HOMEMADE ENERGY GEL

[vegaltena22]

Dirt Rag Article Archive

Homemade Energy Gel
By Derek Nolek

I’m a regular guy who likes to ride, race, and tinker with mountain bikes. I have also had the urge (since childhood) to take stuff apart to see how it works. Usually this behavior has helped me accumulate a good deal of worthless broken stuff. But one day while cycling with my buddy Dave, my curiosity turned to goop. Specifically Powergel, and GU.

Dave and I are the kind of guys that ride really hard. I don’t think there’s been an occasion where we decided to just take the next ride slow. Anyway, we usually down a few packets of Powergel or GU on every ride. At about a dollar a pop, it doesn’t take long until we realized the cost of all this. So one day on the trail, as I glanced at the ingredients of these parcels of fuel I thought, “There’s got to be a way to make this from scratch.”

Flashback to three months earlier.

I’m at the local farmer’s market buying Clover honey because of its reported benefits for combating allergy symptoms. I find a press release from the National Honey Board about a study showing positive results for use of honey as compared to other carbohydrate sources when used during competitive athletic training. That kind of stuck in my brain for a while.

Wavy lines flashback to present.

So one rainy day later, I was taking apart my Power Gel. The packages are labeled with a wealth of information. Listed are the ingredients on the pack, and the “Nutrition Facts” charts. In general, the important stuff in Power Gel is the 25g carbs, 45mg sodium, 35mg potassium, and the vitamins C and E. Yes, I know there is more to them than that, but I did say that that is the important stuff.

The United States Department of Agricultre does a good job of getting those nutrition facts into their database. They actually have every food in the U.S. online at usda.gov. You can peruse and compare the nutrition content of Peanut Butter Capt’n Crunch vs. Count Chocula if you like. My interest in their site was the abbreviated food database that I could download in a Microsoft Excel format. This document is the key to getting the nutritional content of any possible mixture of foods.

The first food item I looked up in the database was Honey. Surprise!—it has a bunch of good carbohydrates and vitamins in it. Honey alone is nutritionally very close to my goal of home-brew power goop, but it lacks a bit of sodium and potassium. So where can I get a good source of potassium? Mush up a banana, maybe nuts?

Suddenly I find that molasses has a ton of potassium. If you can find “Blackstrap” molasses it has even more! As for the sodium, I’ll just add some salt. So out of my research, here’s the recipe:

Home-brew power goop:

7 and 1/3 Tablespoons of Honey
3/4 teaspoons of Blackstrap Molasses
1/10 teaspoons (just shy of 1/8 tsp) of table salt

Be sure to mix everything together well, and it should make enough to fill a 5 serving GU flask.
This recipe works nicely. You may see some bubbles on the surface of this stuff, but that is just a natural occurrence of the molasses. One thing really nice is that neither honey nor molasses needs to be refrigerated, so you can keep it in your pocket all day, and even use it the following week. I probably wouldn’t go much past a week, but it should still be good.

The nutritional content approximates 25g carbs, 45mg sodium, 35mg potassium, with plenty of vitamins and minerals that you wouldn’t get with the store bought stuff. Another nice thing about the honey recipe is that it is all natural. Honey comes from bees that get nectar from flowers. Maybe you’ve passed a honeybee hive on a trail, and just maybe there was a bee in there making the honey that you are going to use on your next ride! Ok, that’s a stretch. Molasses is not actually any part of the four-legged mammal, but is refined from sugar cane. As Homer Simpson would say: “Mmmmm, suuuugggarrrrrr.” Salt comes usually from salt mines, but you could always buy “sea-salt” and use that. I suppose “sea salt” comes from the sea, but with truth in advertising at the current lows, who really knows.

My experiment did not end at just the plain ol’ goop. It was still raining out, so I thought back to something I read somewhere about a 4 to 1 carb to protein ratio. I guess that is supposed to be a good thing (Thanks Martha Stewart), so I made a recipe for that too.

Honey goop with a protein kick:

6 Tablespoons of Honey
5/8 teaspoons of Blackstrap Molasses
6 and 3/8 teaspoons of Soy Protein Isolate
1/16 teaspoons of salt
1-3 Tablespoons of water

Mix everything together in a cup, add water as needed to develop a nice ‘goopable’ consistency. Makes 5 servings.
I tried out some of this at the DINO 12-hour race, and it worked pretty well. The Soy protein gives it a nice kick. I wouldn’t leave this one in the sun for too long though. Not that I’ve had any moss growing in it, but I would probably try to keep this one fresh.

Well now that my work is done, and I’ve freed the masses from cookie cutter carb-gels I would like to say that this in not the end, but merely the beginning. Yes, because these are just my recipes, and like the open source code of Linux, they are open for improvement and personalization. I haven’t even started on anything with caffeine, but I imagine that you could substitute some espresso in for the water, or get wild with some ground up ginseng supplements.

There is also the issue of flavoring. Could normal coffee flavoring work, perhaps mix in some flavored Jell-O, or Kool-Aid mix. Or stay all natural and mix in some lemon or orange zest. How about a jalapeno or two? The possibilities are endless. For now I’m going to step aside and let the great mountain bike forum come up with improvements. Until then I’ll be dissecting that recovery powder stuff. Hmmmm, I wonder how that stuff compares to Cheez-its and Miller High-Life?

–Derek Nolek


© 1998-2004 Dirt Rag Magazine

[drmoorejr]

WOW Hey Pat! he said Linux!!!!

HA HA

[scat silvurz]

cool article! I don't really use Gu type stuff because of the exorbitant cost per oz of the stuff.....but, I could see making this stuff on my own

good thing we've developed the technology to harvest insect vomit!

mmmmm....

Bumblebee huck'n chuck power blast![/i]

[Jason Kinley]

realize everyone knows I work for a company that makes a gel so I am going to leave the companies out of this. The issue I have is not making your own, but making it using simple sugars. Simple sugars (honey, fructose, etc..) require more fluid and electrolytes for digestion than a complex carbohydrate. The next trick is picking a complex carbohydrate with a high enough glycemic index so that the body can absorb it. The GI index rates absorption on a scale of 0-100 and not all sugars are high GI and not all complex carbs are low. This is why diabetics can use some simple carbs and some complex, just depends on the GI rating. Again I realize the link is from the company I work for but it is simply for informational purposes:
http://www.hammernut.com/za/HNT?PAGE=AR ... LE.ID=2890 If you want to make your own, I encourage you to avoid the simple sugars.

[vegaltena22]

realize everyone knows I work for a company that makes a gel so I am going to leave the companies out of this. The issue I have is not making your own, but making it using simple sugars. Simple sugars (honey, fructose, etc..) require more fluid and electrolytes for digestion than a complex carbohydrate. The next trick is picking a complex carbohydrate with a high enough glycemic index so that the body can absorb it. The GI index rates absorption on a scale of 0-100 and not all sugars are high GI and not all complex carbs are low. This is why diabetics can use some simple carbs and some complex, just depends on the GI rating. Again I realize the link is from the company I work for but it is simply for informational purposes:
http://www.hammernut.com/za/HNT?PAGE=AR ... LE.ID=2890 If you want to make your own, I encourage you to avoid the simple sugars.

Nahhh! I won't believe ya unless you share you samples bounty with us poor bike riders I mean... how can I compare?

[Jason Kinley]

Nahhh! I won't believe ya unless you share you samples bounty with us poor bike riders I mean... how can I compare?

Well if you are at Iceman I will have samples available.

[tstorm]

I love the apple cider hammer gels, I mix a couple with a little water in my bottle before the race, eating those hammer gels right out of the pack is yucky and difficult not to mention that putting the empty wrapper in my jersey is almost impossible for me

[Jason Kinley]

I love the apple cider hammer gels, I mix a couple with a little water in my bottle before the race, eating those hammer gels right out of the pack is yucky and difficult not to mention that putting the empty wrapper in my jersey is almost impossible for me

You can try using the refillable flask option: http://www.hammernutrition.com/za/HNT?P ... ccessories
This will allow you to buy the larger jugs of gel and refil the flask. Saves the mess.

[mtbyker]

You might want to add malto-dextrin to those recipes as well. I've tried home-made potions before, but you just have a hard time matching the high-end ingredients a company like Hammer can give you. I'm sold on Hammer Nutrition as well.........

[Jason Kinley]

You might want to add malto-dextrin to those recipes as well. I've tried home-made potions before, but you just have a hard time matching the high-end ingredients a company like Hammer can give you. I'm sold on Hammer Nutrition as well.........

I agree except I would use only maltodextrin and not mix the two. When you combine simple sugars with complex carbohydrates the body must maintain a fluid balance in the stomach and simple sugars and complex have different fluid requirements to maintain that balance. That is why so many products create digestive distress, they mix mulitple carbohydrate forms together or run on sugar alone.

[Crash & Burn]

You can try using the refillable flask option: http://www.hammernutrition.com/za/HNT?P ... ccessories
This will allow you to buy the larger jugs of gel and refil the flask. Saves the mess.

Where do most people carry the flask? In their jersey pocket? I normally tape several gels to my top tube.

[Farmer_John]

You can try using the refillable flask option: http://www.hammernutrition.com/za/HNT?P ... ccessories
This will allow you to buy the larger jugs of gel and refil the flask. Saves the mess.

Where do most people carry the flask? In their jersey pocket? I normally tape several gels to my top tube.

There is a flask holder out there that attaches to your stem. don't have a pic of it, but they (the flask) do make using gels a bit less messy.

Or, just mix it into a water bottle.

Or, Use Heed. For short duration events, the stuff's magic.

[Roy]

It sounds like you need to drink just the right amount of water if you use any energy Gu. How do you know the just right amount? I don't think you can drink to much.

[Farmer_John]

Here's a bike mounted flask holder.



anyone need any?

[Farmer_John]

It sounds like you need to drink just the right amount of water if you use any energy Gu. How do you know the just right amount? I don't think you can drink to much.

You need to drink the "right" amount of liquids no matter if you're using gels or not.

And yes, as you can dehydrate, you can over hydrate. In either case you can end up with an electrolyte imbalance and cramp...or worse.