You guys should read this it gives away the recipe
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2019/fo/c9fo01617a
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Hehe, no problem mate. I do believe you might be looking for the marginalst of maginal gains here. And I would definitely not source obscure ingredients from China without testing them. I think all this time and money could be better spend on just training the gut. Just do long rides on 100+ g/h of regular malto/fructo mixes should get you most of the way.
According to your article:
No negative GI symptoms was observed for either of the test drink or the control despite their high content of digestible CHO.
However, I do appreciate your endeavor to unlock the Maurten-formula. And who knows, maybe next year we are all adding sodium algonate and calcium carbonate to our mixes.
I think that study looked at gi distress below 65% of vo2 max. Below 65% of vo2 max GI distress is much more unlikely but above it it’s much much more likely (because of blood leaving the intestine or something idk). The main goal with the hydrogels is to keep the carbs encapsulated and safe from the acids and stop them from sloshing around and causing a disturbance but also they have a a faster gastric emptying time meaning you can use them quicker (I think there is isotope tracer data to back this up)
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This is a great find. One thing — they make all of the ingredient amounts crystal clear in Table 1, except for the sodium alginate and the pectin. They say “total polysaccharide concentration was 0.2% (in the dissolved drink) and the ratio of alginate to pectin was 60 : 40.” Elsewhere in the paper they just refer to it as “0.2 wt%”.
Can someone explain to me the math, because doing what I would think is correct — multiplying their 201g of water by the 0.2% concentration (201*0.002) — comes out to an absurdly low number of 0.4g of total polysaccharide, and the 60:40 split would then mean .24g of alginate and .16g of pectin. Can that be correct?
I also can’t seem to work backwards on their “14 wt%” of carb content in order to confirm how they’re running the math. In the test drink, they are using 201g of water and 31.7g of carb. 14% of 201g is 28.14g, which doesn’t match. Doing the math the other way, 31.7/201 results in 15.7%.
On the control drink, they’re using the same 31.7g of carb, but the water content is 224. 31.7/224 = 14.15%, but why would that match the weight but the test drink wouldn’t?
Any help greatly appreciated. Thanks.
This part is easier to explain: 201+31,7=232.7 total weight. Of which 31.7/232.7=13,6% so rounded to 14% makes sense.
The first part on de alginate and pectin I don’t know what to make of.
Appreciate the effort, but math for a solution concentration doesn’t work like that. E.g. recipes will commonly ask for a 12.5% concentration of kosher salt in water for a pickle brine. If you have 100 grams of water, you are meant to add 12.5 grams of salt. No one describes a solution concentration as the weight of the additive as a proportion of the weight of the fluid AND the additive. It wouldn’t make sense.
You got to 13.6% via that roundabout method, but if applied to the control drink, 31.7+224 = 255.7 and 31.7/255.7 = 12.4% which is not rounded up to 14% in any study.
That’s sort of my thing with this study (and my layperson skill level, I’m sure), I can’t figure out how to reverse engineer the math so I can’t figure out how to approach the 0.2% polysaccharide concentration.
Not getting into the maths, but this is entirely reasonable for a scientific description of a solution. It might not make sense to a home cook but they aren’t writing a recipe for peanut butter cookies?
The percentage by weight (wt%) of a component of a solution is defined as the ratio of the component’s weight to the solution’s weight, expressed as a percentage.
Ok, looks like that’s definitive. In chemistry you divide the solute by the solution weight, not the solvent (water in this case).
You laugh about making peanut butter cookies, but we are reading studies and trying to make drink mix recipes, so the kitchen part is very relevant. When people hear something in study or product used a “10% concentration,” they are certainly thinking of adding 10g of carb for every 100g of water. In a 650ml tall bottle, they would add 65g of carb. But the chemistry lab math on that would apparently be 65g/715g = 9%. They’d need to add 73g of carb so that 73/723=10%.
Back to the linked study, in chemistry terms, why would they use a hydrogel, 13.6% carb content test drink against a non-hydrogel, 12.4% carb concentration control drink? It’s weird they didn’t get the carb and water ratios exact down to the gram for 14.0% precision in both.
How does this study manage the 2020 result that hydrogels do nothing more than normal carbs to manage gastric distress? Was there something wrong with it? I thought we were pretty much done with it (save maurten trying to justify their income stream)
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Reading through a few homemade drinks threads and found a link to an electrolyte recipe, I primarily use Precision Fuels ph1000 or the Stykr equivalent as I found that the increased sodium helped with cramping since I sweat lots.
I’m trying to adapt her recipe to one (Ultra list - Google Sheets) that is close to the tablets I use but chucking in some carbs as well (eating wins races apparently!). From the linked page, her recipe includes baking sodabut since the magnesium and maltodextrin packets in the UK specify grams and she uses teaspoons I have no idea what that would scale out to. Her’s is the only mention of baking soda which I’m not sure if it’s being used to supply sodium or for a different purpose.
So for all the TR chefs are you using baking soda? Am I missing a crucial ingredient? Too much of something already included? I’ll also add a squirt of squash for flavouring as well.
Edit: looking at bicarb/baking soda it would appear it’s there to get sodium into me, I think so anyhows!
For those that have tried making gels (or are just generally knowledgeable in this area), I’m going to take a stab at DIY’ing a Maurten like gel. How does my recipe sound?
20g sucrose
10g maltodextrin
1g pectin
1g sodium alginate
0.5g calcium carbonate
0.2g sodium citrate
Stir powders into water at ~60C, allow to cool, put in reusable baby food pouches and refrigerate.
120kcal/serving
30g carb
2:1 glucose:fructose
~100mg sodium
intensity was too low for the effects to be measurable. throwaway study if it is under 65% of vo2 max
make suree the pectin doesn’t have acid in it and you are good
been using enteric coated size 000 capsules with sodium bicarb for my workouts above LT2 and it has been very effective.
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I have always wondered with DIY things like this how money is actually saved, and if as a whole the juice is worth the squeeze.
It seems like with the cost of sourcing the ingredients, storing the ingredients, the experimental waste of ingredients, storage of the finished product, spoilage of finished product, and wear/tear on equipment used the savings can’t be significant enough to offset the cost of the time spent recreating what you can buy in an instant.
If this is part of how people express their enjoyment of the sport I totally understand, and am not being critical, I’m just curious to see it quantified and if there is a baseline level of Maurten consumption where this begins to make economic sense.
Honestly I just stopped with the pectin and sodium alginate as it had absolutely no impact on GI distress or anything else. Bog standard recipe for a bottle now is
60g Maltodextrin
30g Fructose
1 teaspoon of sodium citrate
Works well, doesn’t cause me any stomach issues and is plenty cheap enough that I now fuel my training rides well rather than trying to eke out expensive mixes from the major brands. YMMV
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None of these are real issues. You just buy some maltodextrin, fructose, and sodium citrate. None of those “expire” or require fancy storage or tools or anything. I follow this recipe
I pre-mix a large quantity of the dry maltodextrin/fructose that I order from Amazon. Just put it all in a container at 2:1 and shake it a lot. I have to do this once a month, tops. Then, the night before a ride, I scoop out the required amount per ride (1/2 cup is about 60g), add 1/8 tsp sodium citrate and some lemon juice. Put the mix in some warm water, shake, and refrigerate just like I’d have done with Maurten. That’s all there is to it.
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Fair enough! What is your cost per 40g carb bottle?
I haven’t done the math in a long time, but 8lbs of maltodextrin is $30 and 6lbs of fructose is $30. Sodium citrate is $20 for 2lbs (which is enough to last a lifetime and comes out to like a penny per bottle).