Who Invented Sports Drinks?

But how did all of this get started? And does your average exerciser need sports drinks to replenish during or after a workout. In the United States, Gatorade gets credited as the first sports drink, but there was one on the market in the United Kingdom decades before Gatorade got

its start. It's now called lucas Aid. A chemist named William Owen developed what would become Luca's Aid in nineteen twenty seven, and the initial purpose of the glucose in water mixture was to provide an easy source of calories and energy for people who were ill. Because of its

inclusion of glucose. The drink was originally called glucoseade. Glucose is a form of sugar used by all living organisms that we know of to produce a denisine triphosphate, or ATP, which is what cells use as energy to get stuff done. Everything that a cell does, it uses ATP to do. During the first couple decades of the nineteen hundreds, researchers were learning about glucose and its link to energy in

our bodies. There were a bunch of Nobel Prizes given about these discoveries, so it was a savvy marketing move at the time. The name of the drink switched over to lucose Aid a couple decades later, as the brand was sold to the pharma company Beacham Group. Through a number of mergers over the years, that company became glaxosmith Klein, which then sold the brand to Sumtory in the twenty teens.

The reason that lucas Aid doesn't get the first sports drink cred it deserves falls almost entirely on a marketing problem. It wasn't until the mid nineteen eighties that the manufacturer realized that it could sell lucas Aid as more than just a drink for sick people. The company repositioned the brand as a drink to replace lost energy, developed new flavors,

and started pulling in millions in sales. It's still the number one selling sports drink brand in the United Kingdom, but Gatorade was the one that sparked the lucrative sports drink market. It was also the first drink developed specifically to support athletes in training. It was nineteen sixty five at the University of Florida or UF. An assistant football coach and campus hospital security chief by the name of Dwayne Douglas noticed that his players were losing a lot

of weight during training and games. They weren't urinating despite drinking a lot of water sometimes, and some even experienced heatstroke. Douglas teamed up with a few doctors, led by doctor Robert Caid, a kidney disease specialist at UF, to talk the problem through. Caid worked with the UF's College of Medicine to develop a drink to replenish what these athletes were losing through their strain and sweat. Carbohydrates aka sugar

and electrolytes. Electrolytes are a set of minerals that your body needs to maintain its fluid levels and regulate its muscle function. A Caid and his research team formulated a drink that was essentially water with sugar, salt, and potassium. The only problem was the drink was disgusting, so Caide's wife proposed adding lemon juice to make it a little

bit more palatable. Later that year, the football team the Gators started drinking gatorade during practice games, and not only did the weight loss problem improve, but they also saw a significant drop in the number of players experiencing heat exhaustion. It's hard to say whether it actually improved player's performance during these games, but they did go on to achieve

an eight to two record that season. Part of the reason for the players improved was that at the time, there is something of a superstition that drinking water during exercise would lead to debilitating stomach cramps, so the switch from drinking nothing to literally anything water based probably would

have helped. Gatorade was originally made on campus, packaged in individuals serving milk cartons on UF's dairy farm, but by the fall of nineteen sixty seven, a company called Stokely Van Camp bought the rights to the recipe and the

name and started expanding tremendously through acquisitions. PepsiCo now owns the Gatorade brand, which has expanded to a number of drink and snack products and earns Pepsi at least a billion dollars in sales every year, and there are lots of competitors in the industry, including Power Aid owned by Coke, Body Armour, Vitamin Water, Propel, Prime Rain, Ghost, Roar, and on and on. Most sports drinks or drink mixes are

a blend of carbohydrates and electrolytes. The car are generally sugar, and the electrolytes are generally a mix of salt and potassium, designed to replenish what you lose in sweat during an intense workout. Most also have flavors and colors added, which is how you end up with varieties like Fierce Green and Frost Blue. The sugars in these products can add up. Keep in mind that a single serving is usually only eight ounces, and most bottles are two to four times

that size per serving. They contain around fifteen grams of carbs equaling about fifty calories, so if you drink a whole bottle that can pretty easily add more calories to your diet than you'd actually burn during a thirty to sixty minute workout session. If you're exercising for less than forty five minutes, chances are that you don't need a sports drink at all because you're not burning enough calories or losing enough electrolytes to require that kind of hardcore

replacement strategy. You can switch to a sugar free formula, but just drinking water should do the trick unless it's super hot and you're sweating back. Some distance runners and other endurance exercisers just add a pinch of salt to their water instead of purchasing sports drinks. However, no matter how much marketing plays up the athletic angle, sports drinks

really can help during certain kinds of illness. If you're losing fluids through excessive sweat, diarrhea, or vomiting, the carbs and minerals and sports drinks can help your body replace its lost hydration, energy, and nutrients. Today's episode is based on the article who Invented Sports Drinks on HowStuffWorks dot com, written by Becky Strip. Brain Stuff is production of by Heart Radio and partnership with How Stuffworks. Dot com and

is produced by Tyler Klang. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.