Last weekend my friend and I were out for a long run. At mile 6 we decided to gu. I had a lovely hammer gel apple cinnamon, she had a chocolate gu. After she squeezes her gu into her mouth, she stops running. I ask, “What’s wrong?” and she says that she’s afraid she shattered a tooth. She spits her gu out and there are all these white tooth-like fragments in her gu. I examine her mouth, but all her teeth look intact. Then she squeezes her gu, and another tooth looking particle comes out of the package.
So it was really cold that day, between 10-20 F, and I’m thinking that maybe something in the gu froze, causing the toothish particles. Either that, or she missed out on a great chance to make her fortune via litigation. Has anyone else had this happen?
Needless to say, the run was long that day as neither of us had the stomach to try a second gu attempt… YUCK!
Ah excellent. Now I have a chemical I can search on, and I found that maltodextrin with a high dextrose equivalent (DE) can form “large sugar crystal formations.” Now I just need to think about whether or not I think that’s the case for gu, and if maltodextrin regardless of DE is likely to form sugar crystal formations at lower temperatures. What a fun task for a geeky person!
