Are Sports Drinks Good Or Bad For Your Health?

You’ve seen the commercials…

On the competition field is a high-performing, well-trained, and perfectly built athlete. His muscles are burning, his body is strained, and he’s sweating profusely, but he’s not tired. No, in fact, he’s just getting started…

You see, he has Gatorade, and that is the secret behind his superior performance, strength, and ultimate victory.

The makers of sports drinks everywhere would have you believe that YOU can be an athlete too, if only you drink Gatorade like all the world-famous superstars with million dollar paychecks. Convincing you of this is the reason they pay mega-bucks for celebrity endorsements.

Sports drinks now take up almost as much space as colas and are coloured to make your milk turn white. But why do we feel like we can’t do any physical activity without them? How do you make an informed choice when faced with such a wide variety of products?

Powerade is also competing for your energy and hydration dollars. They were the official sports drink of the Olympic Games. This doesn’t mean that Powerade is somehow better than Gatorade, however, or that it’s more nutritious for you. It just means they were willing to pay more for the ad spots.

Are Sports Drinks Nutritious

The claim to fame of sports drinks is that they provide the body with much-needed hydration, carbohydrates, and electrolytes, which are all depleted when you exercise. However, the advertisements make it appear as if pushing a baby stroller around the block or climbing a flight of stairs is sufficient reason to require something other than water.

Gatorade especially has convinced millions that water is simply not adequate for hydration, as though the human body suddenly stopped functioning as it has for tens of thousands of years and now needs extra help from modern-day engineered nutrition.

Let me make something perfectly clear…

The human body is hardwired to get hydration ONLY from natural sources like water. It has never, and will never, need additional help from Gatorade, Powerade, Vitamin Water, Ensure, Boost, Pedialyte, PediaSure, or any other chemical formula produced in a laboratory.

Well what about electrolytes? We need sports drinks to replenish our electrolytes!

There are plenty of electrolytes in foods like celery, apples, bananas, lemons, almonds, kale, and coconut water (nature’s Gatorade). As usual, nature has provided us with everything we need to stay in perfect balance. These are foods the body understands, unlike manufactured concoctions made entirely of artificial chemicals and sugar.

Gatorade’s own website states that there is no fruit or fruit juice in any of their products. How then can sports drinks have a fruity flavor? CHEMICALS! 

Why should you care?

These are the things in all processed foods that have been linked to cancer and other diseases. Cancer is not a mystery. It’s not just a crazy and unexplainable, random occurrence. SOMETHING has to cause it!

What The FDA Says About Sports Drinks

The FDA and other organizations tell us that such chemicals are completely safe as long as they are consumed within safety guidelines, but every foreign chemical that enters the human body affects us on a cellular level regardless of whether obvious toxicity can be observed. Safety levels of any additive can easily be surpassed when ingesting dozens of processed products repeatedly.

About 10,000 different chemicals are allowed by the FDA as food additives. 3000 of them HAVE NEVER BEEN REVIEWED FOR SAFETY by any federal agency.

Many of these chemicals are never even brought before the FDA until there is a suspected problem. They are simply declared safe without any evidence to deem them as such.

Brominated Vegetable Oil is one such additive used in sports drinks that has been banned in Europe and Japan, and an enthusiastic campaign is also underway to ban it in Canada. This chemical has been a topic of controversy in the US for years, but no effort has been made by any agency to eliminate it from our food.

Read also: Why Vegetable Oils Is Bad For You

**EDIT: PepsiCo announced in late January that it would be removing BVO from its Gatorade products. This is proof positive that food companies are beginning to listen to public outcry regarding chemicals in our food. What will come of this, and what they will replace it with, remains to be seen, but it is a small win for consumers. We will be keeping an eye out for further developments in this story.

The exact chemical composition of BVO is not readily available, but it does contain bromide (which is used in flame retardants), and has been shown to cause terrible side-effects like neurological disorders, reduced fertility, and altered thyroid function. Studies have also shown that BVO accumulates in breast milk and causes heart lesions in animals!

Feel protected? Me either.

Read also: How Eating Superfoods Will Get You More Bang For Your Buck

Are All Sports Drinks same?

They are available in a variety of carbohydrate content ranges. The speed with which the drink is absorbed is also influenced by its carbohydrate content. Those with 6 to 8 grammes of carbs per 100 millilitres are swiftly converted to energy by the body. These have adequate energy to meet the body’s requirements both before and after activity.

There are also those that include more than 8 grammes of carbs per 100 millilitres. To avoid digestion issues caused by their sugar content, they should be consumed after exercise. All high-level athletes have their own nutritional drink supplier. If you’re a novice, here are some insider tips that will help you break into the big league.

One of the dangers of sport drinks is that they mix with alcohol. Some people believe that energy drinks lessen the effects of alcohol and keep them awake and alert. They tend to drink more alcohol, which is associated with risky behavior and unfortunate incidents.

Read also: Best Protein Powders For Women

Are Sport Drinks Safe For Kids?

Sport drinks are not recommended for children or teenagers, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. A balanced diet is the best approach for children and teenagers to increase their energy levels. Getting enough sleep might also help you maintain your energy levels. Why should kids and teenagers stay away from energy drinks? One reason is that caffeine is the primary element in energy drinks. It has the potential to cause issues in children and teenagers.

Sport drinks may exacerbate existing issues in children and teenagers. These drinks, for example, can increase the risk of high blood pressure and irregular heartbeats in people who already have cardiac problems. Caffeine and other chemicals are found in sports drinks. It’s difficult to tell how much caffeine is in the drink because the label may not specify how much caffeine is in the other ingredients.

Will Sports Drinks Make You Fat?

The fact is that engineered nutrition makes us fat and keeps us that way.

A report from the University of California at Berkeley states that people who drink a 20 ounce sports drink every day for a year stand to gain an average of 13 pounds. This is not surprising when the ingredients are mainly water, high fructose corn syrup, and salt.

This is where many people trying to lose weight unknowingly sabotage themselves. Low calorie diet foods and drinks are often filled with sugars that cause insulin levels to spike. This insulin spike leads to weight gain and an inability to burn fat as energy.

Aside from that, the “energy” sports drinks are supposed to give you are short-lived. High fructose corn syrup, sucralose, and other simple sugars will give you a quick burst of energy, but that high will be followed by an equally powerful low. The crash results from the body’s attempt to regain balance after blood levels and organ function are artificially changed. This will only serve to diminish energy and overall performance.

Pure water is a far better alternative.