. It doesn't feel synthetic; it feels like something you would drink in the course of your regular meals. So I guess that's the general appeal with beetroot and nitrates and spinach and rocket, et cetera, it's the same. It's like 'it should give me an effect, but if it doesn't give me an effect, there's no harm done.'"
On the topic of contamination, which several high-profile athletes have fallen foul of in recent years, Nomio is also safe in the knowledge that the production line of a juice product is much safer.
"There are stories of pill factories in Europe where there's cross-contamination with this and that, but contaminants in our factory would be like pineapple or kiwi," Holmblad said. "So from a contamination point of view, it's basically what your morning orange juice is, just turbocharged."
What next for broccoli juice?
It's clear that broccoli juice has not yet caught on in the same scale as cherry juice, but that's not to say it couldn't, with professional teams constantly searching for the newest and best innovations in nutrition.
For the scientists at Nomio, cultivating a great product that works is obviously the primary win, but as a commercial company, the brand wants to grow, as well as spreading the benefits of broccoli sprouts.
"We are testing with quite a few of the WorldTeams, and we're seeing growing interest," Holmblad said. "Obviously, Mads has been super helpful in helping to increase the awareness in the sport, and given his success this year, I would be surprised if not everyone's using it by the end of the season or early next.
"I believe the teams have jumped on it quickly because you feel the effects in no time. It’s super easy to use, no one has any issues with it, and in the event it ends up not doing much for you, the one 'downside' is that you’re getting a load of broccoli in your system – which I don’t think anybody sees as a particularly bad thing."
Nomio added a second cyclist to their list of pro consumers, with Sweden's Caroline Andersson (Jayco AlUla) also now using the product and sharing how she includes it in her training.
Exploring other products and supplements may also seem like a next step for a nutrition brand, but for now, Nomio are quite happy to have one very strong product rather than several less developed ones.
"We're not going to put a second product on the market before we have something that is absolutely unique and something that only we can do," Holmblad said.
"So our science team is still researching in nature and in the world for stuff that can help, but we're not particularly interested in dabbling in caffeine or beta alanine or bicarb, stuff that's already out there.
"At this point, we're just focusing on making our product the best it can be."
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