Nectar Hydro sports hydration tablets

Nectar Hydro hydration tablets taste good and provide a mix of minerals that seems to helps prevent cramp.

Nectar Hydro is a new range of sports hydration tablet from the same company that makes For Goodness Shakes recovery drinks. You fill your bottle with water, then drop in a tab to create a drink containing various minerals which can help you avoid cramp. The nice taste will also encourage you to keep drinking and stay hydrated.

Having been testing these tabs for the past few weeks, I'd say it's the taste that makes Nectar Hydro stand apart from some other brands of mineral or electrolyte replacement tabs out there. The lemon & lime flavour has a rather sour taste, but in a good way; it's like old-fashioned home-made lemonade. The orange flavour is slightly sweeter and tastes like Robinson's orange squash. The summer fruits flavour is like Ribena. Can you see a theme here? When I've been out on my bike in hot or cold conditions on the bike (rather too many of the latter for my liking so far this 'summer') all three flavours have slipped down easily and been very pleasant to drink.

But it's not all about taste. The mineral composition is also important. This is because the minerals in the drink replace the minerals lost from your body via sweat, and this helps you avoid cramp. Nectar Hydro's advertising blurb is very keen to emphasise that these tabs contain not three, not four, but FIVE different minerals: sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium and chloride.

Just for the record, each tab weighs 4.3g and the mineral breakdown is sodium 0.25g, potassium 60mg, magnesium 20mg, calcium 40mg, chloride 265mg.

Whether an extra dash of calcium here or chloride there makes any real difference is hard to know, and maybe it's just the nice taste that encouraged me to drink a bit more than normal. Either way, it does the job. As someone who does sometimes suffer from cramp in the leg muscles, I can confirm that I haven't experienced any problems while using these Nectar Hydro tabs.

Will the Nectar Hydro mix of minerals be better for you than any other brand? It's impossible to say. Bike riders have different requirements depending on distance, exertion, weather conditions, and their own metabolism, while the mineral composition levels – especially of sodium - vary from brand to brand (for similar sized tabs). As with so many other nutritional stuff, only trial and error (when you're training, not during an important race or sportive) will determine what's best for you. But based on my own experience with Nectar Hydro tabs, I'd recommend them as well worth a try.

In each tab there's no fat or protein, a tiny bit of fibre and just under one gram of carb. In other words, this is not an energy drink.

As well as helping encourage hydration and prevent cramp, Nectar Hydro is also promoted as 'the perfect solution ... if you are looking to ... lose weight or burn fat'. While this statement is not un-true, your body will always burn fat when its own carbohydrate reserves are depleted, which is what happens when you use a drink mix – such as Nectar Hydro - with virtually no carb content. Nectar Hydro doesn't go as far as some other brands with 'burn fat' claims, but you still shouldn't be seduced into thinking you can shed excess kilos simply by using these tabs. When it comes to "burning fat", you'd get pretty much the same result if you just drank plain water.

A tube of 20 Nectar Hydro tabs costs £6.99 from the Nectar and For Goodness Shakes online shop. You can find it for the same price in your local bike shop, or a bit less at the usual on-line discount stores. This is on a par with the price you pay for similar products from other brands.

Verdict

A great tasting drink to help you stay hydrated and avoid cramp.