Sports drink or water — what’s best for a workout?
Starting as an experiment run from the sidelines of the University of Florida football field 50 years ago, sports drinks have developed into a billion dollar business with everyone from pro athletes to weekend warriors counting on the unique combination of water, carbohydrates and electrolytes to keep them hydrated and energized while working up a sweat.
And while there’s little disagreement on the effectiveness of sports drinks to improve athletic performance, what began as a product engineered for elite athletes to consume during extended bouts of high intensity exercise has now become a product sold in local supermarkets, vending machines and corner stores to anyone with a thirst on.
That switch from ergogenic aid to mainstream beverage has health officials warning consumers about the consequences of drinking sports drinks like water. While it has fewer calories than soft drinks or fruit juices, 100 per cent of the calories contained in a bottle of Gatorade, Powerade or any other sports drink comes from sugar (fructose).
For athletes, sugar (carbohydrates) is the fuel of choice when it comes to keeping working muscles energized while on the run. But for the average Joe or Jill, sugar is on the watch list of foods that contribute to obesity and chronic health problems including cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure and insulin resistance.
Given the debate about the role of sports drinks in adding unnecessary calories to the diet of anyone who counts their exercise in minutes not hours, a couple of Illinois researchers decided to review existing studies to find out whether consuming sports drinks while working out cancels out the calorie deficit generated by a workout.
The researchers restricted their review to studies using traditional sports drinks containing a concentration of six to eight per cent carbohydrates, and compared the number of calories consumed in the form of sports drinks to the number of calories burned through exercise. Most featured research subjects participating in sustained periods of steady state exercise versus intervals where intensity changes dramatically.
In all 30 studies that met the criteria for inclusion, the number of calories expended exceeded the number of calories consumed in the form of a sports drink, which isn’t surprising considering the energy burned ranged from 2,500 to 690 calories, with the longest bout of exercise lasting 197 minutes and the shortest 73 minutes.
“Ingestion of sports drinks does add calories and narrows the energy deficit created by exercise, but the energy expended was calculated to be on average, threefold higher than the energy ingested,” the researchers said.
While this might be good news for endurance athletes who rely on sports drinks to get them to the finish line, they’re the minority when it comes to the type of people who purchase sports drinks. In fact, the most interesting discovery made by the Illinois researchers is that it takes 69 minutes of high intensity exercise to burn off the calories consumed from sports drinks — a duration and intensity that far exceeds most workouts.
Given the amount of exercise needed to burn off the energy consumed from your favourite sports drink, it’s not surprising health and nutrition experts recommend that anyone exercising for an hour or less drink water instead of a sports drinks to quench their thirst.
So while there’s no disputing the value of consuming sports drinks during a long hard run, ski or bike ride, or during a hotly contested game of soccer or tennis in the heat of summer, the benefits of gulping down a sports drink after your yoga practice, fitness class or 5K training run aren’t worth the cost of the extra calories. This is especially true for children who, because they are smaller, tend to burn fewer calories given the same exercise intensity and duration as their adult counterparts.