Cooking 101 - (Home-made gels) - continued

Well I checked my four gel batches this morning. All had mixed well together and were in a gel like state. Batch 1 was the least viscous and had the least carbohydrate content. Batch 4 was the thickest and had the most carbohydrate content. I’m tending towards batch 4. It was the thickest and nearly filled a gel flask, I estimate about two-thirds (80-85 ml). Batch 4 was mixed using this ratio:- 6 scoops Poly-Joule 1 scoop Gatorade 2 scoops Red Cordial My next step was to calculate the nutritional aspect of the gel. After messing with pencil and paper I ended up writing a simple spreadsheet with all the variables entered. All I do now is enter the number of scoops of the ingredients and the figures returned tell me the per 100 gram figures of Carbohydrate, Sodium & Potassium. The nutritional values (per 100 g) of batch 4 are: Carbohydrate 65.9g Sodium 9mg Potassium 3mg I am trying to duplicate the nutritional values of the commercial product, PB Sports Gel as they have served me well. PB sports gel (per 100 g) carbo content is 57g . Their sodium content is 85.7mg and potassium is 45.7mg. The sodium and potassium content is a lot higher than I can achieve using Gatorade or Staminade (my little spreadsheet tells me so). In the interim I’ll modify batch 4 to include 2 scoops of Gatorade and the nutritional values (per 100g) will be:- Carbohydrate 60g Sodium 12mg Potassium 5mg I’m now looking forward to my next long run simply to try out my own homemade gel. It actually tastes quite nice, I’ve done quite a bit of finger licking tests. I’ve got one more calculation to work out and that’s the cost per 100g or per 35g in order to compare it against PB Sports Gel that cost $2.10. Until next time, Chef Steve, signing out.