From Limburg grain to peak performance: The Athlete’s FoodCoach and GrainLabs join forces
There’s a moment every athlete knows. You’ve trained hard, you’ve rested well, and then you eat something that just works. Your legs feel ready. Your head is clear. Something in that meal landed right. That’s not an accident. It’s what happens when the people thinking about your food are as serious about performance as you are.
The grain that went to the Tour de France
It all started with a tweet. Former pro cyclist Laurens ten Dam posted something simple: a sandwich before training that hit different. The baker behind that sandwich was Frank van Eerd, a Limburg-based bread maker and grain expert who had spent years obsessing over what food actually does inside the body.
That tweet opened a door. What followed was more than a decade as an official supplier to Team Visma | Lease a Bike, one of the most successful cycling teams in the world. Alongside riders, nutritionists, and performance staff, Frank dug into the real questions: which carbohydrates fuel effort most effectively, and when? Which proteins genuinely accelerate recovery? How does timing change everything? The answers help shape GrainLabs, products built from pure, local ingredients like spelt, lupin, and fruit, with a single standard: the products should help your body perform.
Why this matters for you
Elite cycling is an extreme testing ground. When a product survives that environment, day after day, race after race, it earns its place in your training bag too. That’s the foundation of the new partnership between GrainLabs and The Athlete’s FoodCoach. A collaboration between two organisations who believe the same thing: optimal performance starts with optimal nutrition.
GrainLabs’ small cakes reflect that philosophy. Made with pure, locally sourced ingredients from the Limburg region, including apples and cherries from Bemelerhof, they combine real food with performance-focused nutrition. Tritordeum flour and carefully selected Spanish olive oil add both flavour and functional benefits, while locally grown lupine provides high-quality protein, including leucine to support muscle function and recovery.
“The small cakes are a favourite among pro cyclists before a race. Wout van Aert, rider for Team Visma | Lease a Bike, describes them as a daily moment of enjoyment — a final coffee and a small cake in the team bus, just before the race begins.”
Through FoodCoach, GrainLabs brings its decade of recipes, timing strategies, real insights from the pros, directly into your daily routine. Pre-session fuelling. Smarter recovery. The small daily decisions that compound into something significant over a season. And there’s something worth appreciating in where this knowledge comes from. Not a lab on the other side of the world. Fields and bakeries in Limburg, refined through years of working with nutrition experts for athletes who couldn’t afford to get their nutrition wrong.
Getting better, together
This collaboration is a logical next step. GrainLabs shows what happens when you approach nutrition with the same precision as training. That’s exactly what The Athlete’s FoodCoach stands for. Together, The Athlete’s FoodCoach and GrainLabs combine craftsmanship with innovation, local expertise with international sport. With one clear goal: helping athletes improve, one meal at a time.
Find one of GrainLabs’ recipes now on our website:
Ready to tune your nutrition?
Take the next step in your nutrition journey with a personalised adaptive nutrition plan in the FoodCoach app.
More about our partner
GrainLabs is a knowledge centre where consumers, grain processors, scientists, healthcare professionals, and sports experts share knowledge and collaborate to allow grains to flourish optimally in our diet. After all, nutrition is the most important element for improving our body’s performance.
GrainLabs