Flavoured Creatine+ Ice Candy | 550 g | German Elite Nutrition

Flavoured Creatine+ Ice Candy by German Elite Nutrition

You know the drill. Stir creatine into your water and then suffer through that bland, gritty mouthful. German Elite Nutrition's Flavoured Creatine+ takes a different approach. Each 5 g serving provides 3410 mg of creatine monohydrate plus 500 mg of L-taurine, in an ice candy flavour. Designed for athletes who train short and hard.

Ice candy, the taste of a blue water ice pop

Think of that blue water ice pop from your childhood, the one you pushed up from a plastic wrapper. That's the vibe of this creatine ice candy. You can smell it as soon as you open the tub. Sweet and cool, with a fresh finish. Not syrupy, but definitely noticeable. Two scoops in over 250 ml of ice-cold water tastes best. Add two ice cubes and your shaker turns into a summer drink. The colder the water, the sharper that fresh side comes through. Lukewarm tap water dulls some of that effect. Then the sweet side is all that's left. If you want it sweeter, use fruit juice. The micronised powder dissolves quickly, so you won't end up with a layer of sand at the bottom. For those who have seen creatine powder as little more than a necessary evil until now, the moment after your workout suddenly feels a bit different. And if water ice isn't your thing, the same formula is available in eight other flavours.

What creatine does in your muscles during short bursts of exercise

During a heavy set of five reps or a ten-second sprint, your muscles rely on ATP. That's the fuel they can tap into directly. Those stores are small and run out after a few seconds. You store creatine in your muscle cells as phosphocreatine, a fast reserve that replenishes that ATP. Creatine monohydrate is the most common form of creatine. Creatine improves physical performance during repeated short bursts of very intense physical exercise. That claim applies to a daily intake of 3 g of creatine. In practice, that means strength training, sprints and intervals, not long-distance running. The 500 mg of L-taurine is an amino acid that occurs naturally in your muscle tissue and is included in the formula alongside the creatine.

Why that 3 grams every day keeps coming up

Creatine builds up slowly in your muscles. A serving doesn't feel like a pre-workout. You don't feel a buzz, a tingle, nothing. It's about the level of your stores over weeks, not that single fifteen minutes after taking it. Many athletes wonder how long that takes. The answer is more in weeks than days. That's why 3 g per day is the figure the claim is based on, and you get that with a 5 g serving of powder. Even on non-training days, that figure remains the same. After all, your muscles don't hold onto their stores just because you happen to have a rest day. By the way, that 550 g tub contains 110 servings. That's well over three months of daily scooping.

Flavour doesn't change the powder underneath

A question that comes up often: does flavoured creatine contain less creatine than a neutral variant? No. Look at the list: creatine monohydrate, citric acid as an acidifier, L-taurine, flavouring and the sweetener sucralose. That's it, there's simply nothing else in it. Of the 3410 mg per serving, 3000 mg is pure creatine. That figure is independent of the flavouring around it. The flavourings and citric acid don't take anything away from that dose. They just make sure you can drink down 5 g of powder without making a face. It contains 0 g of sugar, 0 g of fat and 0 kcal, so flavoured creatine also fits into a week when you're keeping a close eye on your diet. It doesn't contain aspartame and the powder is vegan. The difference with a neutral product is in that first second, when you swallow.

At the end of the day, this is simply creatine monohydrate with some taurine added, in a 550 g tub. The only difference is that you now drink it like a blue water ice pop instead of like chalky water. For those who have been taking their daily serving for years, that makes more of a difference than you might think.