I use a slightly tweaked variation of the oral rehydration solution from
here, that I'll make up in bulk dry and use for bike rides and lawnmowing, and the stuff works a treat. Their recipe is a dumbed down version of the
WHO-ORS.
Their base ingredient list is: 1 liter water, 6 level teaspoons sugar, 1/2 level teaspoon salt.
Using a little basic kitchen chemistry, I try to do a quick and dirty replication of the actual WHO-ORS recipe that's just a
touch saltier. My tweaks? Well, I make up four liter/one gallon batches of dry powder using the following ingredients:
-12tsp (60ml) glucose (easiest found in baking supplies and health food stores as dextrose, they're the same thing - subbing out more sucrose or table sugar [twice the amount, 24tsp or 120ml] is fine if the price of dextrose is putting you off)
-2.5tsp (12.5ml) pink Himalayan salt or Celtic Sea salt (mostly just sodium with trace minerals - table salt is fine)
-1.5tsp (7.5ml) potassium chloride (sold as a sodium free salt substitute in the salt/spices aisles at grocery stores)
-1 dry packet Aldi Mixade unsweetened lemonade (mostly for the citric acid, but also for the flavoring - I use Aldi instead of Kool-Aid or Flavorade brands due to their using turmeric as the coloring agent instead of artificial dyes, but all three are mostly citric acid and will do in a pinch - you
cannot use other flavors, because we
need the citric acid for the sodium citrate)
Mix the powder THOROUGHLY. Mix it AGAIN every time you use some.
GLUCOSE MIX:
Four very slightly rounded
teaspoons of the powder will make up
one liter of oral rehydration drink.
SUCROSE MIX:
Two very slightly rounded
tablespoons of the powder will make up
one liter of oral rehydration drink.
I personally usually use a one quart Gatorade bottle (mostly for the mouth size of the bottle to pour the powder in), rendering the mix a touch stronger.
The stuff works out to roughly one buck worth of ingredients or so per gallon for the mix using glucose. It's a bit cheaper if you go sucrose, but your gut has to do more work to get the necessary glucose to facilitate salt uptake, and the mix comes across a bit sweeter. Like I said, the stuff works a treat, too. Less sweet than Gatorade, far more effective.
(My protip is to make a small cut on the stem of each banana pre-ride so that you're not yanking away on an uncooperative banana while cycling no handed through a crosswind.)
Sometimes, animals are way more clever than us humans, so my protip in response to this is to watch how most chimpanzees eat bananas. They're not idiots like us humans who try to start peeling the banana from the stem side, and instead peel from the bottom. That little brown bulls-eye at the end breaks apart easy with a little squeeze and peels much faster than trying to break the skin by the stem, and this realization will change how you eat bananas forever.