The Story of Chia Charge

The year was 2012, the Olympics were coming to the UK for the first time since the 40s and absolutely everyone it seemed was mad for fitness. I however was not amongst them, instead I was deskbound working in a food business working too many hours a week.

But inevitably the fitness bug managed to work it's way into my life and I fell for running hard. Before I knew it my weekends were increasingly being centred around long runs (thanks Lisa for your patience back then) and my meals transitioned from what was convenient to what was best for recovery.

As my fitness increased so did my aspirations and it wasn't long before I found myself anxiously watching the post to see if I'd got one of the coveted spots in the London Marathon. I got the place but it came at a price.

As I started upping the the distance on my training runs I found as we all do, that I needed to be able to top up my energy stores on the move. The problem however was that all the gels I tried made me sick as a dog and the few bars available at the time were as dry as cardboard and roughly as tasty. 

The solution came straight from the pages of Christopher Mcdougal's book - Born to Run (which is awesome by the way), where he talks about a tiny little seed that the Tarahumara runners of Mexico fuel their crazy runs with. Chia Seeds. 

These nutritional powerhouses won me over immediately, I was sprinkling them over my granola each morning and feeling great, but they weren't the most convenient to take out on the trails with me. Not to be put off now that I had a real food fuel source that didn't leave me searching for a portaloo by mile 10, I began experimenting with the best chia recipes for the job. After lots of trial and error we had a winner - a sea salt and chia seed flapjack, made with all real ingredients. Tasty enough that you actually look forward to eating it, but still easy to eat on the move and on your tummy. 

Seven years on, our packaging has got a bit fancier and our website is much nicer but we still make delicious flapjacks from real ingredients in our Yorkshire bakery and have no plans on changing.