5:1 Carbo-Load Pasta

TORQ’s 5:1 Carbo-Load SNAQ Meals have been developed alongside our long-standing Performance Nutrition range. Formulated to deliver substantial quantities of carbohydrate (125g) along with a significant 25g serving of high quality protein, our 5:1 SNAQ Meals offer a comprehensive nutritional intervention to enhance glycogen storage before long endurance rides, between heavy training sessions or as a final meal before a big event. As well as providing a rich carbohydrate content, our 5:1 SNAQ Meals deliver all the essential amino acids necessary to promote a positive net protein balance to ensure protein supply outweighs breakdown, which is essential for muscle maintenance and recovery.

Available in two tasty vegetarian flavours, Smoked Tomato and Field Mushroom, supplied in convenient individual single-use pouches.

Our 5:1 Carbo-Load SNAQ Meals can be enjoyed at any time of day in the run up to a hard training session or event. Simply add contents of the pack to 450ml of boiling water and cook for 10 minutes either on the hob or in the microwave. Garnish your 5:1 SNAQ Meal, with a vegetable side to ensure a complete meal balanced with carbohydrate, protein, fat, vitamins, minerals and dietary fibre to support a healthy, athletic lifestyle. We recommends that you allow approximately 3 hours after consuming this meal before commencing exercise, to allow for complete digestion.

Most carbohydrate-loading regimens would suggest consuming this 5:1 meal as a final nutritional intake the night before your event/heavy exercise bout, but if exercising later in the day, you should continue carbohydrate loading to within 3 hours of when you are scheduled to start.

This 5:1 SNAQ Meal can also be used in conjunction with our TORQ Recovery Drink and 3:1 Recovery SNAQ Meal at times of particularly high training load, as it provides a higher dose of carbohydrate to assist further with the recovery process.

It is well established that loading with carbohydrate prior to endurance exercise can be advantageous to performance by ensuring muscle glycogen stores are fully replenished. Modern carbohydrate loading protocols have concluded that full glycogen replenishment can occur in as little as 24 hours when 10g per kg of bodyweight of carbohydrate is consumed. For a 70kg person for instance, this equates to 700g of carbohydrate – quite a lot of carbohydrate! Our 5:1 Carbo-Load SNAQ Meal offers 125g of carbohydrate, providing a notable percentage of the daily carbohydrate calories required for complete glycogen replenishment.

Our 5:1 SNAQ Meal is also very low in fat ensuring that excess ‘irrelevant’ calories aren’t consumed during this process. Combine a couple of TORQ’s 5:1 SNAQ Meals with a variety of other high carbohydrate, low fat food and drink sources in the lead up to your event/heavy exercise bout. Also consider snacking on TORQ SNAQ Bars or adding TORQ Energy Organic to foods and drinks or make it into its own neutral drink to assist in the carbohydrate loading process.

The loading of muscle glycogen will allow you to exercise at a higher intensity for a longer period of time by delaying the onset of fatigue, often known as “hitting the wall” in running or “Bonking” in cycling. This devastating loss of energy and associated drop in performance should be avoided at all costs – it really is unpleasant!

The body has a very limited amount of endogenous carbohydrate, stored within the muscle and liver. In total these carbohydrate stores equate to around 5% of the body’s total energy stores, however carbohydrate is the preferred fuel source and during exercise can equate to over 50% (or more) of total energy expended, depending on the intensity and duration of the exercise. These limited stores combined with a limited capacity to absorb and use carbohydrate during exercise can result in them becoming almost completely depleted during an intense endurance training session or competition.

Consuming a carbohydrate rich meal in the 3-4 hours leading up to an event can continue to restore glycogen across the body’s storage sites. Carbohydrate storage is saturated at 500g, with around 400g stored within skeletal muscle and around 100g stored within the liver, so a carbohydrate rich meal should be considered a few hours prior to the start of your event/heavy exercise bout where possible (liver glycogen stores can become depleted after an overnight fast). Alternatively, consuming a 5:1 SNAQ Meal prior to going to sleep is standard practice for events starting very early the next morning.

Protein has been shown to stimulate glycogen replenishment when consumed in conjunction with carbohydrate. The mechanisms underpinning the up-regulated glycogen re-synthesis rates is due to protein stimulating free-circuiting blood insulin, up regulating the glucose transport protein GLUT-4, allowing for more carbohydrate to pass from the blood, for storage into the muscle.

Consuming rich, lean sources of protein can enhance training adaptation by ensuing there is sufficient availability of free circulating proteins required for muscular and cellular repair and reconstruction by stimulating muscle protein synthesis factors. Our 5:1 SNAQ Meals also contain 25g of premium quality vegetarian protein with an extensive amino acid range. The protein is delivered primarily from our unique and highly functional TORQ Protein Fusilli (available separately) ensuring an extremely low fat source of the highest quality protein.

The extremely low fat content of these meals ensures that both carbohydrate and protein are delivered quickly and efficiently to the blood, optimising the supply of ‘useful’ calories. This means that our meals contain fewer overall calories than would typically be consumed if creating your own recipes, because of the prevalence of fat in many commercially available protein sources and food ingredients in general.

We take our ingredient choices very seriously here at TORQ and there is no doubt that the SNAQ Meals we have created are ‘real food’. We have always held the firm philosophy that whilst dietary performance is our priority, we will always forge a natural path, which is why we have Soil Association Organic and Fairtrade Foundation approval on many of our products. Our meals have been developed using natural vegetable powders, herbs, spices and seasoning to complement the technical high protein and regular pastas which provide the majority of the macronutrient calories.

Our SNAQ Meals are deliberately low in fat to facilitate the rapid absorption of useful calories and we make a point of suggesting that you should accompany your SNAQ Meal with a fresh salad, broccoli, green beans or other fibrous vitamin-rich vegetables. Our meals can be consumed on their own without accompaniment and will be highly functional, but we would always recommend regular consumption of fresh fruit and vegetables, because the fibre and micronutrients contained within these fresh foods are essential for a healthy balanced diet.

As the SNAQ range develops, we intend to offer greater variety as well as customised dietary plans through our consultancy to optimise nutritional practices during training and competition, along with programs to facilitate body fat loss whilst at the same time developing muscular integrity and power. These plans won’t feature TORQ products exclusively of course, they will include recipes using other regular healthy foods too. We’re not looking to take over the world, we just know how beneficial a solid understanding of the timing and composition of one’s meals will affect physical performance and the TORQ SNAQ range has been developed with this firmly in mind.

A number of TORQ’s Performance Products are certified Organic or Fairtrade and we will be offering similar options in the future within our SNAQ range.

A primary motivation for establishing the SNAQ range at TORQ has been to fulfil the needs of serious World Class competitive athletes who travel the globe to compete at the highest level. The SNAQ range provides an ever-expanding range of foods with standardised nutritional profiles to remove the guesswork many of these athletes have to contend with every time they travel.

This principle translates to any physically active person travelling either within the UK or globally to take part in events. Being able to create healthy optimised meals easily with full knowledge of the nutritional profile, where the only external ingredient required is a source of fresh water has huge value.

Smoked Tomato

Ingredients: Fusilli (Durum Wheat Semolina, Water) (30%), Smoked Tomato Sauce (Maize Starch, Dehydrated Tomato, Sugar, Red Kidney Beans, Sun-dried Tomato, Tomato Flakes, Dehydrated Onion, Wheat Flour (Wheat Flour, Calcium Carbonate, Niacin, Iron, Thiamine), Milk Solids, Skimmed Milk Powder, Green & Red Bell Pepper, Rapeseed Oil, Dehydrated Garlic, Smoked Paprika, Basil, Black Pepper, Cumin, Ginger, Thyme) (26%), Protein Fusilli (Vegetable Proteins (Soya, Pea), Durum Wheat Semolina, Egg White Powder, Algae Extracts (Sodium Alginate), Amino Acids (L-Methionine, LThreonine)) (21.8%), Maltodextrin (14.2%), Dehydrated Garden Peas (4%), Sun-dried Tomato (Sun-dried Tomato, Salt) (4%).

Allergy Information: For allergens including cereals containing gluten see ingredients in bold. Contains Egg, Soya and Gluten. May also contain celery.

Field Mushroom

Ingredients: Fusilli (Durum Wheat Semolina, Water) (32.7%), Maltodextrin (22%), Protein Fusilli (Vegetable Proteins (Soya, Pea), Durum Wheat Semolina, Egg White Powder, Algae Extracts (Sodium Alginate), Amino Acids (L-Methionine, L-Threonine)) (21.3%), Field Mushroom Sauce (Skimmed Milk Powder (Skimmed Milk Solids, Vegetable Oil (Palm Oil and Palm Stearin), Sugar, Emulsifier: Soya Lecithin), Wheat Flour (Wheat Flour, Calcium Carbonate, Niacin, Iron, Thiamin), Maize Starch, Dehydrated Champignon Mushrooms, Yeast Extract, Natural Flavouring (Soya, Maize, Wheat), Dehydrated Onion, Palm Oil Fractions, Black Pepper) (16.3%), Dehydrated Mushrooms (4%), Garden peas (3.7%).

Allergy Information: For allergens including cereals containing gluten see ingredients in bold. Contains Milk, Egg, Soya and Gluten. May also contain celery.

TORQ 5:1 Carbo-Load SNAQ meals contain TORQ 60% Protein Fusilli Pasta with an exceptionally rich Amino Acid profile.

Amino Acid profile (%) of TORQ Fusilli specifically: Cysteine 0.98, Aspartic A 6.58, Proline 6.58, Methionine 1.4, Threonine 2.54, Serine 3.39, Glutamic A 11.34, Glycine 2.5, Alanine 2.78, Valine 3.16, Isoleucine 2.93, Leucine 4.86, Tyrosine 2.29, Phenylalanine 3.34, Lysine 3.68, Histidine 1.51, Arginine 4.27, Tryptophan 0.8