Maurten Solid 225 Unsponsored Review

Is Maurten’s new Solid 225 worth the hype? I tested it to see what I thought and whether it would fit into a nutrition plan for me or for other athletes.

If you would like to watch a video of my review, click this link.

Maurten Solid 225 - Is it as good as they claim?

Maurten have a new product out called Solid, and it comes in two varieties, original and cocoa. It’s a deviation away from the norm for them as it doesn’t follow their previous hydrogel formula which they became famous for.

I’ve previously reviewed the hydrogel range and have been a big fan, and actually now use it in my triathlons, so I was keen to try this out.

For transparency, I’m not affiliated or sponsored by Maurten in any way and buy all the products I test and review with my own money so that I can do as unbiased a review as possible.

Maurten’s products are used by incredible athletes like Jan Frodeno, Kristian Blummenfelt and Eliud Kipchoge to name just a few.

Taste, texture and palatability - Too Solid for its own good?

So Maurten solid comes in two flavours, original and cocoa.

Both of them are tasty but I think the original is my favourite. They're both sweet but not unpleasantly so and they're nice to eat.

They're really quite dense though so are quite chewy.

You have to put a bit of effort into eating them and they certainly live up to their name!

They are very sugary and quite sticky too, so you wouldn't want to just be holding them without the packing unless you’re happy to have sticky hands!

Size wise they’re a bit bigger than their gels and aren’t particularly thick so they will still fit nicely into something like a top tube of a bike or a pocket on a cycling jersey.

As expensive as expected

If you buy directly from Maurten they cost £30 for a box of 12, which is £2.50 per bar. Pretty much in line with their other products.

This is quite a lot for an oat based chew bar but in the grand scheme of things is still reasonable for a sport specific, batch tested product. It’s unlikely to ever be an ‘everyday’ bar and so for specific uses, as I'll discuss more below, I think this price point is fair.

How Maurten solid 225 fits in a nutrition plan

Are Maurten Solid 225 worth it? Now that might sound a bit odd because you might be thinking, well surely they’re just a carb product so you use them for anything that you would any of the other maurten products.

Maybe, but maybe not.

The big thing here is that it is solid food, and historically I’ve not been quite as a big a fan of bars as something like gels or liquid.

Solids have been shown to have a higher incident rate or severity in terms of GI symptoms compared to gels or liquids, which means they might not be as useful for racing because of the risk of causing tummy upset.

Because of this I would usually advise preferentially using gels or liquids for racing because the generally tolerated better than solids.

With solid food you usually get higher amounts of protein, fat and fibre, all nutrients which contribute to GI upset, hence it’s much better with gels and liquids.

So I thought it would be useful to see how the nutritional data of Maurten’s solid compares to others out there.

You can see that Maurten does reasonably well at keeping the fat, protein and fibre low, and lower than most of the other options. But there’s still enough in there to make me consider whether this is going to problematic for athletes and cause tummy upset.

So let’s just come back to what I think the intended use for this is.

In my opinion I don’t think this is meant to replace their core hydrogel products as first line race nutrition. I think their gel 100 and mix 160/320 are their major players, and this bar is meant to be as an additional extra for people in longer endurance events where they want a break from the taste or texture fatigue of liquids or gels.

If you know that for your event you don’t get taste fatigue and can manage just on gels or liquids then I wouldn’t suggest this is a product you need to add in because I don’t think it’s ‘better’ than their hydrogel stuff.

If you do get solid food cravings and haven’t found something that works for you yet then I think this could be a great addition. I don’t think it’s revolutionary like their hydrogel products but I think it’s a solid addition to a nutrition plan.

I think this is best suited to cycling events or the bike leg of a triathlon just because of it being solid food and it’s potential to cause GI upset, but it might also work for ultra distance running where the intensity is relatively lower.

But as I mentioned they are quite chewy and I found it a bit difficult to run and eat them so they wouldn't be my go to there.

You could use it as a snack before or after exercise too or just to generally help if you need extra calories in the day, but I don't think that's a necessary use, and a pretty expensive snack at that.

As a side note this does contain a decent amount of salt in it. It has 0.66g of salt which is about 0.4g of sodium, or 400mg, which is pretty good. This means it should help from an overall hydration point of view as well, which is a nice added benefit.

This is also an informed sport registered product, which means it’s tested to check there aren’t any banned substances in it. This means if you’re competing and could face a blood test for anti-doping purposes, this should mean you’re at a much lower likelihood of running into any trouble associated with that.

Overall I think this is a great product and there will be a lot of athletes out there who are pleased to see this.

If you’ve tried them I’d love to know what you think so let me know in the comments!