As energy gels are at best palatable and quiet expensive for what they are, has anyone experimented with homemade ones? I'm trying out a 'no bits' marmalade, watered down to give a syrupy mixture, with a squirt of honey to take the edge off.

Tastes pretty good, far cheaper and quite an energy boost to boot.

Sounds... interesting...

There's potential there, I suppose, but surely it's best if you can get a good mix of the right sugars etc?

Yeah I did think about that, but I think a lot of companies hype up the energy sup market. I sure someone once proved that a 50/50 mix of good old OJ and water with a bit of salt was as good as most energy/hydration drinks. I think that the overall aim for a gel is to get as many simple carbs into the smallest 'liquid' volume, and all the rest of the marketing about which ones best is BS.

As most gels are fruit flavoured anyway, what better than fruit concentrate watered down a bit with an added bit of honey (loads of carbs) to taste.

It sounds delicious, maybe add some liquid glucose or something? (can get that in Tesco's for pennies) From what I can remember from school biology, glucose is better because it's a really small sugar molecule, so easy to absorb. Marmalade would mostly be sucrose from the sugar, which"if I remember rightly" would be slightly less good... Where's Almost_No_Specifics when you need her?

It does sound interesting and the good thing is you know exactly whats in it so your less likely to have any bad side effects from taking it

One question though, how do you transport it? i.e. The Energy gels you buy come in handy wee sachets, how do you carry your home made version?

O.

You can buy a belt thing with several small reusable gel bottles on it. There are like mini water bottles. Most running shops do them.

I *think* (from what I remember of reading about energy sources recently) Glucose is the energy form that the muscles use, so therefore a very efficient as they don't need converting (e.g. sucrose would be turned into glucose by the body)... the glucose is stored as glycogen by the muscles.

Have to admit, that as nice as home-made gels sound - I'm far too lazy to worry about mixing them, then filling small bottles, then washing the bottles after etc... on the rare occaisions that I use them I'll probably just buy a few.

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Gels just don't work for me....interesting thread though.

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Hi all

Hope it's not a silly question but where do you find fruit concentrate at the supermarket?
Same aisle as the fruit juice?

Read on another thread about frozen fruit concentrate.

Cheers

Gary

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Hello!

Good old shredless marmalade and honey! Cheap as chips and if you like it on your toast then your're halfway there as far as getting it down your throat.

I suppose any bit-less jam would do it.

but the bits are the best part!

No idea I'm afraid Gary... other than jam itself being a fruit concentrate! lol

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I gave the the 'homemade' its first outing. Basically it was a splodge of marmalade, a squirt of honey and bit of water and some OJ for consistenty. Its first trial was a 15 mile hilly trail run at a fairly easy pace, I only took water with me so I had no other energy source throughout.

I'd have to saiy it worked pretty well, I certainly didn't feel short of energy at any point and at the end I could have probably gone another 4/5 miles if I wanted to. Taste wise its fine as you make it to taste anyway, and as its more fluid than a gel, it doesn't feel like your swallowing snot like you do with a gel!