Sport Drink Facts and Fictions

Sports Drinks

Commercial sports drinks make many claims, such as giving athletes 'wings' (Red Bull GmbH, n.d.), "Seizing Every Advantage" (PepsiCo, 2013), or "Go Stronger for Longer" (Coca Cola Co., 2013). Red Bull's Energy Drink contains 320 mg of caffeine and 110g (11%) of sucrose and glucose per liter (Red Bull GmbH, n.d.). Gatorade Thirst Quencher contains 58.3 g (5.8%) of sucrose and dextrose per liter of beverage (PepsiCo., 2013) and Powerade contains 55.6 g (5.6%) of the artificial sweetener sucralose in the same volume (Coca Cola Co., 2013). This report will review what is known about caffeine and carbohydrate supplementation during intense physical exercise by reviewing three recent empirical studies addressing this issue.

Clarke et al. (2012)

Purpose: Both Red Bull's Energy Drink (Red Bull GmbH, n.d.) and Gatorade (Coca Cola Co., 2013) incorporate two different sugars into their drinks, which is probably based...
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