Understanding Sports and Energy Drinks

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Anyone who’s ever watched a professional sporting event has seen a bucket of Gatorade dumped over the winning coach. Aside from the celebration traditions, do sports and energy drinks do any thing for these athletes, or is it just clever marketing? Can these sports drinks help consumers and amateur athletes as well, if so what facts should they be aware when drinking them? Reading the advertisements of popular sports drink you are likely to encounter messages like this “Sports drinks are designed to maximize fluid absorption and enhance performance by delivering carbohydrates and electrolytes”. We’re going to take a look at these drinks to help you get a better understanding of what they can and can’t do for you.

The number one purpose for a sports drink is to keep you hydrated. As you exercise or perform any other type of strenuous activity, your body sweats. The amount you sweat is governed by three primary factors. The first factor is your exertion level (the harder the work the more you sweat). The second factor is the ambient temperature (the hotter the temperature around you the more you sweat). The third factor is your current level of hydration (the more hydrated you are the more you can sweat). Sweating is the body’s way of dealing with heat, as moisture is pushed out through the skin surface it evaporates, which cools the body. Most people who live in “normal” temperatures can produce a maximum of 1 liter of sweat per hour. When sweat leaves the body it not only takes water with it but it takes electrolytes as well (electrolytes contain chloride, calcium, magnesium, sodium and potassium). These electrolytes help your muscles contract, relax and regulate your nerve impulses. Electrolytes also help keep fluid levels in the body under control. As your body heats up and sweats, more and more electrolytes leave your body, and your body becomes less hydrated. Keeping your body well hydrated is not only essential for athletes but for everyone. In extreme conditions if your body becomes severely dehydrated it ceases to function properly, and can shut down, which will have serious health effects.

Conventional wisdom held that you could re-hydrate the body just by drinking more water. However what occurs inside the body is actually slightly more complicated. When you drink water it causes bloating inside your body, which increases the need urinate. Additionally water contains no vitamins and minerals and actually suppresses your overall thirst. Lastly water has no taste, which generally speaking, is less pleasant than liquids that have a taste or flavor. Recent studies performed at children’s sporting events showed that active children drank nearly 90% more flavored sports drinks than water under similar conditions. The more they drank the more likely they were to stay properly hydrated, play longer, get more exercise and have more fun.

While low carb diets like Atkins may not be as popular as they once were, clearly people are more conscious of their carbohydrate intake, and look for ways to limit it as much as possible. For professional athletes the carbohydrates are essential to help keep them on the field and in the game. Simply put the more carbs they consume the more energy they have to play in the game. However for people who are not professional athletes and are probably exercising to lose weight, carbohydrates are the enemy. Fortunately the manufacturers spotted this trend and now make products with less carbohydrates, in fact according to some labels, there is as much as an 80% reduction in the carbohydrate levels between some sports drinks.

Here are the nutritional values for the drinks we looked at:

Gatorade
Serving Size 8oz (240ml)
Calories per serving 50
Total fat 0g
Sodium 110mg
Potassium 30mg
Total Carbohydrates 14g
Sugars 14g
Protein 0g

PowerAde
Serving Size 8oz (240ml)
Calories per serving 60
Total fat 0g
Sodium 55mg
Potassium 30mg
Total Carbohydrates 17g
Sugars 15g
Protein 0g

PowerAde Option
Serving Size 8oz (240ml)
Calories per serving 10
Total fat 0g
Sodium 50mg
Potassium 35mg
Total Carbohydrates 2g
Sugars 2g
Protein 0g

While most of the drinks are similar from a nutritional value there are few differences to point out. Gatorade has the most sodium, double the sodium of the PowerAde. PowerAde however has more calories and more carbohydrates, again something you should be careful of if you are trying to lose weight. The PowerAde Option does have a lower level of calories and carbohydrates however it is often difficult to find on the store shelves.

To get better feel for how effective the sports drink were we assembled our team and did taste tests. Each participant was asked to rate the taste of the drink on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest. They also noted any feelings they had about the drinks and chose the flavor they preferred. Here are the results of the test:

Gatorade Lemonade: Not very lemony, tasted like flat lemonade, similar to diet lemonade
Gatorade Raspberry Lemonade: Better than the regular lemonade, very flat tasting
Gatorade Lemon Lime Strawberry: Very tart, too sugary, complex complicated flavor
Gatorade Frost: tasted like berry fruit juice, tasted like generic plain fruit juice
Gatorade Berry: best Gatorade flavor, flat berry taste, similar to fruit punch

The participants preferred the Berry, frost and lemonade flavors of Gatorade there wasn’t a strong overall preference as far as taste was concerned. The participants then repeated the taste test for PowerAde, and here are the results:

PowerAde Orange: tasted like tang, too tart, sour orange taste
PowerAde Fruit Punch: Tastes like Hawaiian punch, taste like fruit punch, doesn’t taste like a sports drink.
PowerAde Lemon Lime: tastes like weak lemonade, no distinctive taste, tastes like sugar water.
PowerAde Mountain Blast: Very berry like, tastes like berry juice, very sugary
PowerAde Option: flat after taste, smells awful, undrinkable, like sucking on a lemon peel

The test participants preferred the fruit punch followed by mountain blast. Overall most people found the PowerAde line of products tasted better than the Gatorade with one exception. No one in the test group liked the PowerAde Option which had the lowest calories and carbohydrates.

People who drinks sports drink should be aware that most of them have high levels of citric acid. Citric acid is very corrosive on tooth enamel. To prevent and reduce any possible decay which may occur, never swish sports drinks around inside of your mouth. Try to drink them with a straw if possible, and brush your teeth as soon as possible after you have consumed them.

Some people however find sports drinks too sweet, salty, sour or heavy and instead prefer to drink water. To satisfy these consumers companies have now come out with energy waters, which give you the benefits of traditional sports drinks in water. As was stated above water generally suppresses thirst, so in most cases you will find some sort of mild flavor additive being used to increase the rate at which you are drinking (remember the more you drink the less chance you have of becoming dehydrated).

Here is a look at some of the nutritional qualities of some popular energy water products.

Propel Fitness Water
Serving Size 8oz (240ml)
Calories per serving 10
Total fat 0g
Sodium 35mg
Total Carbohydrates 3g
Sugars 2g
Protein 0g

Glaceau Smart Water
Serving Size 8oz (240ml)
Calories per serving 0
Total fat 0g
Sodium 0g
Total Carbohydrates 0g
Sugars 0g
Protein 0g
(electrolytes were added to this product)

Propel Berry Water: light berry punch, mild berry drink, very sweet
Propel Lemon Water: tastes like diet lemonade, unpleasant odor, and weak taste
Glaceau Smart Water: Tastes like plain water, tastes exactly like water

The test subjects preferred the Propel Berry water, and everyone felt there was no discernable difference between the Glaceau Smart Water and bottled water, which made many question if it was actually worth paying three times the price of regular water.

Of all the drinks we tested the ones that tasted most like fruit punch or berry got the highest scores for taste. The lemon flavors were generally not well received with the exception of the Gatorade Lemonade, so you may have to experiment with the flavors to find one you enjoy the most. Remember sports drinks are designed to keep you hydrated first and foremost, so for it to work properly you are going to have to drink as close to the recommended serving size as possible for it to have the greatest effect.

Further reading:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/sweat.htm

http://www.brianmac.demon.co.uk/drinks.htm

http://www.gssiweb.com/reflib/refs/131/d00000002000002b2.cfm?pid=38

http://www.propelfitnesswater.com/fitness_health_expertise/professionals_library/

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