Kelsey HigginsonSports Nutrition Coach and Founder at Clutch Day Coaching

Gluten free carbs for athletes

7 Nov 2025 · 1 min

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0:32

In this segment, the speaker addresses the challenge gluten‑free athletes face in meeting carbohydrate needs, noting that many common carb sources contain gluten. The core recommendation is to rely on naturally gluten‑free fruits—both fresh and dried—such as mango, cranberries, tangerines, and fruit leather. The speaker also suggests augmenting these with pure honey or maple syrup to boost carbohydrate intake. These options are presented as simple, effective, and suitable for consumption shortly before competition.

Chapters

For my gluten-free athletes, you need to be eating carbs, but it's a little bit harder for you guys to get the carbs because obviously a lot of carbs that people recommend have a lot of gluten in them. The biggest recommendation that I would say is dried fruit and fruit all the way. Like, that will be so easy for you. No fruit has gluten in it. Dried mango, cranberries, dried tangerines, any fruit leather, any fresh fruit— those are going to be such a great source of natural carbs. You can add honey to it, pure maple syrup, to add even more carbs. Those are some awesome carbs to be getting in right before a game if you need something simple yet really effective.