Gatorade. A name synonymous with the sports drink that one can easily find on the shelves of 
almost every grocery stores across America. One can also find it being dumped over the heads of various sports coaches at championship games. The brand is iconic in our world today and culturally significant around the world. It’s branded as “The thirst quencher” and Gatorade’s official website claims that it “adequately replaces the key components lost by players through sweating and exercise. But many wonder, what does it actually do? Does it really work? And is it actually better than drinking water?
The drink came to be in 1964. Gatorade’s official website says that researchers at University of Florida noticed that the football players at the school were suffering from overheating and affecting their athletic performance. They concluded that “the fluids and electrolytes the players lost through sweat were not being replaced, and the large amounts of carbohydrates the player’s bodies used for energy were not being replaced”. Whew what a mouthful. Basically, the researchers crafted a drink for their players that essentially replaced the sweat they would loose during practice. Shortly after, the team found great success and other colleges caught on to the drink craze and the brand “Gatorade” was born.
The history is pretty interesting, but does it actually work? And is it actually better then drinking plain water? Let’s start with what is actually in Gatorade. The standard “Thirst Quencher” contains sugar and electrolytes like sodium and potassium that replaces the nutrients we loose when we sweat through physical activity. Gatorade insists that the electrolytes help regulate the body’s “fluid balance” while carbs provide energy. However, with all of these seemingly helpful nutrients comes a whole lot of sugar. Specifically, there is 21 grams of sugar in a 12oz bottle and 56 grams in a 32oz bottle. That’s about the same amount of sugar that’s in two and a half snickers bar. Gatorade can actually detrimental to your health if one drinks it daily without actually partaking in exercise due to the high sodium content. Even for people that do exercise daily, Gatorade can still be harmful to maybe not one’s health, but one’s wallet. Gatorade’s “Thirst Quencher” costs about $4 for a pack of six bottles, which would last one almost a week. That’s about $16 spent on this drink per month, and $192 per year. Not everyone’s budgets are able to support this kind of excessive spending on drinks.
Studies have tested many of Gatorade’s marketing campaigns and claims to fame. Darren Worrel’s First in Thirst talks about Gatorade’s claim to fame that Gatorade gives a 25-power watt increase while running and exercising than water. However, the brand fails to mention that this wattage difference would only be taken in account if the athlete was partaking in very strenuous activity for at least an hour. Triathlete Alberto Salazar that refutes Gatorade’s claim that it is superior to water. He says that while Gatorade may be more effective for longer periods of exercise, it would take a race of about twelve hours to really matter. On another occasion, Gatorade insisted that athletes perform better in their respective sport when drinking their product. To test this statement, researcher David Criswell at the University of Florida conducted an experiment to test if Gatorade really had a noticeable effect on athletes that consumed the drink. He randomly assigned a local high school football team to either the control group or the experimental group. He gave one group, the experimental group, Gatorade and the other group, the control group, received colored and sweetened water; using the placebo effect to see if athletes noticed a difference. Criswell instructed the athletes to run eight forty-yard sprints while drinking the designated drink in between each repetition. After the experiment, Criswell remarked, “We found no difference in performance at all. Neither team was better than the other”. Clearly, the control group became influenced by the placebo effect, and the study showed that there is not a clear benefit to consuming Gatorade compared to another drink.
While Gatorade does aid in performance and exercise in the long run, it should not be used regularly as a “thirst quencher” as the name suggests. So next time, think before you grab a bottle of the brightly colored drink about what’s really in it.
Photo credit: http://pinnest.net/gatorade-thirst-quencher/
I recently posted a similar entry about how sports drinks compares to water during exercise. Lucky for the both of us, we came to the same take home message that gatorade (and sports drinks in general) shouldn’t be used as a “thirst quencher”, the only means of hydration. I noted the study you explained that Gatorade failed to claim that their “25-power watt increase while running and exercising than water” is only effective with at least an hour of exercise. Why would it only be effective till then considering this drink doesn’t even have caffeine? So how does caffeine-free sport drinks vs. caffeine?
Under the benches at games, my water bottle was always surrounded by a rainbow of different colored Gatorades. While I never really liked Gatorade, my friends would drink it nonstop. Additionally, volleyball tournaments would hand out Gatorade Chews, leading us to think there must be some benefit to athletic performance connected to Gatorade. I had, however, heard about the high levels of sugar before this post. What I did not know was how much it would take for the positive effects of Gatorade to outweigh the negative. One thing I would be curious to know, however, is the benefits of Gatorade for people who are sick. I have often heard that it helps replace the electrolytes that the body loses while you are sick. This post was very interesting, and I think, with more data, it could be applied in many areas, especially coaching.
In high school, I lived off Gatorade. I would bring one to school, drink one at practice, and most of the time drink one after practice. I had cases in the refrigerator, nice and cold, ready to drink. Since the end of senior year, I have not drank much Gatorade. I have moved to drinking much more water, iced tea, and lemonade, instead of Gatorade. I understand that it is not the healthiest of drinks, but there are definitely worse. It is very hard to show how and if Gatorade affects your body, especially in the short-term like the experiment. Gatorade obviously does not give a performance boost in the span of minutes, so the experiment is largely unrealistic. I try to stay away from Gatorade on a regular basis, but when exercising, I definitely choose Gatorade.