How can you make a supplement of L-arginine and L-citrulline taste palatable?

Answer 1

I don't know about the L-citrulline part, but I just bought some of the NOW Sports L-Arginine, and I was amazed at how awful it tasted. Like baking soda with a hint of epoxy resin. So, I added a teaspoon of it to my purple Grape Juice - AND IT TURNED BRIGHT GREEN! Woohoo, fun with chemistry! Grape juice turns color when exposed to a basic (alkaline) chemical, like baking soda, ammonia, or drain cleaner. They hadn't sent me baking soda, though, because it didn't fizz. A little research showed that L-Arginine is supposed to be basic, and thus taste terrible. On the good side, all you have to do is neutralize it with something acid.

To try this, get some lemon juice, purple grape juice (just for fun), and your L-Arginine powder. Put a level teaspoon of L-Arginine into a cup or something. Add a little grape juice. Check out the color! Then add three tablespoons of lemon juice one at a time, stirring as you go. When it turns purple again, it's safe to drink (add a fourth if needed). It isn't even sour from the lemon juice, because they neutralized each other. Very lemony, though. I add half a cup of orange or grape juice to it to calm it down a little. I also tried white vinegar instead of lemon juice. It also completely canceled out the bad taste of the L-Arginine, but tasted kind of weird and burned my throat a bit. Any sour food should work - citric acid, sour mix, orange or grape juice concentrate, etc. If you use regular juice, it takes lots of it, probably more than you really want to drink. Some Japanese guys have a patent on using vitamin C (in a 1:5 ratio C:L-A by weight) to neutralize the taste.

Hope that helps. I have no idea how this affects absorption or anything, but I'm pretty sure this is how they make the pleasantly-flavored L-A fruit drinks.