One of my clients, an athlete training in MMA (mixed martial arts. That’s what you see in UFC) asked me what I think about sports drinks. Let me tell you.

First of all, what is a sports drink? A sports drink is a specially-formulated drink that is supposed to replace the nutrients that you lose when exercising.

Original source: here.

            And by the way, sports drinks are not energy drinks (so a Red Bull and a Gatorade are not the same).

Anyways, what are the nutrients lost during exercise?  Well, you lose sugar (glucose). You also lose electrolytes. What are electrolytes? They are 4 specific minerals: sodium, potassium, magnesium and calcium. They help electricity move around the body (yes, there is electricity inside the body. And yes, you can take that as a compliment. I just called you positively electric).

These are all fairly well-established facts. Now, let’s delve into the nitty gritty.

What should a good sports drink have?

  • Between 4-8% sugar. Most of the time, you don’t want added sugar. In a sports drink, you do. So for every 100ml of fluid, there should be 4-8 grams of sugar in it. For 1 cup (250ml), there should be 10-20 grams of sugar. That’s desirable.
  • It should have added sodium, somewhere in the range of 110-180mg. What??? Added sodium??? Yes. You naturally lose sodium as you sweat. And unlike the devil that it’s made out to be in the media, sodium is an essential nutrient. It helps your muscles contract, and it helps the nerves “tell” the muscles to contract. Without it, you would simply die.
  • It should have very little potassium. Yeah, we’re breaking all the rules of nutrition here. The reason that we want high sodium, low potassium is that when you sweat, you lose much more sodium (ever noticed how your sweat tastes salty?) than potassium. So you need to replenish them in the proper proportions.
  • It should have very little else.

Oh, and one other thing: no matter how good the formulation is, generally speaking, most people don’t need it if:

  1. You’re not exercising intensely enough. A walk, and gardening does not necessitate a sports drink.
  2. You’re not exercising long enough. If you workouts are less than 1 hour, you don’t need a sports drink.

Using these criteria, let’s take a look at the 2 most popular sports drinks on the market: Powerade and Gatorade.

Powerade is a big no-no. If you take a look at its ingredients label, you’ll see that it has 21 grams of sugar per 120 ml. That’s 17.5% sugar. Too much. What’s worse is that its second highest ingredient is high fructose corn syrup (AKA diabetes/obesity drink). And on top of that, it has artificial flavours.

I can hear some people saying “but it’s got vitamins.” Yeah, it has such low dosages that the only reason Powerade puts them in there is to impress the consumer that doesn’t really know how much of these vitamins they need. But since you’ve read this article, now you’re not one of those consumers.

My verdict: give Powerade to the terrorists. It will kill them faster.

Next up: Gatorade.

Significantly better than Powerade is Gatorade. No high fructose corn syrup, no artificial flavours. But the sugar content is still too high. 23 grams per 118 ml.

One other knock on Gatorade is that a lot of its flavoring ingredients (like isomaltulose, dextrose and maltodextrin) are corn-based. If you have a corn sensitivity (and a lot of people do), Gatorade could have the opposite effect of what you want: decreased performance.

So Powerade is the terrorists’ drink, Gatorade is better, but still not what I’d call “good”, so what’s a good sports drink?

Try this recipe:

Pour water into a bottle. Put in 3-4 teaspoons of sugar. Add a pinch of salt (less than one tenth of a teaspoon. Not even enough to taste the salt). And there you go. You have the healthiest, most effective sports drink on the market.

Let’s see how it stacks up to our criteria:

  • Between 4-8% sugar? Check. 1 bottle has about 350 ml. Each teaspoon has 5 grams of sugar (if it’s a level teaspoon, not a heaping teaspoon). So 3 teaspoons would have 15 grams of sugar, or 4.2%. 4 teaspoons would have 5.7% sugar.
  • It should have added sodium. Between 110-180mg. Check. One tenth of a teaspoon will give you about 240mg. You’re using less than one tenth, so it works.
  • It should have very little potassium. You didn’t add any potassium (so don’t think about squeezing a lemon in there), so that’s taken care of.
  • It should have very little else. Check.

So try this simple recipe next time you’ve got an intense workout that is longer than 1 hour, and let me know how you feel.