Research

Hormonal

Specific nutrient intake accelerates the gastric emptying of that specific nutrient (e.g., glucose accelerates glucose emptying, fat accelerates fat emptying) through desensitization of intestinal feedback mechanisms.

If you need to absorb glucose quickly, train your stomach by consuming high glucose loads regularly. Similarly, high-fat diets accelerate fat emptying. This specificity means you should match your training nutrition to your race nutrition strategy.

GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
Cunningham et al. [9] supplemented the diet of two groups of volunteers with glucose 400 g per day for 3 days. The half emptying time (t½) for the glucose test meal was significantly faster after the standard diet had been supplemented with glucose compared with the standard diet alone
Asker E. Jeukendrup · Sports Medicine · 2017

Why this rating

Supported by multiple human studies cited (Cunningham, Horowitz, Yau), though the author notes few studies directly investigated effects during exercise.

Source

Training the Gut for Athletes

Asker E. Jeukendrup · Sports Medicine · 2017

DOI 10.1007/s40279-017-0690-6

narrative_reviewCited 194×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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