Speaker 1: Welcome to brainstud a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogebam. Here, A stroll down the beverage aisle in
Speaker 1: any American supermarket will present you with a wall of
Speaker 1: veritably glowing sports drinks and a rainbow of colors and flavors,
Speaker 1: with options from major soft drink companies like Pepsi and
Speaker 1: Coca Cola, jockeying for your attention, all promising to improve
Speaker 1: your performance or quench your thirst in some superior way.
Speaker 1: It's an industry worth some thirty billion dollars a year.
Speaker 1: But how did all of this get started? And does
Speaker 1: your average exerciser need sports drinks to replenish during or
Speaker 1: after a workout. In the United States, Gatorade gets credited
Speaker 1: as the first sports drink, but there was one on
Speaker 1: the market in the United Kingdom decades before Gatorade got
Speaker 1: its start. It's now called lucas Aid. A chemist named
Speaker 1: William Owen developed what would become Luca's Aid in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty seven, and the initial purpose of the glucose in
Speaker 1: water mixture was to provide an easy source of calories
Speaker 1: and energy for people who were ill. Because of its
Speaker 1: inclusion of glucose. The drink was originally called glucoseade. Glucose
Speaker 1: is a form of sugar used by all living organisms
Speaker 1: that we know of to produce a denisine triphosphate, or ATP,
Speaker 1: which is what cells use as energy to get stuff done.
Speaker 1: Everything that a cell does, it uses ATP to do.
Speaker 1: During the first couple decades of the nineteen hundreds, researchers
Speaker 1: were learning about glucose and its link to energy in
Speaker 1: our bodies. There were a bunch of Nobel Prizes given
Speaker 1: about these discoveries, so it was a savvy marketing move
Speaker 1: at the time. The name of the drink switched over
Speaker 1: to lucose Aid a couple decades later, as the brand
Speaker 1: was sold to the pharma company Beacham Group. Through a
Speaker 1: number of mergers over the years, that company became glaxosmith Klein,
Speaker 1: which then sold the brand to Sumtory in the twenty teens.
Speaker 1: The reason that lucas Aid doesn't get the first sports
Speaker 1: drink cred it deserves falls almost entirely on a marketing problem.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until the mid nineteen eighties that the manufacturer
Speaker 1: realized that it could sell lucas Aid as more than
Speaker 1: just a drink for sick people. The company repositioned the
Speaker 1: brand as a drink to replace lost energy, developed new flavors,
Speaker 1: and started pulling in millions in sales. It's still the
Speaker 1: number one selling sports drink brand in the United Kingdom,
Speaker 1: but Gatorade was the one that sparked the lucrative sports
Speaker 1: drink market. It was also the first drink developed specifically
Speaker 1: to support athletes in training. It was nineteen sixty five
Speaker 1: at the University of Florida or UF. An assistant football
Speaker 1: coach and campus hospital security chief by the name of
Speaker 1: Dwayne Douglas noticed that his players were losing a lot
Speaker 1: of weight during training and games. They weren't urinating despite
Speaker 1: drinking a lot of water sometimes, and some even experienced heatstroke.
Speaker 1: Douglas teamed up with a few doctors, led by doctor
Speaker 1: Robert Caid, a kidney disease specialist at UF, to talk
Speaker 1: the problem through. Caid worked with the UF's College of
Speaker 1: Medicine to develop a drink to replenish what these athletes
Speaker 1: were losing through their strain and sweat. Carbohydrates aka sugar
Speaker 1: and electrolytes. Electrolytes are a set of minerals that your
Speaker 1: body needs to maintain its fluid levels and regulate its
Speaker 1: muscle function. A Caid and his research team formulated a
Speaker 1: drink that was essentially water with sugar, salt, and potassium.
Speaker 1: The only problem was the drink was disgusting, so Caide's
Speaker 1: wife proposed adding lemon juice to make it a little
Speaker 1: bit more palatable. Later that year, the football team the
Speaker 1: Gators started drinking gatorade during practice games, and not only
Speaker 1: did the weight loss problem improve, but they also saw
Speaker 1: a significant drop in the number of players experiencing heat exhaustion.
Speaker 1: It's hard to say whether it actually improved player's performance
Speaker 1: during these games, but they did go on to achieve
Speaker 1: an eight to two record that season. Part of the
Speaker 1: reason for the players improved was that at the time,
Speaker 1: there is something of a superstition that drinking water during
Speaker 1: exercise would lead to debilitating stomach cramps, so the switch
Speaker 1: from drinking nothing to literally anything water based probably would
Speaker 1: have helped. Gatorade was originally made on campus, packaged in
Speaker 1: individuals serving milk cartons on UF's dairy farm, but by
Speaker 1: the fall of nineteen sixty seven, a company called Stokely
Speaker 1: Van Camp bought the rights to the recipe and the
Speaker 1: name and started expanding tremendously through acquisitions. PepsiCo now owns
Speaker 1: the Gatorade brand, which has expanded to a number of
Speaker 1: drink and snack products and earns Pepsi at least a
Speaker 1: billion dollars in sales every year, and there are lots
Speaker 1: of competitors in the industry, including Power Aid owned by Coke,
Speaker 1: Body Armour, Vitamin Water, Propel, Prime Rain, Ghost, Roar, and
Speaker 1: on and on. Most sports drinks or drink mixes are
Speaker 1: a blend of carbohydrates and electrolytes. The car are generally sugar,
Speaker 1: and the electrolytes are generally a mix of salt and potassium,
Speaker 1: designed to replenish what you lose in sweat during an
Speaker 1: intense workout. Most also have flavors and colors added, which
Speaker 1: is how you end up with varieties like Fierce Green
Speaker 1: and Frost Blue. The sugars in these products can add up.
Speaker 1: Keep in mind that a single serving is usually only
Speaker 1: eight ounces, and most bottles are two to four times
Speaker 1: that size per serving. They contain around fifteen grams of
Speaker 1: carbs equaling about fifty calories, so if you drink a
Speaker 1: whole bottle that can pretty easily add more calories to
Speaker 1: your diet than you'd actually burn during a thirty to
Speaker 1: sixty minute workout session. If you're exercising for less than
Speaker 1: forty five minutes, chances are that you don't need a
Speaker 1: sports drink at all because you're not burning enough calories
Speaker 1: or losing enough electrolytes to require that kind of hardcore
Speaker 1: replacement strategy. You can switch to a sugar free formula,
Speaker 1: but just drinking water should do the trick unless it's
Speaker 1: super hot and you're sweating back. Some distance runners and
Speaker 1: other endurance exercisers just add a pinch of salt to
Speaker 1: their water instead of purchasing sports drinks. However, no matter
Speaker 1: how much marketing plays up the athletic angle, sports drinks
Speaker 1: really can help during certain kinds of illness. If you're
Speaker 1: losing fluids through excessive sweat, diarrhea, or vomiting, the carbs
Speaker 1: and minerals and sports drinks can help your body replace
Speaker 1: its lost hydration, energy, and nutrients. Today's episode is based
Speaker 1: on the article who Invented Sports Drinks on HowStuffWorks dot com,
Speaker 1: written by Becky Strip. Brain Stuff is production of by
Speaker 1: Heart Radio and partnership with How Stuffworks. Dot com and
Speaker 1: is produced by Tyler Klang. For more podcasts from My
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