The race to turn lactate’s potential as an energy source into reality is the hot nutrition topic of 2026, with a fourth company in the mix with an entirely different product. Plus: what does it taste like?
Ronan Mc Laughlin, courtesy Exolactate and Enervit
Even a few weeks ago, the idea of exogenous lactate as a performance fuel still seemed like a physiologist’s pipe dream. Lactate’s potential as an energy source was well understood, but converting that into a practical product still seemed like a problem with no solution in sight.
But now, Exolactate, Enervit, and SantaMadre claim to have solved that problem, each with their own new exogenous-lactate gel designed to deliver lactate along with carbohydrate during exercise with the familiarity of a gel.
Exolactate gels are the buzz of the Tour de France: A new super fuel or just more snake oil?
We’ve known for years that lactate is actually fuel rather than a waste product. A top WorldTour team is testing whether ingesting it can actually improve performance.
There is not yet enough independent research to conclude that consuming lactate will live up to the hype, or even what the optimal doses or timings might be. Nor is there evidence it can meaningfully increase total exogenous energy availability once carbohydrate intake is already maximised, but that is at least the theory.
A sachet of Exolactate’s as-yet-experimental new gel product.
Even so, these products have already gained significant attention and have moved exogenous lactate from pipe dream to the centre of the performance-nutrition conversation. All told, lactate already has the sense of “the next ketones” to it.
But while cyclists are only beginning to learn of lactate’s possibilities thanks to these three companies, a fourth believes it has a better solution and that this first generation of products may already be constrained by the formulation used to make them.
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