DIY Salt Sticks

February 5, 2023 7:34 PM

I really like the Salt Stick brand of electrolyte tablets in particular. How do I copy their recipe for home use? I am hoping for: buy these ingredients, combine at these ratios.

Tab format is a bonus, if I could get to a point where I could mimic it as a powder, that would be great.

posted by aniola to Grab Bag (8 answers total)

I don’t know but I can tell you table salt in those gel capsules is not the same and makes my stomach hurt in a way Salt Stick doesn’t. I’ve been told it’s the additives, or maybe the lack of potassium. Not sure if that’s helpful but thought I’d share my failed attempt from a few years ago to steer you away from that!
posted by brook horse at 8:36 PM on February 5, 2023

Potassium is the hard part. It's literally explosive, dangerous if overconsumed, and hard to purchase. It really makes me feel better, though, I think.

I briefly looked into DIY electrolyte powder as a response/preventive for migraine. I hit a wall with potassium. Apparently, there's not a big motivation to make it easy to buy quantities of a highly explosive element.

I suspect that you know everything I'm about to type, but others may not, so:

While magnesium, for example, is pretty safe to supplement (although I think it and calcium can block absorption of iron if consumed at the same time), potassium can really be harmful if you accidentally overdose, or just supplement regularly if your level is already high -- another reason it's hard to find potassium for sale in any kind of quantity, as far as I understand it.

However: I gave up quickly on the potassium quest, so you might do better. I'm just mentioning this so you'll know what the hardest part seemed to be. Now, I just try to keep bananas (or banana chips) on hand.

Someday I'll probably look into the safety of supplementing with a) dirt, and/or b) fertilizer, both of which have a decent amount of potassium in them (well, there are soil test kits for potassium levels in soil, and the potassium probably will survive the kind of heat that would kill viruses/bacteria, PLUS I know there are already people eating dirt -- but I would _really_ have to research this before trying it).


-- side note --

In "new information to me but probably only me" news, I just learned that some people are successfully staving off migraines by taking riboflavin. The study I found used two doses/day of 200 mg each dose, but a friend is having success with just 100 mg/day + magnesium. Apparently there's _not_ a danger of overdosing on this, nor on magnesium, so I'm trying that out. So far, so good.

Riboflavin (a.k.a. vitamin B2) isn't that easy to find; I had to check several grocery stores and pharmacies before I found some in stock.

-- and --

I did not know SaltStick came in chews! Awesome! Now I want to invent a delicious, fresh, not-too-sweet electrolyte drink.
posted by amtho at 10:57 PM on February 5, 2023

I just remembered this potassium idea: Original NoSalt sodium-free salt seems to be made of potassium iodide. I have no idea how bio-available the potassium there is, or if the iodide part will hurt or help.

I haven't tried this -- I was looking into making amphibian Ringer's solution myself and came across this posting. The poster (a vet tech) needed to treat his poor dusty dried out frog in a hurry, and amphibian Ringer's is hard to find, so he sourced the electrolytes needed (calcium, sodium, and potassium) mostly from Walmart, in the forms of iodide-free table salt, NoSalt, baking soda, and ice melt for sidewalks.

Apparently the frog returned to excellent health, but that's all the detail available. If you read the post, you can see why I remembered it!
posted by amtho at 11:11 PM on February 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

You can get Potassium Citrate in 2 lb bags on Amazon. I've used it, it works fine ime.
posted by asimplemouse at 3:04 AM on February 6, 2023 [4 favorites]

I can't help with a specific recipe, but I know that similar salt/potassium blends (intended to be mixed with water) are sometimes called "ketoade." The Keto subreddit has a lot of different recipes.
posted by unknowncommand at 5:28 AM on February 6, 2023

Best answer: *****************************************************
*****************************************************

Dear Internet:
BE CAREFUL WITH SUPPLEMENTING POTASSIUM

*****************************************************
*****************************************************
posted by amtho at 8:19 AM on February 6, 2023 [3 favorites]

Best answer: I haven't tried this exact thing myself, though I have tried (with varying success) making different electrolyte mixtures.

I'll just point out that all the active ingredients of Salt Sticks are available in bulk, just for example at Amazon:

* Sodium citrate
* Potassium citrate
* Magnesium citrate
* Calcium gluconate

Now you're going to be knocked back about $65 just getting enough of each of these to even try it, but it can be done.

Also, besides the four ingredients listed as "active" there are a number of others, including things like dextrose and flavoring, that are very certainly part of the secret of making the final result palatable.

The amount in one serving (2 tablets) of SaltStick is PRETTY small, so don't go crazy taking tablespoons of any of these. I respect amtho's warnings about taking too much potassium for example. But if you take the actual amount recommended in one serving of SaltStick - which amounts to less than 1% of the normal daily value for potassium - I think you're going to be fine. But do be aware that if you should take, say, 83 grams instead of 83 milligrams then, yeah. That would not be good.

But the measurements needed to make one serving of a SaltStick are something like:

* Sodium citrate: 400mg product for 100mg sodium
* Potassium citrate: 83mg product for 30mg potassium
* Magnesium citrate: 36mg product for 6 mg magnesium
* Calcium gluconate: 109 mg product for 10mg calcium

Then something to give you a couple of grams of carbs (that's 2 grams of sugar, or roughly 1/2 teaspoon) and something for flavoring. You'll have to experiment with that.

Now, how you're going to accurately measure 36mg, 83mg, and so on - you'll probably multiply this by 10 or 20 and make that many servings at once.

Again, be aware that the one-serving amount of each of these ingredients is miniscule. If you are taking any of them by the spoonful or whatever, yeah that would be bad. These are s-m-a-l-l amounts. Tiny.

Bonus: I will mention that one of the electrolyte solutions I have tried myself, and that seems to work when I get fairly dehydrated when hiking, bicycling, etc is something like: Salt and no-salt in roughly a 5-1 ratio (say 5 tsp salt and 1 tsp no-salt) plus I grind up say 1 calcium tablet and 1 magnesium glycinate tablet into that mixture. Mix well. To use, it is something like 1/4 tsp of the mixture to a water bottle. (When I'm actually needing to use it, I never have a measuring spoon handy - I add a fairly small-ish amount to a water bottle until it just barely tastes salty.) For flavor, if needed or wanted, very dilute gatorade powder - adding maybe 1/10 or 1/20 the amount the gatorade jar would suggest. Or like 1/2 tsp of sugar (or equivalent in something like fruit juice). The point of any of those options are just for flavor and a bit of sugar/carb to make the electrolyte mixture absorb better.
posted by flug at 1:16 PM on February 6, 2023

I have used this tiny scale to weigh tiny frogs, and it seems to work well. It seems to be accurate to .01-ish grams.
posted by amtho at 6:58 PM on February 6, 2023 [3 favorites]