Just heppened upon this browser tab again and the thread was still open. I think this is really the crux of it. IME there are only 2 reasons to go onto table sugar:
Cost savings
Rural availability
If you’re somewhere so remote that you can’t even buy sugar then you might as well carry 3kg of fancy engineered drink mix (ignoring cost). It’s probably packaged better and will be slightly friendlier to your gut. Will be pre-measured too so no guesswork or measuring utensils required.
I do think I’m going to stay with sugar even if I never do another ultra again in my life though, but that’s just due to cost. Absolutely can’t beat it, and over a year’s worth of training and racing it adds up to quite a lot of savings.
As far as I can tell it’s exactly the same as what you would buy from a sports supplement place, just a quarter of the price. I also asked the company selling it if it’s safe to ingest raw and they said yes. Fructose from Amazon is the cheapest place I’ve found at about $10AUD a kilo.
Thanks @TheGearedGuitarist - I ended up simply using Table Sugar 1:1 Fructose/Glucose bit of Salt and fresh lemon juice to taste. Not too sweet for me and huge $$$$$ savings