On this page we talk to you about our company values, our attitude to environmental concerns and our efforts to create a sustainable business.
Nutrition with Purpose
At the heart of Torq is a desire to do the right thing, justify our actions based on peer-reviewed research and to be true innovators within the world of performance nutrition. We lead from the front, leaving no stone unturned and this is reflected in the exceptional quality/functionality of our products and the advice we provide, whether via digital communication or face-to-face. In this section we talk about how we have your backs covered, along with supporting the environment in which we live and the checks and balances we have in place with our supply chains. We also talk to you about how we intend to improve and our future plans.
A commitment to you
Our website is filled with informative thoroughly researched articles and resources. We strive to promptly respond to customer requests and support our vendors in the best ways possible. These are values that are of huge importance to us and the expertise and experience of our staff means that we can seamlessly link your nutritional needs to your fitness and training practices. We believe that our customers should be comprehensively informed on how, why, and when our products should be used so that you can buy and consume Torq products that are relevant to your needs and with absolute confidence.
Premium Fueling, Organic
Our Energy Bars, Energy Chews, and Explore Flapjacks are all certified organic by the Soil Association, as is one of our Energy Drinks. This purity guarantee doesn’t only support your health due to the avoidance of artificial additives and chemical pesticides, the flavors of organic foods are better and they are richer in essential micronutrients. What is often overlooked is how much better organic farming is for the environment.
Organic farms use less energy than non-organic farms, because organic standards ’close the loop’, making use of what’s to hand and limiting the use of imported resources. Chemical fertilisers are often imported from abroad, creating a carbon footprint whereas organic farmers source their natural fertilisers locally and rotate crops to maintain healthy soil. Chemical fertilisers also consume 3-5% of the world’s natural gas during their production/manufacture, an energy-intensive CO2 and pollution-producing practice. In addition, organic soils store more carbon – did you know that our soils store more carbon than the atmosphere and all of the world’s plants and forests combined? According to the Soil Association website, healthy soils store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, drawing it down through photosynthesizing organisms like trees and plants and storing it as ‘soil organic carbon’. Organic soil also stores nearly 2 tons more carbon per football pitch-sized area than non-organic soil. For further information, visit this page of the Soil Association website.
Much of the fruit in our organic TORQ products is also fairly traded, meaning that farmers in developing countries receive a fair price for their crop. Where we use ingredients that are not organic, we take an extremely firm stance on not using additives like colors or artificial sweeteners – we keep our products clean and free from any superfluous ingredients that are not linked to supporting athletic performance.
Vegan Plant-Based formulations
Almost every TORQ formulation is suitable for vegans, the only exception being our whey protein-based Recovery Drinks and even though this is the case, we also have Vegan Recovery Drink options available. The reason we maintain the inclusion of whey protein in some of our recovery drinks is solely on the basis of performance. Whey protein performs better than any other protein and as we stated at the beginning of this piece, we are a research-focused performance brand. Our products must function to the highest possible level, so in the case of the Recovery Drink, we let you make the choice between out-and-out performance and your personal ethics. Fortunately with all of our other products, you don’t have to make that choice.
From an ethics and sustainability perspective, we are very careful at TORQ not to make extreme judgements about the dietary habits of the population and we respect the freedom of choice that all of us have. Education is at our core however and we believe that providing our customers with the facts allows them to make their own responsible decisions, whether that’s on how to fuel properly for an event or help protect our planet.
Our opinions at TORQ are nuanced and very much in line with this BBC news article where scientists suggest that we should all consume fewer animal products whilst not necessarily feeling the need to cut them out entirely. Our customers will have their own views on animal welfare, but here’s why moving closer to a plant-based diet is beneficial to the environment:
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Reduces Carbon footprint
Animal agriculture produces an enormous amount of CO2 and methane, which warms the earth 20 times faster than CO2 alone. These emissions come from the livestock themselves, their waste, transportation and the huge amount of energy that goes into growing crops for their consumption. It’s much more energy efficient for us to eat the crops directly.
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Improves water conservation
According to the Water Footprint Network 1 liter of milk requires 1,000 liters of water to produce it and 100 times more water is required to produce a kilo of animal protein compared to a kilo of plant-based protein. A huge amount of fresh water is used in agriculture generally, but significantly less would be used if it was used to grow crops we eat directly rather than feeding them to animals to make meat.
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Reduces pollution
Waste containing large amounts of toxins from factory farms when added to the soil as fertiliser leaches into the rivers and oceans overwhelming marine life and can create what are calledDead Zones. Overuse of chemical fertilisers are also responsible and again we have made our stance on this clear when we discussed our commitment to organic ingredients. According toOne Green Planetthe air surrounding factory farms is full of toxins including ammonia as well as the afore mentioned CO2 and methane output.
Grand tour tested Grand tour approved
Torq has a very strict Anti-Doping stance and we are able to guarantee the purity of our products by supplying you with certified batch-tested product if necessary. Testing for prohibited substances takes place in a WADA accredited laboratory and is not an inexpensive process, but we feel it is necessary to provide professional athletes with the assurance and confidence they need in such an uncertain world. A few years ago, many sports supplement brands were tested independently and an alarming number were found to contain traces of substances that could give rise to a positive dope test. We want to make absolutely sure that this accusation could never be levelled at us.
TORQ have a specific range of products tested under the ISO17025 standard by an independent WADA accredited laboratory. We test all of our main product lines and will always have ‘tested’ product available on our shelves for those athletes who want absolute assurance that the food they are consuming is guaranteed to be free from prohibited substances.
pack it in, pack it out
As we service the needs of endurance athletes and physically active people who exercise in the beautiful great outdoors, the preservation and protection of this environment is very close to our hearts. Nothing upsets us more than seeing litter in nature’s playground and we make it very clear in our litter policy on this website that we urge you to take your litter home with you or dispose of it responsibly. We appreciate that the odd accident can occur especially where packaging can end up in two pieces like with gel rip-top tabs and this is why we designed a litter-free tab, to keep the gel pack in one piece after opening.
