Didn’t Gatorade get pretty thoroughly debunked as just marketing? I think you’re only supposed to drink it if you like the taste, not for performance reasons.
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I was mainly a Kool-Aid drinker as a youth, but I have fond memories of the year I rode a 24-mile bike-a-thon for MS and then played the best AYSO soccer match of my life one Saturday because I mistook the cups of Mountain Dew at the hydration stations along the route for Gatorade. 
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milk of magnesia!
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More troubling to my mind is the study design:
Design: Each subject ( n = 72, euhydrated and fasted male subjects)
Even though reviews and selective re-testing of other male-only studies have proved them to be FAR less valuable.
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I keep the powder packets in the medicine cabinet- lasts longer
And the store-brand freezer pops are great for vomiting issues
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The article from the BB article puts soft drinks above sports drink, so I guess that checks out? It puts tea above sports drinks too.
This is what I was also thinking of:
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When I moved to Engand the Lucozade ads had the athletes drink some Lucazade, not win, then sit and drink some more Lucozade to palliate their failure. I don’t remember what the exact voiceover was but to my American ears it was something like “Lucozade: gives you the strength to fail.” Apparently the name is derived from “Glocozade” and not from the infamous British auto electronics company.
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Probably also 20X the amount of caffeine I’d normally consume in a day… /s
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Sounds like they stole a motto from whiskey.
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This is for drinks consumed on their own. Do the results really matter if you actually eat something with your drink?
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I got a case of “this life is the shits” many years ago. I fully hydrate with Malbec wine, Wormtown Be Hoppy ale, and mojitos. It works!
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Ardbeg. The Islay malt that sweetly whacks you.
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Chocolate milk especially, in my experience.
For actual endurance sports you do need to replenish electrolytes somehow. Hyponatremia is a real concern in that context. Gatorade, salt tablets, Doritos, pickle juice - different people have different approaches.
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For sure, but these articles also make it look like of all the other drinks used to get electrolytes, Gatorade is almost dead-last in effectiveness.
The marketing does a good job of making it seem like it should be way better than other drinks, instead of just barely better than water.
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In an emergency, you can mix up your own oral rehydration solution: clean water, sugar, salt.
https://visihow.com/Make_an_Oral_Rehydration_Solution_(homemade)
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That sounds like way too much lemon to me.
The current, consumer-grade Gatorade. The original formula was apparently a pretty nasty concoction with the sole purpose of rehydrating college football players… in a very specific college (hence the name).
College athletes will generally consume whatever they are told to. Your average person… won’t. So when they moved to make it mass marketable, out came the supplemental electrolytes in levels suited to playing football in the swamp, and in came the sugar. They simply sold it like it was the original (and as though the original was useful outside the narrowly targeted population it was formulated for).
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Ever since those “nut milks” started getting popular, we get studies like this. They’re worried about losing their customers, I guess. I share your aversion to drinking milk, but there are so many sugary products out there designed to set this habit from childhood (Big Cereal and companies that make milk flavoring products get lots of business).
I found this to explain why humans do this:
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Its got exactly the same stuff in it as Pedialyte. And the IV’s they hook up to dehydrated people. Just less concentration and it comes with a lot more sugar.
Hell, my grandmother’s doctor insisted she start drinking it after a few brushes with heat stroke. All she drinks is hot coffee otherwise.
Any claims I’ve seen that Gatorade doesn’t work relate to marketing claims that it makes you better at sports ball. Not whether lectrilytes are what plants crave.
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