Tastes Like Rocket Fuel

BUT DOES IT ACT LIKE IT? WITH THE ARRIVAL OF A LONG-RUMORED KETONE SUPERDRINK, ENDURANCE ATHLETES WANT TO KNOW

- Alex Hutchinson

AS THE PACE quickened during a mountain stage of the 2013 Tour de France, a jolt of excitement rippled through the peloton: one of the leaders had fumbled the feed bag containing his next drink. “I’d never, ever seen so much chatter on the radio,” Greg Henderson, a veteran bike racer from New Zealand, later told an interviewer. “It was like full panic. And I was thinking, Mate, it’s a drink bottle. Go back and get another one.”

Eventually, a team car stopped to collect the bag from the side of the road where it had fallen, and another rider shuttled it back up to the cyclist. “I was gobsmacked,” said Henderson. “I was just like, What can be so important in this drink bottle?”

The answer, he now suspects, was ketones, the much hyped “fourth macronutrient” that offers a sustained—and legal—source of energy for muscles beyond the traditional carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. For several years, whispers of an astronomically expensive, ketone-based superdrink have percolated through the elite sports world, particularly among cyclists. Now, courtesy of San Francisco biohacking startup Hvmn (pronounced “human”), that elixir is on the market. The debate, however, has shifted to a knotty question: Does it work?