The threat to sport drinks

When people find that sports drinks are not as effective as they are in advertising, the demand will be greatly reduced, which is a threat to sports drinks. This is why its advertisement is not so reliable:

Advertising: Sports drinks are a must-have item for sports. It not only can effectively replenish moisture, but also better promote electrolyte balance, replenish energy, prevent hyponatremia and water poisoning, and make athletes perform better. For non-athletes, sports drinks are also part of a healthy lifestyle, and sports drinks can make you healthier.

Truth: Sports drinks are mainly composed of water, sugar (glucose, oligosaccharides, etc.) and electrolytes of sodium and potassium ions. The purpose is to supplement the water, electrolytes and energy substances lost by athletes during competition and training. Its biggest function is designed for athletes who are engaged in intensive, high-intensity sports. For ordinary people, sports drinks are not healthy daily drinks, but it also brings a series of health problems.

Sports drinks help you stay in good shape?

For athletes, a large loss of body fluids may have an impact on health and exercise capacity, but whether sports drinks are as good as sports drink companies claim to better promote the replenishment of body fluids and electrolytes is now controversial.

Some scholars have suggested that athletes' three-day nutritional diet is enough to supplement their electrolyte and energy consumption during training and competition. From this point of view, it is not necessary to supplement the energy or electrolyte loss after training or competition with sports drinks. For the energy supplement during the competition or training interval, the appropriate amount of solid energy bars, candy bars, bananas, etc. can also achieve the corresponding purpose, this sports drink has no outstanding advantage.

The biggest achievement of the sports drink industry is that it has successfully shaken people's trust in “thirst”. Thirst has long been considered a fairly well-established discovery and coping mechanism for dehydration. But research sponsored by sports drink companies has pointed out that this mechanism is inaccurate and unreliable, and relying on thirst mechanisms may make it impossible to fully compensate for lost body fluids. Therefore, "even if athletes are not thirsty, they should add 150 ml of liquid every 15 minutes."

http://sayfitness.com/the-importance-of-staying-hydrated/

Sports drinks make you healthier?

After successfully convincing athletes that what to drink during exercise is as important as usual training, the sports drink industry has followed the target sales crowd. They advertised to the mass media, and they also communicated the importance of rehydration and bottled water to schools, parents and students through sports medicine education.

Their strategy is very effective. Now non-athletes have become the biggest consumer group of sports drinks. Many people who are not very active drink sports drinks as a healthy lifestyle. An analysis from the Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University pointed out that a quarter of American parents believe that sports drinks are healthy drinks for children.

But all the research provided by sports drinks companies is aimed at people who maintain intensive, high-intensity exercise habits. They did not seem to have considered that the vast majority of their consumer groups were only those who went to the gym for an average of two hours a week. This is why the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) stated that electrolyte drinks containing carbohydrates (sports drinks) are only suitable for those who are physically active in high-intensity endurance sports.

http://www.kidsdentalonline.com/dental-topics/tips-safety/sports-drinks-can-harmful-teeth/

Researchers at Harvard University point out that a 500-ml sweet drink usually contains 3-14 tablespoons of sugar (1 tablespoon about 4 grams of sugar). Eating more sugar means ingesting more energy. If other aspects are not controlled, it will increase health problems such as obesity, diabetes, dental caries and gout. The above analysis from Yale University confirmed that the increase in children's consumption of sports drinks has contributed a lot to their obesity.

Sports drinks should obviously not be consumed as a healthy drink.

In conclusion, when sports beverage companies sell their products, they all emphasize the scientific evidence behind the products. In the British Medical Journal's systematic review of sports drinks, it is found that the following problems are common in related research: insufficient sample size, low research quality, manipulation of data (preferential positive results), lack of double blindness Tests, etc. In the positional paper on rehydration published by the American College of Sports Medicine, most editorial committees expressed their cooperation or funded relationship with certain sports beverage companies in the conflict of interest statement or description at the end of the article. In addition, since the evaluations of relevant institutions and famous journals have established long-term cooperative relationships with well-known sports and beverage companies, research on negative reports on sports drinks is difficult to publish. However, the market for sports drinks is increased by this series of advertisement.

Jiali ZHU