That’s how I feel about it. Seems like wayyyyy too much at $2+ for anyone that isn’t racing for money.
Can anyone who’s Maurten confirm if the 320 bag is simply 2 packets of the 160 or is there a different formulation between the two?
Thanks!
It’s different. Go to their website. They show labels. The carbs are about 2 to 1, but the sodium and sugar is not.
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From what I’ve gathered from the Maurten website, yes, it’s the same formula. I used it for the first time on a training ride last week, and will follow up with it on my first RR of the season this Sunday!
It’s more FILLING than regular powdered mix. Like some others have mentioned here, it’s like “food in a bottle.”
Look’s like Maurten’s claim of “World’s Fastest Sports Drink” is marketing hype.
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Thanks for that @Bud_Seitzinger! Very cool.
I have fiddled around with these products quite a bit. Including making them myself…a process which I got the fam involved with & we had a lot of fun with it.
My conclusion is, for those athletes who have not or are unwilling to engage in gut training the Sodium Alginate products can provide some help. Since most athletes are oblivious about gut training (much less how to train the gut), sodium alginate products can be useful.
In my experience, people who really put in the effort to find the best product to consume on long rides…from a gastrointestinal distress perspective…are just doing crude gut training. If you try to maximize caloric intake on a few rides using product A…then you maximize caloric intake on a few rides using product B…then you maximize caloric intake on a few rides using product C…guess what? Product C works best. Product A probably sucked.
So a lot of folks just settle on the product they were using when their gut finally adapted & then swear by that product.
If you never do anything to train your gut, you’re probably better off using Maurten. If you train your gut, you might as well buy some fructose, buy some glucose, mix it appropriately & use that.
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40g fructose
40g maltodextrin
1g salt
30p per drink.
Came here to say this. Maurten has been claiming they have scientific backing supporting their claims for faaaar too long, and have not provided anything from the research community to support.
I know there are some users like @Jonathan who like maurten, but its no better/different than the cheap stuff that people have been talking about in the 1000+ post SIS thread.
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Or you can create your own maurten (gel or drink) as these are matlo, fructose, electrolytes and thickener (sodium alginate). Every ingredient is cheap. Maurten drink mix is basically homemade jam as it has also pectines to thicken it.
Edit: here is more info how alginate works: WO2011063809A1 - Diet product comprising alginate - Google Patents
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@jarsson I’m not sure. I think Maurten is actually CHO encapsulated in sodium alginate spheroids. You can still make these at home pretty easy but the process is more involved.
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Ok, thank you for the info - my bad as I did not look enough on this topic. Now I am more intrigued 
Just to frame the discussion, here is the forest plot from the meta-analysis…it’s a little different because the plot is horizontal instead of vertical (like we’re all used to seeing it!)
So, a couple of points…
Point the First: Hold your hand over the McCubbin & Pettersson studies in the forest plot. Now what you’re seeing (assuming your hand is opaque) are the results from cycling studies only. Notice that the mean standardized effect sizes are all positive.
Point the Second: We are cyclists & competitors…not scientists & doctors (although I’m sure there is some intersection on that venn diagram). If I tell you, ‘On average there is some positive benefit to cyclists from using a hydrogel but I can’t be 95% sure that’s really strictly due to the hydrogel’ most of us will still give hydrogels a shot. What if the effect size for THIS individual is above average? Definitely there were a lot of athletes in this meta analysis that experienced a better than average benefit.
So I don’t want to be 100% down on Maurten. I think it’s very likely that for some athletes in some circumstances it does provide a very real benefit. But I’m OK if some negative press forces them to lower their prices a little bit. 
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I have sodium alginate, pectin and a set of microgram scales. would be very interested to hear what weight of each you used? Started doing some inital testing and have been revising downwards so far.
Just use sodium citrate. The hydrogel bit doesn’t do anything.
The reason maurten works better than most is because the sugar ratio is closer to 1:1 gluc:fruc.
DETAILED info here in all the links I shared in the following 3 posts.
If the slowtwitch forum links (first one especially) don’t answer all your questions, feel free to ask here or anywhere else on TR forum.
Also related, and author appears to be a smart guy:
I’m after any real life experiences with the Maurten drink mix for events around 8-11hrs, with regards to the lack of electrolytes?
I’ve used Maurten in training for rides up to 4-5hrs with out issue.
I note maurten says electrolytes aren’t necessary, but this seems to go against most other sports product marketing!
Do others supplement in electrolytes?
Regards
Gg
I used Maurten drink and gels for Park City P2P last year. I did supplement with some Skratch hydration. This worked fine for me and I took the electrolytes close to same time as gels while taking the drink mix at separate times. Like you, I was worried about just Maurten as the electrolytes provided are far lower than recommended anywhere else.
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They should. I certainly would.
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