Explore Creamy Mushroom Pasta Meal

*Our Explore Meals, Desserts and Breakfasts share almost identical nutritional profiles. This means that all of our Supercharged System^TM range will deliver the same performance function, regardless of whether the recipes are savoury or sweet. 

Our Explore Supercharged Pasta Meals have been designed to provide easily accessible, useful and effective nutritional fuel in a convenient, lightweight, low volume package. Simply add hot water to the pack, give it a stir and leave to rehydrate for 10 minutes.

It is TORQ’s Performance Nutrition heritage that makes our Explore Meals so unique and sets them apart from other outdoor food products in the marketplace. Each pack contains over 500 calories of high quality functional food to provide the energy needed to get the most out of your adventurous activities. By focussing on functionality, TORQ’s Explore Meals significantly out-perform higher calorie alternatives.

Open pack, add 350-400ml of hot water, stir well, zip pack back up and wrap in clothing to insulate for 10 minutes.

Once rehydrated, stir again and add more hot water if desired. For a richer flavour, use less water, but allow slightly longer to rehydrate.

The pouches are heat sealed and some air is trapped inside them. If you would like to expel the air to reduce the volume of the pack before your trip, partially tear into the top of the pack, expel all of the air and use the zip-seal to reseal the pack. Adding a small piece of tape to the tear in the pack will ensure that contents are then 100% secure.

It’s our background in Fitness Consultancy and Performance Nutrition that makes our Explore Supercharged Pasta Meals so unique. Of course they are lightweight, dehydrated, low volume and very quick to prepare (you simply add hot water and allow to rehydrate for 10 minutes), yet the way these meals are formulated means that they are designed to give you the useful energy and nutritional support you need when pursuing energetic and adventurous activities.

The technical information we discuss under this tab applies not only to our Explore Pasta Meals, but also to our Explore Breakfasts and Desserts. Our range of Meals, Breakfasts and Desserts have been developed with Shared Nutritional Profiles meaning that functionally they are identical – they will ‘do the same thing’ and it’s simply up to you which option you choose. Do you fancy a delicious power-packed anytime Breakfast, a savoury Pasta Meal, or creamy Dessert? If you’ve been really busy and burnt a lot of calories, you can enjoy an Explore Pasta Meal, give it an hour or so to digest and then finish the day with an Explore Dessert. There will be literally nothing stopping you the next morning once you’ve had your Explore Breakfast!

It is the blending of high performance nutritional formulations and shared nutritional profiles that lead to the development of the TORQ Explore Supercharged System^TM

It’s a common misconception that meals used to fuel adventure and exploration need to be incredibly high in calories at any cost! The easiest way to pack lots of calories into a small package is to make the product high in fat, because fat contains 9 calories per gram compared with just 4 calories per gram for carbohydrate and protein. However, there is a fundamental issue with doing this, because dietary fat doesn’t deliver the useful energy the human body requires under exercise stress. The truth is that most of us carry far too much fat on our bodies already and it’s just as easy for us to access these bodily stores and use the energy within as it is to burn dietary fat from our food. This makes fat in the context of a physically active person’s Adventure Food irrelevant as a fuel source – why consume fat through your diet when you have plenty of it stored away anyway?

If you have a big expedition to the North Pole and you’re going to be away for weeks, it’s a completely different story and you will need a range of nutrients including foods that are high in fat (and the specific fat-soluble vitamins contained within) in order to achieve energy balance (calories in = calories out) and remain healthy, but this is very different to fuelling an expedition over the shorter term, like a weekend or a couple of weeks away. For these shorter trips, it’s a common misconception that you actually need to achieve energy balance – you don’t. Even the leanest of individuals have substantial fat stores, which are freely available to be burned to provide energy and there are a variety of reasons why a meal rich in high quality protein and carbohydrate (and low in fat) will provide significant performance/energy benefits:

Internal Carbohydrate Stores are Limited: The human body can only store around 500g or 2,000 calories of carbohydrate and low carbohydrate stores lead to loss of muscle power and feelings of fatigue. Since fat is stored in plentiful supply within the human body, maintaining carbohydrate intake through foods rich in carbohydrate calories is logical and will deliver the best physical performances.

Fat Slows the Absorption of Carbohydrate: As well as being an irrelevant nutrient from a fuelling perspective, dietary fat slows down the absorption of carbohydrate, because it moves so slowly through the digestive tract. This makes foods that are high in fat uncomfortable on the stomach, causing heaviness and indigestion during physical activity as well as blocking the absorption of a useful fuel the body really needs.

20-25g of Protein is Optimal: Consuming more than 20-25g of protein in one serving is not necessary, because the human body is only capable of processing and making constructive use of this much at a time. For optimal performance and muscle structure maintenance, you should look to consume 20-25g of protein 5 times per day. Your TORQ Explore Meal provides one of these servings at any time of day.

We mentioned above that achieving energy balance wasn’t a necessity – what’s important is getting the nutrients in that are going to make a difference to your physical performance. The additional benefit of focussing on these functional nutrients above all else is that if you do happen to end up with a slightly negative energy balance (less calories in than you’re pushing out through exercise and your general metabolism) is that you will lose body fat and finish your adventure a little bit lighter – not something most people would complain about. Your performance will not suffer.

Incidentally, if you are interested in losing weight, for further information on TORQ’s Performance Weight Loss TM program, click HERE.

TIP: Your TORQ Explore Meal pouch is packaged with air inside it to help it sit upright on shelves in stores. If you want to reduce its volume, simply break the air seal with a slight tear across the tear strip at the top of the pack, expel the air and press shut the zip seal. Adding a small piece of tape to the tear in the pack will ensure that contents are then 100% secure.

If you have any further questions about this or any other TORQ products, please don’t hesitate in contacting us on enquiries@torqfitness.co.uk or 0344 332 0852.

Nutritional Information for all flavours of TORQ Explore Meals are supplied under this tab.

Supercharged Chilli Non Carne

Ingredients: Instant Pasta (Durum Wheat Flour, Water) (33%), Tomato Powder (17%), Maltodextrin, Kibbled Mushrooms, Corn Flour, Sun Dried Tomatoes (Sun Dried Tomatoes, Salt) (7%), Pea Protein Isolate, Sugar, Sea Salt, Onion Powder, Coarse Ground Black Pepper, Garlic Powder, Ground Chilli Powder (0.1%), Oregano.

Suitable for Vegans. For allergens, see ingredients in bold.

Supercharged Creamy Mushroom

Ingredients: Instant Pasta (Durum Wheat Flour, Water) (41%), Skimmed Milk Powder, Maltodextrin, Mushroom Powder (11%), Corn Flour, Kibbled Mushrooms (3%), Onion Powder, Coarse Ground Black Pepper, Garlic Powder, Acidifier: Citric Acid.

Suitable for Vegetarians. For allergens, see ingredients in bold.

Supercharged Tomato & Basil

Ingredients: Instant Pasta (Durum Wheat Flour, Water) (33%), Tomato Powder (17%), Maltodextrin, Kibbled Mushrooms, Corn Flour, Sun Dried Tomatoes (Sun Dried Tomatoes, Salt) (7%), Pea Protein Isolate, Sugar, Sea Salt, Onion Powder, Coarse Ground Black Pepper, Basil (0.3%), Garlic Powder.

Suitable for Vegans. For allergens, see ingredients in bold.