I have been doing 100 g an hour of organic table sugar for about a year. I decided that it was the cleanest option. This type of fueling results in the consumption of ridiculous amounts of sugar and using a clean source seems important to me. My understanding is that sucrose it is cleaved into glucose and fructose by sucrase, an enzyme in the lining of your stomach. My goal is training up that enzyme. So far so good.
Organic or inorganic sugar makes absolutely no difference.
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To each their own.
I try to eat minimally processed foods with as little pesticides and herbicides as possible. I agree some things matter more than others, And there may not be a big difference between conventional and organic sugar but I am not confident the processing of conventional sugar removes all undesirable compounds.
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I just read you can dissolve 420 grams of sugar in 1 cup of water!
I did 250g in a small water bottle plus 5 teaspoons of sodium citrate plus 20g of scratch for flavor and got a seriously thick solution. 1080 calories and drank water out of the camelbak to wash it down. It was….not as good as I hoped. Something about the incredible concentration made it a little odd.
Joe
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Has anyone mixed two bags of beta fuel (160g of carbs) into a 500ml bottle? Any suggestion on how to prepare the bottle (i.e. hot water the night before etc…) ? thanks
specifically looking into maltodextrin to replace some of the glucose in my carb mixes.
How do you determine the glucose molecules from maltodextrin? I understand the “dextrose equivalent”, where a higher value represents a smaller chain, higher sweetness and higher solubility, but have yet to find any measures of something like DE5 = x glucose molecules while DE18 = y molecules.
I would think this is important when making your at-home solution, trying to get to the desired ratio of glu:fru?
Also, trying to understand how maltodextrin is reported in USDA labeling. Since it is technically a starch, i dont think it is included in “sugars”, but looking at my container of Gu Roctane drink mix (ingredients are maltodextrin, fructose, extra stuff), Total Carbs = 60g and Total Sugars = 17g, does that imply 43g of maltodextrin and 17g of fructose? That seems weird, since that would be a ratio of 2.5x glu:fru or so…
thoughts?
DE5 has the same number of glucose molecules DE18. Lengths of chains are simply different.
And treat maltodextrin as sugar. It gets broken down immediately, virtually no difference in glycemic response.
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Dump it in before your ride. Shake well. Enjoy.
not sure about that. sugar (aka sucrose) is 1:1 glu:fruc, maltodextrin is only glucose. Also, research shows higher DE values are more soluble than lower DE values since they are shorter chains. Just trying to get to the facts
Glycemic response to maltodextrin vs. sugar are virtually indistinguishable.
The only real consideration is making sure that you’re not overloaded on glucose (ie. more than 60-80g/hr, depending on the person). That’s why I often recommend sugar.
Yes. And it is weird. If weird = suboptimal. 
Many many companies have suboptimal sugar ratios because they care more about optimizing taste for their market, and they don’t recommend adequate hourly carb rates high enough for sugar ratios to matter that much. It’s silly, but it’s a customer acquisition & retention strategy.
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sorry, i was confusing solubility with GI response.
that immediately rang true as i was trying to get my 20g gatorade + 40g sucrose/ 750mL to be less sweet. It felt like my teeth were going to dissolve during my ride, but the fueling was perfect for a 90min set of intervals and cost maybe $0.20 vs $1.66 for Roctane.
All good! Yep, solubility differences definitely matter in terms of logistics (putting in a bottle)!
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thanks for the clarification.
Ok, so experimenting with 60g @ 8% (20g gatorade + 40g sucrose / 750mL), it was pretty near overpoweringly sweet. is there any recommendation to get to 90g @ 12% with equal or less sweetness? I am having a hard time make the math work to get under a 1.5 ratio while keeping the maltodextrin high to reduce sweetness
I weigh over 100kg and regularly cycle upwards of 100km, on a hilly route, at a decent pace, and often see 300w+ average power. Strava and Garmin (with heartrate and PM ) both estimate above 4000kcal burned over 3 to 4 hours.
I will be on the verge of bonking if I eat any less than the maximum I can get in, including loading on carbs the day before, morning of and during the ride.
My long-lost twin! (jk, I’m almost your size but can’t hit that power.)
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Add salt or sodium citrate.
Not sure if this has been answered before. If yes, sorry for that.
Sucrose works as well as maltodextrin+fructose, and probably better than glucose+fructose.
Is there actually ANY reason at all not to use sucrose instead of malto and fructose?
If it is proven to be as effective, and there is no loss in performance, why not just use normal table sugar from the supermarket all the time? Would be the easiest and chpeapest option.
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- Grape Juice
- Honey
- Maltodextrine
- Lemon juice
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The best tasting and most effective product I’ve ever tried was Ultra Fuel by TwinLabs. 100g of carbs in a 16oz bottle. Tasted fantastic. You could honestly feel it work. It was discontinued a while back tho.
Difference malto/fructose vs sucrose? With m:f I can ingest 90 g /h in 500ml of water for several hours without any issues. If it’s not too warm. If I try the same with sucrose I must throw up.
This is really a very subjective thing.
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