Originally Posted by
chasm54
There have been some recent suggestions that some protein intake during a long ride improves recovery. Personally I think the "real food" advice is good. Dried fruit, a few nuts, sandwiches, bananas, I don't think power bars are superior to these nutritionally and most of them are, to me, unpleasantly sweet. It's pretty easy to get your 60g of carbs per hour from proper food.
Your body does a lot more than just burn things when you do work. It needs to make a lot of weird chemical enzymes, and that takes amino acids supplied by proteins, which don't really store well. A protein intake helps. Maybe not 250g of protein, but something.
If you want to get at your fat stores, you will need to either cannibalize your muscles or intake a small amount of protein to generate the proteins associated with lipolysis.