Should I use sports drinks?

Luisa Dillner
29 September 2014
The Guardian
Sporting stars promote them as healthy and performance-enhancing alternatives to water. But is there any evidence to support the claim?
When did water stop being the best drink for quenching your thirst? It’s cheap, has no calories and a US independent Beverage Guidance panel ranked it top for its “contribution to intake of energy and essential nutrients” and for “its positive effects on health”. In comparison, sports drinks were way down the list, just above “sweetened, nutrient-poor drinks” such as Coca-Cola. Yet sports beverages – flavoured, often brightly coloured drinks containing carbohydrates, minerals, electrolytes and sometimes vitamins, are widely promoted at sporting events and by sports personalities. But do they really improve your sporting performance? Last week, the Australian authors of a paper in the Journal of Medical Ethics argued that “sponsorship could mislead the public into thinking these products work well and/or are good for health – for which there is no strong scientific evidence”.
An advert earlier this year claiming Lucozade Sport “hydrated you and fuels you better than water” was banned by the Advertising Standards Authority, which ruled it was misleading. Meanwhile, pediatric journals warn that the acidity in sports drinks erodes teeth enamel and encourages obesity – a 500ml bottle of Lucozade Sport contains 17.5g of sugar (a teaspoon is 4g). An analysis by Carl Heneghan’s team at Oxford’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine of 1,035 web pages with 431 performance-enhancing claims for 104 different products (a mixture of sports drinks, supplements, trainers and clothing) found only three studies out of 146 were high quality and at low risk of bias. The team concluded there was insufficient evidence for the health benefits of any of the claims. Meanwhile, an investigation into sports drinks by the BMJ two years ago concluded that people who avoided sports drinks could well get thinner and run faster.