I think perhaps the best evidence, regardless of what may have come out recently which I may not have read yet, is one of Dr. Jeukendrup’s landmark papers.
Figures below are from that paper, in 2004.
The trends are what are most striking.
They’re indicative that with higher fueling rates, and longer durations, higher oxidation rates would absolutely be achieved.
Pair this with the recent study showing substantially reduced muscle damage comparing 90g/hr to 120g/h in mountain marathon runners, and you’ve got a pretty nice case building that we don’t yet know max exogenous carb oxidation rates because there hasn’t been sufficient study. To call a “cap” now, would be unwise.
The cap is higher than present research shows.
Endogenous oxidation rate increasing up above 1.7g/hr:
This is the moneymaker. Working on solving that for the world as we speak. Apps are good at gathering LOTS of user data and feedback. Not as rigorous as research, of course, but much larger data sets and more real-world implementation.
Give me 2-3 years and I’ll have more info. We’re moving to a short, broad, public beta testing period this week. If not this week, then next week for sure. Then we’ll release in app stores hopefully within a month. If folks want to sign up to use our app beta (and get free usage of the app for a while, in exchange for criticizing it) they can sign up for that, here. I’ll probably reach out to TR management and see if it’s something I can share officially in a thread here, too.
Malto+fruc is very very marginally sweeter than sucrose I believe.
Others here on the TR forum have used Citric Acid with positive reports, and it’s a common additive to endurance carb supps for that reason.
I tend to find that just getting sodium concentrations up into optimal ranges is more than enough to combat the potent sweetness, even if I’m consuming something like a 30-40% concentrated solution.
I tried 1000mg of sodium (1 packet of ELMT) per litre you suggested in one of your videos and it tasted like salt water. But for some reason 4000mg of sodium citrate doesn’t taste as bad. I have no idea why but the citrate works out to be much cheaper so I’ll stick with that
I just did an experiment. We mixed up 3 solutions all at 600 mg of sodium per 250 ml water. One was salt (sodium chloride), the next was sodium citrate, the third was salt plus citric acid. The salt in water alone tasted salty, the sodium citrate tasted very neutral only slightly different than plain water, the salt plus citric acid tasted very salty and acidic, not that pleasant. So if you want to make sure your sodium input is at a certain level but want to avoid the saltiness then sodium citrate is your go to.
On another item from above, maltodextrin comes in a variety of types called Dextrose Equivalents (DE) from about 7 to 18. The higher the number the sweeter the maltodextrin due to free glucose. A maltodextrin with a DE of 10 is quite neutral to the taste (almost no perceptible sweetness) but a DE of 18 has a very slightly but distinct sweet taste. For reference a DE 10 would have about 0.7% free glucose and a DE 15 would have about 1.3% free glucose, DE 18 about 1.6% free glucose. So it also depends on which maltodextrin you buy how sweet it tastes. We use DE 18 a lot and it really is not that sweet but it is definitely and perceptibly more sweet than DE 10.
Hopefully the rise of the CGM’s can help speed up the data collection. I know pro teams are using them for training. We’ve all seen one slapped on Froomy’s arm. But then you have Daryl Impey (same team) posting nutrition tips for training that still correlate to the established “limits.” I would have thought some teams more on the cutting edge would have started fueling differently already with that data.
It depends on where you get the product. most products will have a product name that will include something like MD-18 for instance where the 18 is the DE value. if you buy it on line or at a bulk store it should have a nutritional label. Look at the nutrition facts, you will see a number for carbohydrates then beneath it you will see a number for sugars. The lower that number is the lower the DE. A DE of 18 would have a sugars of around 8-9 and a DE of 10 would be around 3-4g.
Don’t underestimate the ability of high-budget teams to:
Hire staff based almost exclusively on the personality trait of extraversion, without knowing they are doing so.
Never firmly-enough encourage talented athletes who are paid an order of magnitude more than the support staff to actually try an evidence-based approach.
I’d posit the reason so many ridiculous things are done in sport nutrition among pro teams is 75% number 1, and 25% number 2.
I felt the same. I figured out why it’s still such a black box.
The 60g / 90g dogma stuck hard.
I believe, but don’t quote me here, this effect was predominantly because of Jeukendrup & Gatorade. It was preached as absolutely sacrosanct in my undergraduate, masters programs. There just wasn’t anyone in the field who doubted the initial work, or even sought to replicate it, let alone push the envelope.
The people with the know-how aren’t interested.
The people with the knowledge to ask the “push the envelope” questions, and ability to do that research, are interested in other things (health). The dietetics field is dominated by women. My wife is one of them. She was one of two women in her class of 100+ who was interested in sport nutrition, IIRC. There were 3 or 4 men in her class, total. ALL of the men sought sport nutrition internships. There is an enormous interest gap in this topic, between men and women in that field. And there are very few men in the field.
There’s a social barrier to performance-interest within the dietetics field.
It’s seen as uncaring. Many of my wife’s colleagues insult sport science and sport nutrition as less important and valuable compared health-related nutrition science. They may be right. Regardless of correctness of that thinking, it’s a major barrier.
My wife is constantly frustrated at the total conservativism and “accept the zeitgeist” mentality of so many of her colleagues. They’re quite “health” focused, to the extent that they won’t even ask the performance-relevent questions. Even RD’s holding sport dietitian positions at major D1 universities are entirely lackluster in their interest in actually enhancing sport performance. They just like making sure college kids are well-fed. This was at a big-name university. I’ll leave them nameless to avoid personal identification ability.
It’s hard to pass IRB.
Add in the barrier of having to sell “we want to make people run hard and maybe have diarrhea” to an Institutional Review Board (IRB) and you’ve got a set of barriers plenty high enough to prevent many folks from asking that question in research.
Unfortunately, dietitians, biologists, and chemists are the folks that have the actual expertise to ask these questions. And they just don’t ask them because health is more important to 99% of those folks.
The interested folks, don’t have the skills.
At all. Not even close. The field of sport science (not exercise science) is the opposite of the woman-dominated dietetics field. Utterly male dominated. The common joke in the sport science program at ETSU was that the women there all had the pick of the litter for a mate because it was 10:1 men:women, but half of the women were lesbian so it didn’t matter. This does not hold true for exercise science. But exercise scientists are less prone to asking the push the limits questions, compared to sport scientists.
Our lab was full of testosterone, smelled bad, and was full of folks willing to push the envelope. But most of them don’t have chem or bio backgrounds. The stereotype is that they skated through the sciences while they were on the football team. It holds laughably true in many cases.
They just wanted to know what makes you jump higher and faster, now. Very applied. Very avoidant of examining physiological mechanisms. Very weak on chem and bio, let alone gut physiology. I have a minor in chem and a minor in bio and was considered quite advanced in my doctoral program in sport science.
Human subjects research is painfully slow, regardless.
I recently had a bod pod (which I think was done incorrectly… I supposedly gained 7 lbs of fat in 8 weeks, and 4 percent higher body fat). The guy couldnt understand my push to want to improve performance. He kept saying “but do you feel good? You are in the healthy range, just stay there. Its about feeling happy in your skin” and things like this. He wasn’t necessarily wrong, but he is used to dealing with overweight soldiers trying to lose weight and I was on the other side of the spectrum and using this to really optimize my diet and change my body comp.
The results suggest that carbohydrate ingestion at 120 g h−1 in 0.8:1 fructose-maltodextrin ratio as compared with 90 g h−1 in 1:2 ratio offers higher exogenous carbohydrate oxidation rates but no additional sparing of endogenous carbohydrates.
