Tour de France: How professional cycling teams eat and cook on the road

A few weeks before the last Tour de France, amid the chaos of planning for eight riders and more than a dozen support vehicles touring the country, EF Education Easypost performance chef Owen Blandy received word that there was a problem at one of the hotels.

For reasons that were never explained, Brandi was told she would not be allowed to use the hotel kitchen or even cook in her food truck on the premises.

He could oversee the hotel's chefs' cooking if he wanted to, but he wouldn't be allowed to do so from inside the kitchen.

This wasn't ideal news for the man tasked with supplying professional cycling teams with fuel for the sport's most important races, but he wasn't fazed at all.

“It was fine,” Brandi shrugged. “It was just a rough few days getting used to my own kitchen.”

With over a year of combined experience competing in major races, Brandi has learned to take a beating.

“There are no perfect working conditions in cycling, so you always have to adapt and be flexible,” he says.

If the hotel wants to prohibit the team chef from cooking the food, so be it.

Until recently, the approach to fuelling in professional cycling was surprisingly basic.

Passengers' choices rarely went beyond a monotonous menu of pasta, rice, or whatever the hotel kitchen decided to serve that night.

These days, the situation is quite different, with huge amounts of money being spent on custom food trucks, personalized nutrition apps and meticulously planned diets in the name of improving performance.

For the nutritionists and chefs tasked with providing nutrition for the team's riders as they cover more than 2,170 miles in the coming weeks, there are two main dilemmas: what food to prepare and how to do that in an ever-changing environment.

The answers come from a year-round process that begins with preseason training in December.

While the athletes are training their bodies for the upcoming races, the numbers crunchers are diligently collecting data to better understand the athletes' nutritional needs.

“We know exactly what each athlete's individual body is, their metabolism, how many calories they burn at rest, what they train, how intensely, how long they burn and how many calories they expend,” says Martin Redegerd, head of nutrition at Visma Lease-a-Bike.

“Heart rate plays an important role. We measure heart rate after every training ride and also measure lactate and respiration levels in the lab at certain points during the season to create a proper profile for each rider.”

As one of just three teams, along with UAE Team Emirates and Ineos Grenadiers, with a budget that dwarfs all others, Visma-Lease a Bike has sought to be at the forefront of nutritional advancements.

The purpose of partnering with a university is to help the school keep a close eye on trends in its field and “stay competitive with other teams,” Redegerd said.

As cyclists consume an average of 6,000 calories a day during the Tour – nearly three times the amount consumed by an adult at rest – Visma-Lease a Bike has also started using artificial intelligence to determine exactly how much and what type of food each cyclist should consume.

Personalisation is becoming increasingly important, with the team developing their own app and using various algorithms to create individualised nutrition plans.

When a rider returns from a day on the bike, they simply open the app and are told the exact grams of each nutritional component (carbs, protein, fat, etc.) to put on their plate – no more brain power wasted than with the scales you often find on buffet tables.

Each team has a different method for figuring out their exact nutritional needs, but they all follow a broad five-meal plan that includes breakfast, a pre-race snack, on-bike nutrition, a recovery meal and dinner.

The basic feeding principles remain the same for the whole pack but are adjusted according to the requirements of the next day and whether the rider in question is a climber or sprinter, a domestic or an overall class candidate.

Carbohydrates (usually in the form of rice or pasta) act as fuel and therefore require very high consumption levels.

Protein (mainly fish and poultry) is always raw, fiber is kept to a minimum to minimise intestinal irritation and aid digestion, and fruits and vegetables are often consumed in the form of juice.

Vegetarians tend to fuel up with protein shakes, in addition to plant-based proteins like tofu and seitan.

Before a flat race day, athletes may be allowed to eat more vegetables and fibrous foods as the body is better able to break them down, while saving red meat for an evening treat before a rest day.

Fuelling on the bike is done by roadside soigneurs who will stuff your musette bag with a variety of high-carb forms, which you can choose or discard according to personal preference.

Energy bars, gels, drinks and gummies are great for a quick energy boost on those tough days, while more traditional foods like rice cakes, brioche, jam sandwiches, flapjacks, sweet breads and cakes are great for the easier days.

The quantities required are unenviably huge: riders consume around 1.5kg of rice or pasta per day and around 120g of carbohydrates per hour while on the bike, which is the equivalent of the carbohydrate content of five bananas per hour.

One EF rider once consumed four cups of maple syrup over the course of a three-week race.

Brandi's laptop is filled with a treasure trove of nutritional information to help with menu design.

With one spreadsheet, you can compare the nutritional value of all your foods and decide whether to cook with eggplant or parsnips, quinoa or couscous, chicken breasts or chicken thighs.

Another resource is the EF Education-EasyPost recipe bible, which features a variety of recipes for soups, salads, carbohydrates, proteins, side dishes, desserts, post-race snacks and drinks, etc. Repetition is kept to a minimum over the three weeks of racing to prevent taste fatigue.

“All of my food is transparent,” Brandi says, “no heavy sauces, it's all simple and uncomplicated food with light seasonings, light oils, fresh herbs and citrus.”

“Instead of adding cream, salt and butter for flavour, we add herbs and citrus fruits which are low in calories and packed with antioxidants.”

This doesn't lend itself to the kind of innovative kitchen artistry you see on TV shows and in fine dining restaurants.

“When I coach new chefs, I always tell them the only way they can fail is by trying to be too 'chef-like,'” Brandi says.

“You have to swallow your chef ego and include it in desserts or have some fun at the end of the race. Have fun while you're there, but leave the basics like carbs and protein alone. Give the athletes what they want and they'll be happy.”

“I've made risotto before, but they just asked for plain basmati rice. They're not here on holiday. They're not interested in fancy food. They're here for a literal energy boost.”

Brandi estimates that she stayed and cooked in more than 300 hotels during her time with EF Education Easypost, and the fluid nature of the job presents many logistical challenges.

A Tour de France chef's day starts around 6 a.m. The chef must have fresh breakfast items ready by 8 a.m. (all packaged foods are already prepared the night before) before packing up and driving to the next hotel while the race continues.

They are responsible for not only cooking the food but also sourcing the ingredients, a job that varies depending on the team and especially the sponsor.

Brandi's experience in European supermarkets means she knows where to find the best quality foods, and she does most of her own grocery shopping and also emails hotels in advance to order fresh produce.

In contrast, Visma-Lease a Bike has been sponsored since 2014 by Dutch supermarket Jumbo, which provides its food at all races, including the Tour de France.

“During the Grand Tour, we have three new deliveries coming in with fresh ingredients from Holland,” Redegerd says. “It's always the same Dutch food, but the staff love it because they know what to expect. And we know the products the staff like, so we always have them ready.”

“It makes things a lot easier for chefs as they no longer have to hunt for ingredients at the local supermarket, and for me as a nutritionist it makes the calculations a lot easier as I know the nutritional value of every ingredient.”

Upon arrival at the hotel, the chef will begin preparing dinner and the next day's breakfast and snacks.

Professional cycling teams tend to follow one of two eating styles.

Most riders travel in a custom-built kitchen truck, the size of a supermarket delivery van, where food is stored and cooked, then served to all riders and team members in private rooms in hotels.

A select few teams, including Ineos Grenadiers, will instead opt to travel in much larger trucks equipped with kitchens and dining rooms.

The camaraderie between rival chefs runs deep: “Sometimes we'll have six teams at the hotel and the parking lot will be full,” says Brandi.

“It's hard. We all share water and electricity, so we have to help each other. Chefs come to me and ask for ingredients, and I go to them. We help each other.”

This is a world apart from the tomato-based pasta that athletes ate for three straight weeks at the Tour de France just a generation ago.

Redegerd predicts that nutrition will continue to evolve, suggesting that within a decade or so, teams will be employing DNA analysis to take personalising rider fuelling to the next level.

But without someone to prepare the meals, all the analysis becomes meaningless.

Earlier this year, Brandi was getting ready for a quiet week at home when she got an SOS from her team.

When a fellow chef from EF Education Easypost fell ill before the Paris-Roubaix race, he was given 30 minutes to pack his bags, hop in a taxi and head to the airport.

“I rolled up the knives and threw them in my suitcase,” he says. “I felt like a commando chef.”

In the world of elite cycling, cooking is serious business.