#1 is of course gummies (jelly babies) my personal favs being cherries and cola bottles dusted with just enough maltodextrin to keep them from sticking together.
By icing I think they mean cake icing, which to the best of my knowledge isn’t available in that form here in the USA.
You could add a tiny bit of water to the tub version to make it squeezable like a gel, and bonus look at all the flavors.
Edit: The only caution for the US brands that I’ve noticed so far is that they can contain 2-5g of fat which may impact both absorption and gut comfort. YMMV
Icing is made with sugar. It can be plain table sugar or powdered sugar. The fat that is used is usually butter which is what makes it solid. Just think of whipping warm butter with a wisk or in a mixer, then adding sugar which dissolves and then you can add flavoring like vanilla, food coloring, and other stuff to customize it.
I think the point of the video was it was something you could buy at the store in a package, no mixing required, so even my “put the frosting in a squeezy” is outside the bounds provided.
I dont know about icing, but I used to regularly take marzipan when I was audaxing. Worked really well as long distance food. I guess there is a little fat and protein from the almonds but it still has a huge sugar content. Easy to chop up into little bite sized bars too.
How much is maple syrup there out of interest? In UK it’s about £5-6 for 250g, when I saw that people were using it as nutrition I did a quick price comparison and figured the cost per g of carbs worked out at about 8x higher than what I pay for maltodextrin and about 3x the price for Haribo. I like maple syrup but not that much!
A bit more money than icing blocks, but a lot more palatable - although it is a lot less carbs than icing (69%).
I’ve just got going with my custom drink mix - table sugar (anything up to 200g a bottle), sodium citrate and blue raspberry kool aid for flavour. A 70g carb bottle works out as less than 46p, but the chunk of that cost is the kool aid which is expensive in the UK. Switch the flavour out for something less fun (lemon juice) and it’s cheaper still.
My issue with pure sugar aside from drink mix for training rides is the empty stomach feeling. I need something solid.
So 30ml is 27g of carbs, roughly 33 servings per liter comes out to $0.45 per serving.
So yes, due to the fact that it’s sourced from North America, it’s cost effective in region, but it wouldn’t be top of the list outside of the continent.
I personally don’t like the Costco comparison because it doesn’t factor in the cost of Costco membership, that’s why I used Amazon. I know a lot of people do the Costco thing though!
As an alternative to dextrose, if this is available in your area, I have come to realize that Nestea Ice Tea powder mix has 30g of carbs in a 32g serving. Basically dextrose with flavours. Best part is it is less than half price of the equivalent amount dextrose powder, comes in 2kg containers from Costco. Seems like a win-win, cheaper, same sugar content and some flavour.
