Mule Bar aims to reduce the amount of gel wrapper waste with its range. If you cycle popular routes, both on and off road, you’re sure to have noticed the number of gel wrappers discarded by cyclists. The temptation is to just throw away the wrapper once you’ve consumed its contents since you are left with a sticky piece of plastic that makes a mess of your hands, clothing and any other kit in your pocket – but by doing so you're ruining the countryside for everyone.

So Mule Bar's gels are packed in a plastic wrapper like a toothpaste tube. You can just flip the cap with one hand to slurp its contents, then snap it closed when you’ve finished refuelling.

>>> The best energy gels

The cap can be screwed off when you get home to wash out the tube. You can then refill it from Mule Bar’s bulk bottles of gel. These contain enough gel to refill the cleaned-out gel wrapper up to 12 times.

Mule Bar’s gels are either vegetarian or vegan approved and made with natural ingredients. The main sweeteners used are syrups from rice, malted barley or agave. The first two have a high glycaemic index, the last a low GI, for a mix of burst energy and longer release carbs.

>>> Best cycling energy bars

Mule Bar says its gels contain around 28g of carbohydrate for around 110 calories per gel, depending on the flavour. There’s also around 100mg of salt from pink Himalayan salt crystals, which provides the electrolyte content.

>>> How to fuel for long distance rides

I particularly liked the Salted Caramel flavour gel, although all four options are palatable. The Café Cortado flavour has 100mg of natural caffeine from coffee and guarana too. But in all flavours the salt taste is quite pronounced. Mule Bar says that Himalayan salt contains trace minerals, although it does not say what or how much.

A 444g refill pack costs £14.99 and Mule Bar says that the gel can also be added to your water bottle for an energy drink. You can also buy refillable silicone containers. These have a higher volume than a standard gel and are easier to wash out as they can be disassembled completely.

But I did find I got a bit messy sometimes with gel around the cap and it’s quite difficult to consume the entire gel when riding because it takes quite a bit of squeezing to get the last bit out.

Whilst they contain a similar amount or carbohydrate to High 5 or SiS gels we have reviewed, the PowerGels contain a higher proportion of 'which sugars.' We found these gels to be noticeably sweeter than other gels on the market, with some testers finding them a little too sickly. Fear not though, if gels of this type are not to your taste, PowerBar also make Hyrdo gels, which are designed to be consumed without the need for additional water.

>>> For a PowerBar nutrition guide, click here

PowerBar suggest you consume one gel with a minimum of 150 ml of water. Post-consumption, we found that the sweet taste resulted in us reaching for our water anyway. The sickly texture was thirst inducing.

>>> To learn how caffeine can make you faster, click here

There are plenty are flavours to choose from with us enjoying the strawberry and banana the most – it reminded us of our favourite Calpol!. The green apple and blackcurrant flavours both feature 50 mg of caffeine, roughly the equivalent of a single espresso, ideal to pick you up before a long climb or the end of a race.

Talking of which, opening the gels is easily achieved without mess or fuss, and the compact packaging allows plenty of them to be stuffed into a jersey pocket.

For more information, head over to PowerBar.

As a guideline, one should strive to consume ~60g of carbohydrates per hour to optimise cycling performance. Note that this kind of fuelling isn't necessary for any ride under 90 minutes, as you should have enough stored glycogen to suffice.

>>> For more information on cycling nutrition, click here

One SiS Go Energy Gel contains 22g of carbohydrate. SiS recommends taking three an hour, but if you are not racing you may prefer to balance this with energy drinks and a bar. In addition, SiS Go Energy gels are patented as being the only truly isotonic gels on the market.

>>> Caffeine makes you faster!

SiS claim that this means the gels don’t need to be consumed with water, and provides a quicker supply of energy to the working muscles than a non isotonic gel. Whilst we cannot completely verify this, we can confirm that we didn't feel the need to wash these gels down with big slurps of drink and were comfortable consuming them in isolation

As with many sports nutrition products, buying in bulk can result in savings. A box of 30 will set you back £37.79 on the Science in Sport website. This works out at roughly £1.25 a gel, despite being expensive, is a competitive price within sports nutrition.

If you like Pink Grapefruit, try them. The flavour is distinct and the texture feels is less viscous than some other gels.  Whilst the flavour will not be to everybody's taste, these gels are a welcome addition to existing flavours and make a refreshing change from very sweet energy products.

If pink grapefruit is not to your taste SiS also do 6 other flavours, so for more information, head over to Science in Sport.

In terms of ‘natural’ credentials The MuleBar Kicks Natural Energy Gel is hard to beat. Only six ingredients are listed on the packaging, five of which you could probably pick up from your local health foods shops (the only exception is ‘natural flavourings’, so we’ll let MuleBar off on that one).

The non-caffeine gel is available in three flavours: Salted Caramel, Apple Strudel, and Cherry Bomb. Two caffeine versions are also available: Lemon Zinger, with 50mg of caffeine, and Café Cortado with 100mg, or roughly half the hit you’d expect to get in an espresso.

>>>Results are in: drink coffee ride faster

We tested the Salty Caramel variety, an unusual flavour that was a welcome departure from the overly sweetened fruity gels we’re used to. The gel is still quite thick and sticky, certainly different from the lighter flavours offered by the CNP Hydro Gel,  but this seems a good match for a flavour that will to mind the sort of indulgent dessert that we all try so hard to avoid.

In terms of nutrition, the 37g MuleBar gel delivers a big energy boost, with 25g of carbohydrate per serving, of which 19g is sugar. With such a high sugar content, you might expect that all the energy would be delivered in one, big, short-lasting sugary burst, such is the case with the Honey Stinger Organic Energy Gel.

However the sugar is delivered from two sources: brown rice syrup, with a high glycaemic index (GI) which means the sugar is delivered into the blood stream quickly, and agave syrup, with a very low GI, meaning the sugar is absorbed over a longer period. Effectively what this means is that you benefit both from the initial energy hit that you get from a traditional gel, and from the longer term boost of an energy bar or cereal bar.

>>>10 tips to get your get your food and drink dialled

Aside from the brown rice and agave syrups, the MuleBar gel also include pink Himalayan crystal salt. Not only does this contribute to the yummy Salty Caramel flavour, but also provides electrolytes to prevent dehydration, and we never had any problems with cramps due to lack of salt while testing the MuleBar gel.

>>>Sir Chris Hoy: good nutrition is crucial to performance

At £37 for a box of 24, the MuleBar Kicks Natural Energy gel sits around about the midpoint in the very competitive cycling nutrition market, and seems like a reasonable cost for a very good gel. And if you like a few of MuleBar’s other products, they also offer custom boxes containing whatever mix of products you want, and at exactly the same price.

For more details visit the MuleBar website.

Honey Stinger pride themselves in the fact that they only use natural ingredients in their products, something that they’ve continued with in their small but powerful gels. The Honey Stinger Organic Energy gel comes in three varieties: vanilla, acai and pomegranate, and fruit smoothie.

>>>10 tips to get your food and drink dialled

We sampled one of the fruit smoothie-flavoured gel, which was perhaps a little closer in both taste and general feel to a traditional energy gel, such as the than we’d like. The texture thick and sticky, and the flavour fruity and sweet – not to the point of being unpleasant after only one, but we’re not sure we could stomach multiple servings, particularly during long and hot summer rides.

The effect on your energy levels is also what you’d expect from a typical energy gel. The 23g of carbohydrate (13g of which is sugar) comes from the combined forces of tapioca syrup and, as you would expect from Honey Stinger, honey. With both having a relatively high glycaemic index (GI), this means the sugar is absorbed into the bloodstream over a short space of time, giving an instant energy boost.

>>>Sir Chris Hoy: good nutrition is crucial to performance

The Honey Stinger gel doesn’t make any claims to aid hydration as well as deliver energy. However, the 0.16g of salt is roughly equivalent to the amount found in the likes of the MuleBar Kicks gel, so should be at least a small step to preventing dehydration.

One thing we know with energy gels is that bigger is not always better, and here the Honey Stinger gel certainly has the upper hand over bulkier products such as the CNP Hydro gel. At only 32g the slim packaging of the Honey Stinger makes it very easy to fit in a jersey pocket.

At £27 for a box of 24 gels, the Honey Stinger is great value. It’s not quite on the level of the 55p per gel that Wiggle offer for their own-brand gels, but it’s certainly not bad.

For more details head over to the Honey Stinger website.

A natural energy gel (although not organic), as gels go the CNP Hydro gel is fairly liquidy. The reason for this is that the Hydro Gel has been developed to deliver electrolytes from coconut water as well as energy from fruit juice.

The CNP Hydro Gel is available in two flavours: pineapple, and passion fruit, which we tested (CNP also produce a Hydro Gel Max in blackcurrant which contains caffeine). With coconut water as the main ingredient, the taste is much lighter than we’ve come to expect from most energy gels, and is certainly easy to stomach even at the end of a long ride.

>>>10 tips to get your food and drink dialled

One 60g gel delivers 22.9g of carbohydrate, a similar amount to competitors such as the SiS Go Gel, if not a huge amount for such a large gel, but with only 1.6g of this being delivered via sugars, the energy boost will be more sustained rather than a sudden hit. Whether this is a good or bad thing depends on the situation.

Our main concern with the CNP Hydro Gel was its bulk and volume (for comparison the Honey Stinger Organic Energy Gel is roughly half that weight). Although this means a milder flavour that is easier to stomach, it also means it will take up more room in your jersey pocket, and cannot be swallowed in one go, something that’s important in the cut-and-thrust of a peloton nearing the end of the a race.

>>>Results are in: drink coffee ride faster

Other than that, the main thing to consider is the price. At almost fifty quid for a box of 24, this is a significant outlay, especially compared to the likes of the £1-per-gel High5 Energy Gel, and this is possibly a price to pay for the Team Sky connection.

Click here for more details.

As a rough guideline, you should aim to consume ~60g of carbohydrates per hour whilst cycling. Failure to keep your blood sugar levels topped up can result in the infamous 'bonk'. To this end one High Five Banana Energy Gel contains 23g of carbohydrate with High Five recommending you take 3 an hour.

>>> Results are in: drink coffee, ride faster 

They are certainly a convenient source of carbs/sugar but how do they taste? We are big fans of the banana flavour and would recommend it to anyone who likes bananas! They are not as sickly sweet as some other gels we have used, have a nice consistency and are pretty palatable. High Five have produced a video to explain the product further.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zKDw7xx9No&list=PL58zboXBjpgo8PswNyboW0bWHgZPJzNYE

>>> Nutrition for cycling: 10 tips to get your food and drink dialled 

For the food conscious, it is worth noting that they contain no artificial sweeteners, flavours or colourings. Despite the recommendation of three an hour, we preferred to have one an hour and get the rest of our hourly carbs from an energy drink and bar. We would still argue that £1 is expensive for what is essentially some flavoured syrup, but they are competitively priced relative to other gels on the market. If you are new to energy gels, this product would be a great one to try out and comes highly recommended.

For more information, head over to High 5.

It’s official: caffeine boosts your cycling performance. We reported on a number of studies that have demonstrated the potential performance gains through caffeine consumption. There are currently lots of caffeinated products on the market, including chewing gum, and SiS have now launched a new double strength gel to go alongside their existing products.

SiS's Product Director Luke Heeney says that they "used the feedback collected from some of the world’s best cycling teams and other sports teams like GB Rowing to develop this gel. We know that as well as helping elites, it can help the amateur athletes get a boost when it’s most needed.”

SiS currently offer two caffeine gels, Berry and Cola, both of which contain 75mg of caffeine. By comparison, the new double espresso gel contains a hefty 150mg. We took one before a local chain gang and to say it gave us a 'kick' would be an understatement.

Taste is often sacrificed in sports nutrition, but we quite liked the Double Espresso Gel, although others may not. To someone who hasn't experienced it, it is best described as tasting like the filling in a Cadburys Roses Coffee Creams. If you are more of a strawberry cream kinda person then this might not be the most enjoyable taste sensation for you.

Why not just drink a cup of coffee we hear you ask? Well, the amount of caffeine in coffee can vary dramatically and appears to be highly inconsistent, with a mug of instant sometimes having more caffeine than an espresso. With a gel you get a consistent and measured dose of caffeine.

The gel also contains 22g of easily digestible carbs, to help fuel your muscles when the caffeine kicks in. If you are planning a long ride or sportive, taking a gel such as this, to get you through the last hour, would be ideal.

It’s official: caffeine boosts your cycling performance. We recently reported on a number of studies that have demonstrated the performance gains through caffeine consumption. Most people are familiar with sources of caffeine such as coffee, caffeinated gels and pro-plus, but now there is a new product: Superfast Energy Gum.

The makers claim that this caffeinated gum will enable you to study smarter, compete harder, focus better, stay alert longer and party forever. On top of this ambitious statement Superfast say that absorption is up to six times faster than swallowing a tablet or drinking coffee.

The suggested dose is two pieces, which equates to 100mg of caffeine. To put this in context, The Department of Health reckons an ordinary mug of filter coffee has approximately 140mg of caffeine and gels typically contain 70-120mgs. We definitely noticed the hit and would say the effects were comparable to a caffeine gel.

However, we were very conscious of having a large piece of gum in our mouths whilst cycling along, a surprise bump in the road could create a choking hazard. The taste was acquired, some people may enjoy the taste of blue-tac, others, less so... To further advertise the benefits of this gum the makers have produced a handy promotional video.

If you're gluten and/or dairy intolerant or have a vegan/vegetarian diet, then getting a gel for when you're riding can be a huge problem. So when CNP announced Hydro Max our ears pricked up.

The main ingredients of pineapple juice and coconut water may not sound too amazing, but thanks to their more liquid consistency compared to the usual gloopy gel, it makes them very palatable.

Designed for those with delicate stomachs, the gel is easily absorbed but still manages to offer energy over a sustained period rather than just one big sugar hit.

Probably the best compliment, as someone who suffers is that I hardly noticed using it - no cramps and no problems.