Gels are great for racing but they're a pretty expensive and tooth-rotting source of fuel for normal riding. To the OP: how fast do you go? If your heart rate is ~150+, nothing beats a gel for getting energy into your system without having to slow down to digest. However, if you're going a bit slower you can afford to eat other food. Good foods are carb-rich and easily portable, and preferably easily obtainable when on the road. Examples include bananas (which also contain a lot of water so go down well), snickers bars, fig rolls, nutri grain bars - or other energy bars, but I don't cope well with the drier cereal bars.
I use Torq as they seem to have the highest bang for buck of g carb per item
Zipvit gels, surely? They have 51g carbs to the 30g in Torq gels. As for the tummy rumbling effect, I tend to do 3:1 gels to energy bars (Zipvit ZV8 - and no, I'm not sponsored by Zipvit) to give a bit of substance for my stomach to work on.