February 12, 2025 • 45 mins
This massive brand kicked off the sports drink industry in the 1960s. Anney and Lauren explore the history and (some) science of Gatorade.
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hello, and welcome to Savor Prediction of iHeartRadio. I'm Annie Reese.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
And I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and today we have an episode
for you about Gatorade. Yes, not a sponsor, Not a sponsor, Nope, nope.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Uh I think I know the answer to this, but
I will ask the question anyway. Was there a particular
reason this was on your mind? Lauren?
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Yes, as we record this episode, the proverbial big Game
is upon us, by which I mean the the NFL
Super Bowl. And I'm still I'm still a rebel. I
still say that out loud on this our podcast because
(00:54):
it is a factual statement. I'm not saying that this
episode is connected to that body or or that event
in literally any way. It's just it's going to happen.
And so, you know, I was thinking about sports drinks
or you know, I was like, Okay, what's a topic
that we haven't done yet, And we have not done
sports drinks. And also I had just done an episode
(01:16):
about sports drinks over on my other podcast, Brain Stuff,
and so I was like, yeah, that seems like an
interesting story. There are entire transcripts of you know, twenty
eight pages worth of interviews that I haven't read all
the way through yet, so let's read smart that.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Wow, you're braver than I. The big game it is
to me maybe because my dad was a lawyer. I'm
so paranoid. But I we were talking about this. This
is something we put off for a while because it's
complicated in terms of the the context of the whole subject.
(02:00):
But the company, this is, this is manageable. Ish. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Yeah, I did delay our recording by like an hour.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Yeah, but but here we are.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Here we are, Yeah, here we are. I will say
that this is not there's a lot of things that
this episode is not okay, and like, it is not
an episode about the nutritional function of these products. It
is not an episode about all of the nitty gritty
about electrolytes and all of that kind of stuff. I'll
(02:40):
say a few things about it as we go, but
we're not we're not nutritionists or scientists of any kind. Yeah,
not really qualified to talk about that.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Nope, nope. And I'll say for the history part, I
really was just relying on what the researchers said at
the time, so, which is correct. But I'm not going
to I don't know the nutrition.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Tu Yeah, aspects of that. Yeah, and I'll pepper a
few a few things in there that will put some
of that those facts into context.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
So yeah, yeah, but yes, I guess.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
This does bring us to our question. I certainly suppose
it does. Yeah, Gatorade, what is it? Well, Gatorade is
a brand of sports drinks and related products currently owned
by PepsiCo. They have a few different lines of drinks
(03:50):
and drink mixes, but their baseline formula is this combination
of sugars like glucose, which your body needs on a
cellular level to create energy, and electrolytes like a salt
and potassium. Electrolytes being a group of minerals that your
body needs to maintain its fluid levels and to regulate
its muscle function. All Right, The idea here is that
(04:15):
you're gonna replenish the lost water, calories and minerals that
you sweat out during prolonged or otherwise intense exercise. Other
formulas have other stuff, maybe like added vitamins or caffeine
or a sugar substitute so that you're not drinking calories,
depending on what they're marketed for. Yeah, Gatorade products typically
(04:38):
come in bright colors and candy like fruit flavors. It
is the original and the largest brand of sports drinks
in the world and part of a multi billion dollar industry,
and people also have like strong nostalgia for it and
like strong opinions about it, like favorite flavors and you know,
(05:00):
appropriate temperatures at which to drink it, and all kinds
of different things like that, like the flavor that got away,
the one that was discontinued sometime twenty years ago and
you still miss but yeah, uh, like you probably don't
need it. You probably don't need it. So it's like,
(05:20):
and I'm really trying not to be mean here, but
like it's kind of like if leaf blowers had like
one overwhelmingly popular brand of leaf blowers, because like, the
products were designed to serve a purpose and they do
serve it, and they are applied in many situations in
(05:43):
which they are at best unnecessary and at worst like
real unnecessary.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Wow, you and I just had a long conversation last
year recording about our opinions on leaf flowers.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Uh. Yeah, let the record state that I do I
do think that leaf flowers are one of humanity's worst inventions.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Not not related to gatorade.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Necessarily no no, it's their gatorade is now they're never
going to be a sponsor. Heck uh, you can tell
they're not a sponsor because I Yeah, again, I'm not
trying to be mean when I say that, but that
was the most apt metaphor that I could, or similarly
(06:44):
technically that that came to mind.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Yes, and we were because when you suggested this, I
gasped aloud, uh oh no, no, no, no, And we were
talking about it, and I said, you know, the only
time I drink Gatorade is when after a run, usually
(07:10):
very hot because we're in Atlanta, or when I'm sick.
So I actually have very specific associations with Gatorade. But
other than that, I do not seek it out because
it's too sweet, honestly for meat.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I even I also will drink it
when I'm sick, and even then I water it like
I like, I fill a cup with ice, like a
lot of like chipped ice, preferably, and then pour Gatorade
on top of that. And that is about the sweetness
of Gatorade that I want to consume. But but yeah, now,
(07:48):
people have opinions, and if you have a differing opinion,
I don't want to say that you are wrong. It
is just differing, and that's fine, that's great.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
You know we love strong opinions.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Oh yes, partially because we have them here. We are okay,
but so yes, there are many current flavors. There have
been many discontinued flavors. If you have come here looking
for a comprehensive list of current Gatorade flavors, I am
so sorry to disappoint you, but I'm merely going to
(08:19):
be summarizing here partially because and this is super interesting
to me. On Gatorade dot com, you know, like the
American Gatorade Consumer Forward website, they have basically removed the
brand's lines of bottled beverages from site as of right now,
(08:40):
as of February of twenty twenty five. Like you can
find those product pages, but you have to like google
very specific things and get a direct link, Like it
is not in the menu options.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
They seem instead to be really into selling reusable bottles
and then various powders and tablet some liquid concentrates to
put in those bottles along with water of your own.
And I think that all of this is in or
all of this is in a bid to reduce single
use plastics. So I like couldn't find a current list
(09:17):
a complete current list, but okay. Their product lines in
general include like different formulations that promise different benefits, like
rapid hydration versus performance fuel versus a hydration booster versus
(09:37):
like a pre workout slash energy boost versus prolonged activity endurance.
All of these are going to have different levels of
sugar or zero sugar, or additional vitamins and minerals stuff
like that. The flavors on these products range from from
things that we understand to be flavors, you know, like
(10:01):
orange or lemon, lime, fruit punch, grape, to like aquatic
actions like a riptide rush or a glacier freeze, to
weather related abstractions like lightning blast or midnight thunder. There
(10:22):
are guides online to what those flavors taste like if
you're curious WHOA Often often like the food coloring in
the packaging or in the drink, or the lack thereof
will give you kind of a concept, but I don't
(10:45):
know it's going on vibes a lot of the time,
and I really respect that in a certain way.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
You feeling of your eyed rash or a lightning blast.
What's going on?
Speaker 2 (11:00):
I don't know. I like absurdism, Sure, let's go.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Mine is blue. If it's blue, I'm like, probably that one.
I don't know what that says about me.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Yeah, I'm a pretty staunch fruit punch person. But it's classic. Yeah,
it's red. I know what to expect. I don't know.
Gatorade also does have a line of protein bars in
various chocolate related flavors, and in twenty twenty four they
(11:32):
released an unflavored Gatorade water with electrolytes and I quote
foretaste okay, yeah, okay. The larger Gatorade portfolio within PepsiCo,
because this is a thing, it includes sub brands I
(11:54):
guess like Propel, which is a line of flavored waters
and powders with which to flavor water containing no sugar vitamins,
and Gatorade Electrolytes, which is another branded phrase if you
couldn't tell from my capitalization there. Then there's also fast Twitch,
which is a pre workout energy powder and or flavored
(12:15):
water brand, then Muscle Milk, which are protein shakes and powders,
and then Evolve, which are specifically plant based protein shakes
and powders. Some of muscle milks are plant based as well,
but I don't make up the rules.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Wow, yeah, Propel, that's that's a throwback for me, my
little brother.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Oh yeah, okay, okay.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
When he was growing up. Ye yes, Propel all the time,
the green one that was.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
His Oh all right, yeah cool. I'm not positive that
I've ever had that product, but I'm you know again,
people have strong feelings in like nostalgian opinions about these things.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Gatorade does all to sell various sports adjacent equipment, like
the aforementioned reusable bottles, those like classic like VAT coolers,
you know, in case you need like a lot of
Gatorade and ice chests, plus towels, towels that are sometimes
co branded with NFL teams.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
Yes, indeed, Well this brings us to the question, h
what about the nutrition?
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Okay, okay, okay, y'all again, Like, I'm not gonna go deep, deep,
deep into this, but I'm gonna say the sugars in
these products can add up, you know, Like a single
serving is generally like eight ounces if you do buy
it in bottle form. Most of the bottles are like
(13:51):
two to four times that size per serving. And again
it depends on like like like product to product, but
they can contain like a round fifty ten grams of
carbs equaling about fifty calories, and that's preserving. So if
you drink a whole bottle, that can really easily add
more calories to your diet than you would actually burn
(14:11):
during you know, like a thirty to sixty minute workout session.
If you're exercising for less than forty five minutes and ago,
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 replacement strategy. All right,
(14:32):
you can't switch to a sugar free formula, but just
drinking water will usually do the trick, unless it's super
hot and you know you're really sweating. Also, you know,
like you don't always have to buy branded things like
some distance runners and other endurance exercisers like add a
pinch as salt to their water instead of purchasing sports drinks.
(14:53):
I know, I've never done endurance training, or the last
time I did was in like the Year of Our
Dark Lord nineteen ninety nine, So like it's been a minute,
but you know, everyone has personal strategies to get them
through that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Yes, and I believe we talked about it in our
pickle juice. Pickle juice is the thing that some people
do during strenuous exercise.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
It's salt and water, and I mean, potassium is great.
Sugar can be helpful anyway. But the one thing that
sports drinks really are good for is during certain kinds
of illness, because if you're losing fluids through excessive sweat
or diarrhea or vomiting or all three, those carbs and
(15:48):
minerals can help your body replace the lost hydration and
energy and nutrients without really upsetting your stomach by trying
to introduce solid food, which isn't always what it wants
from you at that sh I'm sure.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
So it is true. Okay, Well, we do have some
numbers for you.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
We do so. Twenty twenty five is Gatorade's sixtieth anniversary,
So happy anniversary, Gatorade. Worldwide, the sports drink industry is
worth some thirty billion dollars a year, and globally, Gatorade
(16:31):
is responsible for about seven billion dollars of that as
of twenty twenty three. Anyway, Gatorade accounted for about sixty
four percent of the American market for sports drinks. Like
the two followers up together, Power Aid and Body Armor,
which are both owned by Coca Cola, are only about
(16:53):
twenty five percent of the market. So in the States,
just absolutely wild domination of the market. And that is
I suspect why they aren't currently marketing their their bottles
on their website because they don't have to.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Like they just.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Also last number, I guess it's kind of a number
for all of the new different products that they have
out there, the classic plastic bottled Gatoried beverages are still
the brand's best seller.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Wow, yep, they know they're at the top. Yeah, we
have to.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Must be nice.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
It must be nice. And the story of how it
became this way is really fascinating.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Oh yeah, I love brand episodes. Okay, so yeah, we
are going to get into that as soon as we
get back from a quick break for a word from
our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
And we're back, Thank you sponsor.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Yes, thank you. Okay. So, there is a long history
of people selling drinks for various purported health purposes. You
can see our episode on like Soda water and soda
fountains for a bunch of conversation about mineral waters, which
were kind of the original sports drinks. I suppose a
more direct predecessor of Gatorade is this British brand called
(18:25):
lucas Aide that got its start way back in the
nineteen twenties. It was this glucose and water drink that
was sold as a product for people who were sick
and needed an easy way to get calories and energy.
Glucose was new then. It was a really smart marketing
thing in the nineteen twenties. I don't think this brand
had a direct influence on Gatorade, but the research around
(18:46):
glucose in general would have had to.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Yes. Okay, So when it comes to Gatorade, the story
goes that Gatorade was invented in the ninth teen sixties
at the University of Florida College of Medicine by doctor
James Robert Cade and his team of scientists including research
fellows doctor Dana Shires, Jemfrey and A and Di Caseda.
(19:13):
They were looking to create a product that would help
with heat related illnesses athletes would suffer. So to do
this they were they set about coming up with a
product that would replace the fluids, calories, and electrolytes athletes lost,
especially in the heat during strenuous activity, which Florida has
(19:34):
a lot of heat. So yep, kind of a saying.
Since they were specifically looking to help out UF's University
of Florida's football team, the Gators, they called it Gatorade.
It was used for the first time in nineteen sixty five.
But okay, let's break down some of this. There's a lot,
(19:56):
a lot of legend and lore behind this whole Oh sorry,
Oh yes. The sixties was a time when a lot
of scientific research was being done in the field of
sports science, and doctor Cade specialized in renal therapy our
kidney basically studied the kidney, yeah, and knew a lot
(20:16):
about how human bodies regulate fluids or how they don't.
He helped establish the Division of Renal Medicine at Shan's Hospital,
which was associated with the College of Medicine at University
of Florida still is Yeah, yep. As legend has it,
he was chatting with the assistant coach of the Gaetors
who told him that the players were suffering from all
(20:37):
of these heat related illnesses.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
The coach in question was one Dwayne Douglas, who also
happened to be the security chief at Shans, and they
started talking in the cafeteria one day about all of this,
and it was kind of serious, like the football players
were losing a lot of weight during training and games,
Like there are rapports of these players weighing in like
(21:03):
eighteen or twenty pounds lighter at the end of a
game at the end of a game, okay, not like
over the course of a week or something. And they
were not urinating at all, like some would develop heat
exhaustion and have to be hospitalized. It was not great, No,
it was not great at all. So Cade he started
(21:25):
thinking about it and really got it in his head
that he wanted to figure this out. So he approached
the head coach about testing some of the players. The
coach agreed, but only for the freshman team, which kind
of makes me laugh. He was, He's like, m not
my star players, not my stary, but you can try.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
You can try my freshman team. And the freshman team
provided a lot of feedback as well as samples of
blood and sweat that showed that their electrolytes were off
and their blood sugar and total blood volume were low
after strenuous physical activity, so Caid figured the solution was
(22:05):
to give them water with a little bit of salt
and sugar, not enough to upset their stomachs. The first
time they tried it, the athletes provided even more feedback
it did not taste good. Kid's daughter Phoebe Kde Miles
claims it was her mother's idea to add lemon to
(22:29):
improve the taste. So the wargos that Kaid tested this
new tastier concoction during a scrimmage between the Gators bee
team and the freshman team. At first, the freshmen were
losing pretty badly, but after drinking some gatorade, they turned
(22:49):
it around and won. And this really impressed the coach
enough so that he requested that enough gatorade be made
so that the varsity team could have have it for
an upcoming game against LSU where LSU was heavily favored.
It was a really really hot day and in an upset,
(23:10):
the Gators won and it kind of became a stable
for the team. After that, a lot of people were like, Hm,
it was this gatorade.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Yeah, And at the time they were producing it entirely
on campus, they were packaging it, and these like individuals
serving milk cartons on UF's dairy farm.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
Oh so, after all of this, Caid and his team
continued to fine tune gatorade in nineteen sixty six, especially
after a sizable number of athletes from the team went
to the hospital for heat related illnesses. Many of them
were admitted to the hospital, the coach asked kid if
(23:53):
he could make enough gatorade, not just for the games,
but for practices too. Over the course of the following
five years, only a single player was admitted to the
hospital for heat. He allegedly confessed he had not drunk
any gatorade.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Uh okay, So a lot of this sounds like really
like like hard evidence for gatorade. But one of the
things that you need to understand about about the entire
situation is that, like, Okay, at the time, there was
this common knowledge by which I mean basically a superstition
(24:36):
that if you drank water during exercise, it would give
you incapacitating stomach cramps. So it was highly probable, like
I like, from all evidence that I have read, these
athletes were not drinking anything during training sessions in games
(24:58):
like they would they would drink before and after water,
but nothing during the actual exercise. So you know, going
from drinking nothing to drinking literally anything water based was
gonna give them an edge probably, Yeah. Yeah, I mean
(25:21):
the fact that it happened to be Gatorade is you know,
I mean again, like the sugar and the electrolytes if
you're working out that hard, are useful. H M. At
first they called it, they called it Gator Aid aid. Yeah,
but then they got this legal advice the name really
shouldn't directly imply that it was going to provide health
(25:44):
benefits because then they would have to get the FDA involved.
So that's when they switched it to gatorade ad as
in like lemonade. And yeah, oh oh man.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Well, the team, the Gators, earned a reputation as a
second half team, meaning they kind of got better at
the end.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Yeah. Yeah, you really pick up that spare?
Speaker 1 (26:10):
Yeah yeah. And after an interview where the coach of
the team mentioned Gatorade got picked up by the Associated Press.
Gatorade started getting a lot of nationwide attention. After the
Gators won the Orange Bowl for the first time in
nineteen sixty seven, the coach of Georgia tech. The losing
(26:32):
team said, we didn't have gatorade. That made the difference. Wow.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Soon after, other football teams started requesting Gatorade, including the
Kansas City Chiefs. They were some of the first, and
a few cases were shipped to the team. When they
won the Super Bowl in the nineteen sixty nine to
nineteen seventy championship, they had Gatorade with them. And again,
(27:00):
to be clear, no one is saying this is the
only reason or the reason, but the team had been
struggling with issues around humidity and heat. So interesting, all right,
so we've got all of this success. In nineteen sixty seven,
(27:21):
Caid sold Gatorade to Stokely Van Camp, a company that
mostly did canned goods at the time, for twenty five
thousand dollars. If you're someone like me who likes this
kind of stuff, you can read a lot of back
and forth about this.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Oh yeah, about the price, the whole thing and the
deal and that, yeah, the wheeling and.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
The The company had been interested in the product after
hearing about it from doctor Bradley, who was another fellow
of Caid's who worked with Caid. A bunch of the
people who worked on Gatorade went to Indiana, Okay, and
that is where this company, Stoke Cleveland Camp is headquartered.
(28:04):
By happenstance, this doctor Bradley met a lot of the
company's upper level execs who asked to sample the product
because he was like, hey, have you heard a gatorade?
And they were like no, but tell me more. And
after they sampled it, they immediately decided they wanted it
in their portfolio. They part of our company. This purchase
(28:28):
made it possible for Gatorade to move out of the
lab onto grocery shelves as a commercial product. At the time,
it was available in two flavors, lemon, lime and orange.
And Yes, this did set off a series of legal
disputes that weren't fully settled until nineteen seventy three. Who Yeah.
(28:51):
Basically it revolved around who got royalties since it was
invented with public funding at a public institution, But eventually
royalties were split between the institution and the original inventors,
known collectively as the Gatorade Trust.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
Yeah, And these days the Gatorade Trust funds a lot
of different research and stuff around the University of Florida.
But a few things would have to happen first.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Oh yes, okay, Quaker Oats and Quaker Oats Company they
purchased Stokely Van Camp in nineteen eighty three, and they
really went all in on Gatorade. Yeah, oh my goodness.
What would become the Gatorade Sports Science Institute was established
(29:42):
in nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
The institute employees and or funds and otherwise collaborates with
nutrition and exercise researchers and students in a bunch of
different disciplines.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
This is also the same year the so called gatorade
shower or gatorade bath was invented. Or maybe it was
nineteen eighty four, there's some disagreement, but this is the
thing when football players celebrate a victory by dumping cold
gatorade on the coach. We've seen it, yeah, yes. The
(30:15):
story goes that after some tension between the coach and
a player of the New York Giants, the player dumped
a cooler of orange gatorade on the coach's head after
the team broke a losing streak and then.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
There took off. Yeah, pre t talk even right.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
By nineteen eighty seven, it was at the Super Bowl
and now people, of course, a bet on the color
which changes, and there's you can look up charts and
see how many what color per year. Orange is the
most popular color. Okay, but recently purple has really come strong.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
So all right cool?
Speaker 2 (31:04):
I mean, like, I understand that sports betting is a thing,
but I didn't know the Okay, good?
Speaker 1 (31:08):
Great.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Meanwhile, the aforementioned Lukazaid, the British company, was watching all
of this and they pivoted to marking their product as
a sports drink instead of like an illness drink right
around this time, and I believe that lucas Aid is
still the number one selling sports drink brand in the UK.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Right in, right in, This is when we see the
beginning of using famous athletes and ads for Gatorade, starting
with Michael Jordan in nineteen ninety one. This aggressive marketing
meant they pretty much dominated the sports drink market, accounting
for eighty percent of it. And again, if you're like
(31:52):
me and you like this stuff, you can read about
all the songs between the Pepsi and Coca Cola and
why Michael Jordan went over.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
So there's definitely a whole story there. But we all
know those commercials were familiar with them. In the nineteen nineties,
Gatorade really started experimenting with their flavors.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Yeah, lots of new flavors, lots of creative flavor naming
started coming up during this time. I mean it was
the nineties, so you had a lot of like extreme
sports kind of stuff going on, and so this is
where you get like fierce grape. I'm not sure how
fierce grapes can be, but I love it. Or cool
(32:41):
Blue Raspberry, which eventually just became cool blue the raspberry
is implied. I don't know they have a whole line
of frost beverages. I don't know there was an extreme
O line like x T R E m O extreme.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Little on edge about all of this. I'm afraid of
this fear scrape. I wouldn't I wouldn't mess with it.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
I would not mess with a fear scrape. No, thank you, No,
I'm good. I was a little bit afraid of the
California raisins as a kid, and I feel like this
is tied right in right.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
It's like an amped up at the nineties extreme version
of that Oh no, oh, dear Well. In two thousand
and one, Pepsi co purchase Quaker Oats for thirteen billion dollars. Yeah,
talked about before.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
Yeah, yeah, in our Quaker Oats episode. Certainly we have
done an episode on that, and right being under the
Pepsi umbrella meant that Gatorade suddenly had even more money
and power to work with, and I believe it is
for that reason that we got the move part of well, okay,
(33:54):
it's for that reason. The electrolytes featured heavily in the
two thousand and six film Idiocracy, directed by Mike Judge.
If you have not seen the film, I have no
idea whether it holds up, but there's this whole it's
about this time in the near future when we're living
in an idiocracy and the crops are all dying because
(34:17):
people have been sold on the idea that electrolytes are
what plants crave. It's it's not they're salt. They're salt,
and when you put salt on plants, they don't live
for the most part. So that's sorry. I just explained
a stick from Idiocracy.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
To Yeah, I think that's appropriate for our brand. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
Also, I don't know, I have some feelings about Idiocracy
right now, so it's just fine, Yay.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
Well, oh no, what a terrible pivot. Doctor K died
in two thousand and seven.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
He had a good run. I think he had a
good run.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
Yeah he did.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
Yeah. It was also around this time that competition from
other sports drink brands like Power Aid and also like
broader health and lifestyle beverage brands like Vitamin Water began
eating into Gatorades supremacy, though they fought back like successfully
by expanding into different aspects of sports nutrition, drinks, and snacks.
(35:24):
In twenty fifteen, the Gatorade Trust hit a billion dollars
earned in royalties from brand sales. University of Florida does
receive twenty percent of that, and so they can probably
stop asking me for donations.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
Let's send this episode to them. This is your no more.
I've done enough.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
Yes, and I'm an alumni. I don't worry. I was
not on the football team, So if you have a
strong opinion about that, you don't have to.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
Don't at me anyway.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
In in twenty nineteen, PepsiCo launched their larger Beyond the
Bottle initiative to create more beverage options without selling single
use plastic bottles. Which is cool, which is great, totally
applaud that kind of work. But yeah, that's where stuff
like the soda stream came in and and Gatoraid's focus
on these like powders and stuff like that. Also recent
(36:30):
news and probably something you're going to see if you
watch the aforementioned large game of football. Gatorade returned to
its nineteen nineties early two thousand's ad campaign is It
In You? As of twenty twenty four. If you don't
remember these ads, they featured celebrities like Michael Jordan in
(36:52):
like very like like like monochrome kind of very intensely
lit in contrasting ads, and then they would have this
this colored fluid sweating out of them.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
M hm.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
And because the Gatorade was in them along along with
the you know, proverbial it whatever it may be, whatever.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
It may be. Yeah, it was an effective ad campaign.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
It was. It was I'm making fun of it because
it's objectively funny at a certain point, but.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
Like, yeah, but it it stuck. It was. It was
a very effective thing. And I think when we're talking
about Gatorade, it's it's hard to overstate how much of
an impact they had on the sports streets industry.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
Yeah, it would not be what it is.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
Without Gatorade, it would not be what it is. And
if you do watch the Big Game, you will run
in to Gatorade. You will not escape it.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Yep, the branding will be there. I'm sure there's going
to be a commercial in there somewhere. Yes, yeah, m
hm m h. It's a whole thing.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
It is a whole thing, and there really is a
lot of if you if you do want to learn
more there, there's a lot of material out there.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
Oh yeah, yeah, And I can say, like having been
you know, having gone to the University of Florida, there
is a lot of lore just in the air about
it there because like what so so fun fact, by
the time I went there, uh, the campus drink company
was Coca Cola, but we had like a special provision
(38:45):
written in that Gatorade would be the sports drink of choice.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Yeah. See, this is the stuff I love. I love
the dry legal stuff. Yes, I do love it. Yeah. Well,
I would love to hear from listeners if you have
any experience, oh yeah, thoughts about Gatorade. Please let us know.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
Please, absolutely, we do already have some listener mail for
you though, and we are going to get into that
as soon as we get back from one more quick
break for a word from our sponsors, and we're back.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you, and we're back with.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
Oh yeah, it was either battery, confetti cannon, and I
felt good about it either way.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
Either way, that was a good one. Judy Rope, hello there,
first time writing in. I first tried skier on a
trip to Iceland in twenty eighteen and it was so delicious.
I came back home to Canada and found some in
the grocery store, but it didn't taste the same. It
(40:17):
was not as smooth and creamy and had the same
sour astringent aftertaste, more in line with yogurt. I highly
recommend visiting Iceland. There's also delicious icelandic rye bread. You've
got to try rouge bread, which is made by burying
(40:38):
the dough in a milk cart near a hot spring,
and loved to bake all day. I still think of
it to this day. Yeah I would too.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
I love a bread. I love a rye bread. I
love burying your dough and a milk carton near a
hot spring to bake.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
That feels so like dungeons and dragon.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
Oh man, I love this, I like strongly want a
Game of Thrones remake that's just about the food, and
I want this to be going on at Winterfel.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
Yes, I agree. I agree. It does add a whole vibe,
like the way those kinds of ways of making food.
I'm like, yeah, okay, yeah, I am in this space
right right, Let me bury my bread near those hotspreads.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
I mean, yeah, it's a genius. That's terrific. Oh. I hope,
I hope that you do find a skier that that
fits your your memory. Yeah, in Canada, But.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
If you're telling us to go to Iceland, oh.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
That's okay too. Sure, so thank you, done and done,
done and done. Mary B wrote, I just had to
stop listening to listen on the Mandarin Orange episode as
soon as they mentioned chilies imported from New Mexico. Okay,
I'm a native New Mexican who loves hatch green chilies.
(42:10):
The amazing thing about this chili is that it's like
no other. I believe I sent you a small can
somewhere around the beginning of the pandemic, and I'm unsure
if it ever got to you. These chilies can be
eaten two ways, green or red. Green chili sauces usually
just include the fire roasted flesh of the green chili,
along with a thickening agent and maybe some garlic and onion.
Red chili sauce is its own special type that can
(42:32):
have anything from ground red chilies in it to whole ones,
depending on the family recipe. People will say that green
chilies from Colorado or Texas are acceptable, and they are
very wrong. There is a special flavor that comes from
a green chili grown in New Mexico, especially around the
Hatch area. Yes, this is a very strong opinion. The
(42:52):
amazing thing about green chilies is that they can go
in anything. It's very easy to end up having them
at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I hope one day you
can do an episode on them.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
Yes, I love this. I love this so much. Delightful.
Thank you. We love strong opinions. You know you did.
We did get those people love hats chilies. I have
to say yeah, rightfully so because after I tried them,
I was like, yes, understood that. You are not the
(43:28):
first person who's written in and been like, hey you
need to try these, do an episode on these, and
this is the acceptable way.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
No, it's amazing. Again, yeah, like, I mean, like we
everyone everyone is just in their own little little pocket
of the universe about food and so so hearing from
people from those different pockets is the best because right,
like I never knew about that Icelandic hot spring rye bread,
like I I've never heard this impassion depend about Hatch
Chili's and heck yass, heck.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
Yeah, it's beautiful and they are. I after I got
a taste, I was hooked. So I try to find
them whenever I can. I know I'm not getting I
usually can find a can. Sometimes we do get them.
I don't know how legit they are, but when they're
in season here in Georgia. But I I'm a convert.
(44:30):
You've got me, so any recipes sent them my way?
Speaker 2 (44:35):
Yeah, always, Oh my gosh. And I just entered it
into our idea spreadsheet just now, so it's in there.
Speaker 1 (44:45):
Yes, yes, I think it's in there multiple times, but
now it's at the Thank you to both of these
listeners for writing in. If you would like to write
to us, you can Our email is Hello at savorpod
dot com.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
We're also on social media. You can find us on
blue Sky and Instagram at saver pod and we do
hope to hear from you. Savor is production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, you can visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Thanks as always to our super producers Dylan Fagan and
Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening, and we hope
(45:18):
that lots more good things are coming your way.
Hello, and welcome to Savor Prediction of iHeartRadio. I'm Annie Reese.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
And I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and today we have an episode
for you about Gatorade. Yes, not a sponsor, Not a sponsor, Nope, nope.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Uh I think I know the answer to this, but
I will ask the question anyway. Was there a particular
reason this was on your mind? Lauren?
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Yes, as we record this episode, the proverbial big Game
is upon us, by which I mean the the NFL
Super Bowl. And I'm still I'm still a rebel. I
still say that out loud on this our podcast because
(00:54):
it is a factual statement. I'm not saying that this
episode is connected to that body or or that event
in literally any way. It's just it's going to happen.
And so, you know, I was thinking about sports drinks
or you know, I was like, Okay, what's a topic
that we haven't done yet, And we have not done
sports drinks. And also I had just done an episode
(01:16):
about sports drinks over on my other podcast, Brain Stuff,
and so I was like, yeah, that seems like an
interesting story. There are entire transcripts of you know, twenty
eight pages worth of interviews that I haven't read all
the way through yet, so let's read smart that.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Wow, you're braver than I. The big game it is
to me maybe because my dad was a lawyer. I'm
so paranoid. But I we were talking about this. This
is something we put off for a while because it's
complicated in terms of the the context of the whole subject.
(02:00):
But the company, this is, this is manageable. Ish. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Yeah, I did delay our recording by like an hour.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Yeah, but but here we are.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Here we are, Yeah, here we are. I will say
that this is not there's a lot of things that
this episode is not okay, and like, it is not
an episode about the nutritional function of these products. It
is not an episode about all of the nitty gritty
about electrolytes and all of that kind of stuff. I'll
(02:40):
say a few things about it as we go, but
we're not we're not nutritionists or scientists of any kind. Yeah,
not really qualified to talk about that.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Nope, nope. And I'll say for the history part, I
really was just relying on what the researchers said at
the time, so, which is correct. But I'm not going
to I don't know the nutrition.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Tu Yeah, aspects of that. Yeah, and I'll pepper a
few a few things in there that will put some
of that those facts into context.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
So yeah, yeah, but yes, I guess.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
This does bring us to our question. I certainly suppose
it does. Yeah, Gatorade, what is it? Well, Gatorade is
a brand of sports drinks and related products currently owned
by PepsiCo. They have a few different lines of drinks
(03:50):
and drink mixes, but their baseline formula is this combination
of sugars like glucose, which your body needs on a
cellular level to create energy, and electrolytes like a salt
and potassium. Electrolytes being a group of minerals that your
body needs to maintain its fluid levels and to regulate
its muscle function. All Right, The idea here is that
(04:15):
you're gonna replenish the lost water, calories and minerals that
you sweat out during prolonged or otherwise intense exercise. Other
formulas have other stuff, maybe like added vitamins or caffeine
or a sugar substitute so that you're not drinking calories,
depending on what they're marketed for. Yeah, Gatorade products typically
(04:38):
come in bright colors and candy like fruit flavors. It
is the original and the largest brand of sports drinks
in the world and part of a multi billion dollar industry,
and people also have like strong nostalgia for it and
like strong opinions about it, like favorite flavors and you know,
(05:00):
appropriate temperatures at which to drink it, and all kinds
of different things like that, like the flavor that got away,
the one that was discontinued sometime twenty years ago and
you still miss but yeah, uh, like you probably don't
need it. You probably don't need it. So it's like,
(05:20):
and I'm really trying not to be mean here, but
like it's kind of like if leaf blowers had like
one overwhelmingly popular brand of leaf blowers, because like, the
products were designed to serve a purpose and they do
serve it, and they are applied in many situations in
(05:43):
which they are at best unnecessary and at worst like
real unnecessary.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Wow, you and I just had a long conversation last
year recording about our opinions on leaf flowers.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Uh. Yeah, let the record state that I do I
do think that leaf flowers are one of humanity's worst inventions.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Not not related to gatorade.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Necessarily no no, it's their gatorade is now they're never
going to be a sponsor. Heck uh, you can tell
they're not a sponsor because I Yeah, again, I'm not
trying to be mean when I say that, but that
was the most apt metaphor that I could, or similarly
(06:44):
technically that that came to mind.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Yes, and we were because when you suggested this, I
gasped aloud, uh oh no, no, no, no, And we were
talking about it, and I said, you know, the only
time I drink Gatorade is when after a run, usually
(07:10):
very hot because we're in Atlanta, or when I'm sick.
So I actually have very specific associations with Gatorade. But
other than that, I do not seek it out because
it's too sweet, honestly for meat.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I even I also will drink it
when I'm sick, and even then I water it like
I like, I fill a cup with ice, like a
lot of like chipped ice, preferably, and then pour Gatorade
on top of that. And that is about the sweetness
of Gatorade that I want to consume. But but yeah, now,
(07:48):
people have opinions, and if you have a differing opinion,
I don't want to say that you are wrong. It
is just differing, and that's fine, that's great.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
You know we love strong opinions.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Oh yes, partially because we have them here. We are okay,
but so yes, there are many current flavors. There have
been many discontinued flavors. If you have come here looking
for a comprehensive list of current Gatorade flavors, I am
so sorry to disappoint you, but I'm merely going to
(08:19):
be summarizing here partially because and this is super interesting
to me. On Gatorade dot com, you know, like the
American Gatorade Consumer Forward website, they have basically removed the
brand's lines of bottled beverages from site as of right now,
(08:40):
as of February of twenty twenty five. Like you can
find those product pages, but you have to like google
very specific things and get a direct link, Like it
is not in the menu options.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
They seem instead to be really into selling reusable bottles
and then various powders and tablet some liquid concentrates to
put in those bottles along with water of your own.
And I think that all of this is in or
all of this is in a bid to reduce single
use plastics. So I like couldn't find a current list
(09:17):
a complete current list, but okay. Their product lines in
general include like different formulations that promise different benefits, like
rapid hydration versus performance fuel versus a hydration booster versus
(09:37):
like a pre workout slash energy boost versus prolonged activity endurance.
All of these are going to have different levels of
sugar or zero sugar, or additional vitamins and minerals stuff
like that. The flavors on these products range from from
things that we understand to be flavors, you know, like
(10:01):
orange or lemon, lime, fruit punch, grape, to like aquatic
actions like a riptide rush or a glacier freeze, to
weather related abstractions like lightning blast or midnight thunder. There
(10:22):
are guides online to what those flavors taste like if
you're curious WHOA Often often like the food coloring in
the packaging or in the drink, or the lack thereof
will give you kind of a concept, but I don't
(10:45):
know it's going on vibes a lot of the time,
and I really respect that in a certain way.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
You feeling of your eyed rash or a lightning blast.
What's going on?
Speaker 2 (11:00):
I don't know. I like absurdism, Sure, let's go.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Mine is blue. If it's blue, I'm like, probably that one.
I don't know what that says about me.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Yeah, I'm a pretty staunch fruit punch person. But it's classic. Yeah,
it's red. I know what to expect. I don't know.
Gatorade also does have a line of protein bars in
various chocolate related flavors, and in twenty twenty four they
(11:32):
released an unflavored Gatorade water with electrolytes and I quote
foretaste okay, yeah, okay. The larger Gatorade portfolio within PepsiCo,
because this is a thing, it includes sub brands I
(11:54):
guess like Propel, which is a line of flavored waters
and powders with which to flavor water containing no sugar vitamins,
and Gatorade Electrolytes, which is another branded phrase if you
couldn't tell from my capitalization there. Then there's also fast Twitch,
which is a pre workout energy powder and or flavored
(12:15):
water brand, then Muscle Milk, which are protein shakes and powders,
and then Evolve, which are specifically plant based protein shakes
and powders. Some of muscle milks are plant based as well,
but I don't make up the rules.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Wow, yeah, Propel, that's that's a throwback for me, my
little brother.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Oh yeah, okay, okay.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
When he was growing up. Ye yes, Propel all the time,
the green one that was.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
His Oh all right, yeah cool. I'm not positive that
I've ever had that product, but I'm you know again,
people have strong feelings in like nostalgian opinions about these things.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Gatorade does all to sell various sports adjacent equipment, like
the aforementioned reusable bottles, those like classic like VAT coolers,
you know, in case you need like a lot of
Gatorade and ice chests, plus towels, towels that are sometimes
co branded with NFL teams.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
Yes, indeed, Well this brings us to the question, h
what about the nutrition?
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Okay, okay, okay, y'all again, Like, I'm not gonna go deep, deep,
deep into this, but I'm gonna say the sugars in
these products can add up, you know, Like a single
serving is generally like eight ounces if you do buy
it in bottle form. Most of the bottles are like
(13:51):
two to four times that size per serving. And again
it depends on like like like product to product, but
they can contain like a round fifty ten grams of
carbs equaling about fifty calories, and that's preserving. So if
you drink a whole bottle, that can really easily add
more calories to your diet than you would actually burn
(14:11):
during you know, like a thirty to sixty minute workout session.
If you're exercising for less than forty five minutes and ago,
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 replacement strategy. All right,
(14:32):
you can't switch to a sugar free formula, but just
drinking water will usually do the trick, unless it's super
hot and you know you're really sweating. Also, you know,
like you don't always have to buy branded things like
some distance runners and other endurance exercisers like add a
pinch as salt to their water instead of purchasing sports drinks.
(14:53):
I know, I've never done endurance training, or the last
time I did was in like the Year of Our
Dark Lord nineteen ninety nine, So like it's been a minute,
but you know, everyone has personal strategies to get them
through that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Yes, and I believe we talked about it in our
pickle juice. Pickle juice is the thing that some people
do during strenuous exercise.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
It's salt and water, and I mean, potassium is great.
Sugar can be helpful anyway. But the one thing that
sports drinks really are good for is during certain kinds
of illness, because if you're losing fluids through excessive sweat
or diarrhea or vomiting or all three, those carbs and
(15:48):
minerals can help your body replace the lost hydration and
energy and nutrients without really upsetting your stomach by trying
to introduce solid food, which isn't always what it wants
from you at that sh I'm sure.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
So it is true. Okay, Well, we do have some
numbers for you.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
We do so. Twenty twenty five is Gatorade's sixtieth anniversary,
So happy anniversary, Gatorade. Worldwide, the sports drink industry is
worth some thirty billion dollars a year, and globally, Gatorade
(16:31):
is responsible for about seven billion dollars of that as
of twenty twenty three. Anyway, Gatorade accounted for about sixty
four percent of the American market for sports drinks. Like
the two followers up together, Power Aid and Body Armor,
which are both owned by Coca Cola, are only about
(16:53):
twenty five percent of the market. So in the States,
just absolutely wild domination of the market. And that is
I suspect why they aren't currently marketing their their bottles
on their website because they don't have to.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Like they just.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Also last number, I guess it's kind of a number
for all of the new different products that they have
out there, the classic plastic bottled Gatoried beverages are still
the brand's best seller.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Wow, yep, they know they're at the top. Yeah, we
have to.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Must be nice.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
It must be nice. And the story of how it
became this way is really fascinating.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Oh yeah, I love brand episodes. Okay, so yeah, we
are going to get into that as soon as we
get back from a quick break for a word from
our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
And we're back, Thank you sponsor.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Yes, thank you. Okay. So, there is a long history
of people selling drinks for various purported health purposes. You
can see our episode on like Soda water and soda
fountains for a bunch of conversation about mineral waters, which
were kind of the original sports drinks. I suppose a
more direct predecessor of Gatorade is this British brand called
(18:25):
lucas Aide that got its start way back in the
nineteen twenties. It was this glucose and water drink that
was sold as a product for people who were sick
and needed an easy way to get calories and energy.
Glucose was new then. It was a really smart marketing
thing in the nineteen twenties. I don't think this brand
had a direct influence on Gatorade, but the research around
(18:46):
glucose in general would have had to.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Yes. Okay, So when it comes to Gatorade, the story
goes that Gatorade was invented in the ninth teen sixties
at the University of Florida College of Medicine by doctor
James Robert Cade and his team of scientists including research
fellows doctor Dana Shires, Jemfrey and A and Di Caseda.
(19:13):
They were looking to create a product that would help
with heat related illnesses athletes would suffer. So to do
this they were they set about coming up with a
product that would replace the fluids, calories, and electrolytes athletes lost,
especially in the heat during strenuous activity, which Florida has
(19:34):
a lot of heat. So yep, kind of a saying.
Since they were specifically looking to help out UF's University
of Florida's football team, the Gators, they called it Gatorade.
It was used for the first time in nineteen sixty five.
But okay, let's break down some of this. There's a lot,
(19:56):
a lot of legend and lore behind this whole Oh sorry,
Oh yes. The sixties was a time when a lot
of scientific research was being done in the field of
sports science, and doctor Cade specialized in renal therapy our
kidney basically studied the kidney, yeah, and knew a lot
(20:16):
about how human bodies regulate fluids or how they don't.
He helped establish the Division of Renal Medicine at Shan's Hospital,
which was associated with the College of Medicine at University
of Florida still is Yeah, yep. As legend has it,
he was chatting with the assistant coach of the Gaetors
who told him that the players were suffering from all
(20:37):
of these heat related illnesses.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
The coach in question was one Dwayne Douglas, who also
happened to be the security chief at Shans, and they
started talking in the cafeteria one day about all of this,
and it was kind of serious, like the football players
were losing a lot of weight during training and games,
Like there are rapports of these players weighing in like
(21:03):
eighteen or twenty pounds lighter at the end of a
game at the end of a game, okay, not like
over the course of a week or something. And they
were not urinating at all, like some would develop heat
exhaustion and have to be hospitalized. It was not great, No,
it was not great at all. So Cade he started
(21:25):
thinking about it and really got it in his head
that he wanted to figure this out. So he approached
the head coach about testing some of the players. The
coach agreed, but only for the freshman team, which kind
of makes me laugh. He was, He's like, m not
my star players, not my stary, but you can try.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
You can try my freshman team. And the freshman team
provided a lot of feedback as well as samples of
blood and sweat that showed that their electrolytes were off
and their blood sugar and total blood volume were low
after strenuous physical activity, so Caid figured the solution was
(22:05):
to give them water with a little bit of salt
and sugar, not enough to upset their stomachs. The first
time they tried it, the athletes provided even more feedback
it did not taste good. Kid's daughter Phoebe Kde Miles
claims it was her mother's idea to add lemon to
(22:29):
improve the taste. So the wargos that Kaid tested this
new tastier concoction during a scrimmage between the Gators bee
team and the freshman team. At first, the freshmen were
losing pretty badly, but after drinking some gatorade, they turned
(22:49):
it around and won. And this really impressed the coach
enough so that he requested that enough gatorade be made
so that the varsity team could have have it for
an upcoming game against LSU where LSU was heavily favored.
It was a really really hot day and in an upset,
(23:10):
the Gators won and it kind of became a stable
for the team. After that, a lot of people were like, Hm,
it was this gatorade.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Yeah, And at the time they were producing it entirely
on campus, they were packaging it, and these like individuals
serving milk cartons on UF's dairy farm.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
Oh so, after all of this, Caid and his team
continued to fine tune gatorade in nineteen sixty six, especially
after a sizable number of athletes from the team went
to the hospital for heat related illnesses. Many of them
were admitted to the hospital, the coach asked kid if
(23:53):
he could make enough gatorade, not just for the games,
but for practices too. Over the course of the following
five years, only a single player was admitted to the
hospital for heat. He allegedly confessed he had not drunk
any gatorade.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Uh okay, So a lot of this sounds like really
like like hard evidence for gatorade. But one of the
things that you need to understand about about the entire
situation is that, like, Okay, at the time, there was
this common knowledge by which I mean basically a superstition
(24:36):
that if you drank water during exercise, it would give
you incapacitating stomach cramps. So it was highly probable, like
I like, from all evidence that I have read, these
athletes were not drinking anything during training sessions in games
(24:58):
like they would they would drink before and after water,
but nothing during the actual exercise. So you know, going
from drinking nothing to drinking literally anything water based was
gonna give them an edge probably, Yeah. Yeah, I mean
(25:21):
the fact that it happened to be Gatorade is you know,
I mean again, like the sugar and the electrolytes if
you're working out that hard, are useful. H M. At
first they called it, they called it Gator Aid aid. Yeah,
but then they got this legal advice the name really
shouldn't directly imply that it was going to provide health
(25:44):
benefits because then they would have to get the FDA involved.
So that's when they switched it to gatorade ad as
in like lemonade. And yeah, oh oh man.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Well, the team, the Gators, earned a reputation as a
second half team, meaning they kind of got better at
the end.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Yeah. Yeah, you really pick up that spare?
Speaker 1 (26:10):
Yeah yeah. And after an interview where the coach of
the team mentioned Gatorade got picked up by the Associated Press.
Gatorade started getting a lot of nationwide attention. After the
Gators won the Orange Bowl for the first time in
nineteen sixty seven, the coach of Georgia tech. The losing
(26:32):
team said, we didn't have gatorade. That made the difference. Wow.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Soon after, other football teams started requesting Gatorade, including the
Kansas City Chiefs. They were some of the first, and
a few cases were shipped to the team. When they
won the Super Bowl in the nineteen sixty nine to
nineteen seventy championship, they had Gatorade with them. And again,
(27:00):
to be clear, no one is saying this is the
only reason or the reason, but the team had been
struggling with issues around humidity and heat. So interesting, all right,
so we've got all of this success. In nineteen sixty seven,
(27:21):
Caid sold Gatorade to Stokely Van Camp, a company that
mostly did canned goods at the time, for twenty five
thousand dollars. If you're someone like me who likes this
kind of stuff, you can read a lot of back
and forth about this.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Oh yeah, about the price, the whole thing and the
deal and that, yeah, the wheeling and.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
The The company had been interested in the product after
hearing about it from doctor Bradley, who was another fellow
of Caid's who worked with Caid. A bunch of the
people who worked on Gatorade went to Indiana, Okay, and
that is where this company, Stoke Cleveland Camp is headquartered.
(28:04):
By happenstance, this doctor Bradley met a lot of the
company's upper level execs who asked to sample the product
because he was like, hey, have you heard a gatorade?
And they were like no, but tell me more. And
after they sampled it, they immediately decided they wanted it
in their portfolio. They part of our company. This purchase
(28:28):
made it possible for Gatorade to move out of the
lab onto grocery shelves as a commercial product. At the time,
it was available in two flavors, lemon, lime and orange.
And Yes, this did set off a series of legal
disputes that weren't fully settled until nineteen seventy three. Who Yeah.
(28:51):
Basically it revolved around who got royalties since it was
invented with public funding at a public institution, But eventually
royalties were split between the institution and the original inventors,
known collectively as the Gatorade Trust.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
Yeah, And these days the Gatorade Trust funds a lot
of different research and stuff around the University of Florida.
But a few things would have to happen first.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Oh yes, okay, Quaker Oats and Quaker Oats Company they
purchased Stokely Van Camp in nineteen eighty three, and they
really went all in on Gatorade. Yeah, oh my goodness.
What would become the Gatorade Sports Science Institute was established
(29:42):
in nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
The institute employees and or funds and otherwise collaborates with
nutrition and exercise researchers and students in a bunch of
different disciplines.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
This is also the same year the so called gatorade
shower or gatorade bath was invented. Or maybe it was
nineteen eighty four, there's some disagreement, but this is the
thing when football players celebrate a victory by dumping cold
gatorade on the coach. We've seen it, yeah, yes. The
(30:15):
story goes that after some tension between the coach and
a player of the New York Giants, the player dumped
a cooler of orange gatorade on the coach's head after
the team broke a losing streak and then.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
There took off. Yeah, pre t talk even right.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
By nineteen eighty seven, it was at the Super Bowl
and now people, of course, a bet on the color
which changes, and there's you can look up charts and
see how many what color per year. Orange is the
most popular color. Okay, but recently purple has really come strong.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
So all right cool?
Speaker 2 (31:04):
I mean, like, I understand that sports betting is a thing,
but I didn't know the Okay, good?
Speaker 1 (31:08):
Great.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Meanwhile, the aforementioned Lukazaid, the British company, was watching all
of this and they pivoted to marking their product as
a sports drink instead of like an illness drink right
around this time, and I believe that lucas Aid is
still the number one selling sports drink brand in the UK.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Right in, right in, This is when we see the
beginning of using famous athletes and ads for Gatorade, starting
with Michael Jordan in nineteen ninety one. This aggressive marketing
meant they pretty much dominated the sports drink market, accounting
for eighty percent of it. And again, if you're like
(31:52):
me and you like this stuff, you can read about
all the songs between the Pepsi and Coca Cola and
why Michael Jordan went over.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
So there's definitely a whole story there. But we all
know those commercials were familiar with them. In the nineteen nineties,
Gatorade really started experimenting with their flavors.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Yeah, lots of new flavors, lots of creative flavor naming
started coming up during this time. I mean it was
the nineties, so you had a lot of like extreme
sports kind of stuff going on, and so this is
where you get like fierce grape. I'm not sure how
fierce grapes can be, but I love it. Or cool
(32:41):
Blue Raspberry, which eventually just became cool blue the raspberry
is implied. I don't know they have a whole line
of frost beverages. I don't know there was an extreme
O line like x T R E m O extreme.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Little on edge about all of this. I'm afraid of
this fear scrape. I wouldn't I wouldn't mess with it.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
I would not mess with a fear scrape. No, thank you, No,
I'm good. I was a little bit afraid of the
California raisins as a kid, and I feel like this
is tied right in right.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
It's like an amped up at the nineties extreme version
of that Oh no, oh, dear Well. In two thousand
and one, Pepsi co purchase Quaker Oats for thirteen billion dollars. Yeah,
talked about before.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
Yeah, yeah, in our Quaker Oats episode. Certainly we have
done an episode on that, and right being under the
Pepsi umbrella meant that Gatorade suddenly had even more money
and power to work with, and I believe it is
for that reason that we got the move part of well, okay,
(33:54):
it's for that reason. The electrolytes featured heavily in the
two thousand and six film Idiocracy, directed by Mike Judge.
If you have not seen the film, I have no
idea whether it holds up, but there's this whole it's
about this time in the near future when we're living
in an idiocracy and the crops are all dying because
(34:17):
people have been sold on the idea that electrolytes are
what plants crave. It's it's not they're salt. They're salt,
and when you put salt on plants, they don't live
for the most part. So that's sorry. I just explained
a stick from Idiocracy.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
To Yeah, I think that's appropriate for our brand. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
Also, I don't know, I have some feelings about Idiocracy
right now, so it's just fine, Yay.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
Well, oh no, what a terrible pivot. Doctor K died
in two thousand and seven.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
He had a good run. I think he had a
good run.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
Yeah he did.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
Yeah. It was also around this time that competition from
other sports drink brands like Power Aid and also like
broader health and lifestyle beverage brands like Vitamin Water began
eating into Gatorades supremacy, though they fought back like successfully
by expanding into different aspects of sports nutrition, drinks, and snacks.
(35:24):
In twenty fifteen, the Gatorade Trust hit a billion dollars
earned in royalties from brand sales. University of Florida does
receive twenty percent of that, and so they can probably
stop asking me for donations.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
Let's send this episode to them. This is your no more.
I've done enough.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
Yes, and I'm an alumni. I don't worry. I was
not on the football team, So if you have a
strong opinion about that, you don't have to.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
Don't at me anyway.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
In in twenty nineteen, PepsiCo launched their larger Beyond the
Bottle initiative to create more beverage options without selling single
use plastic bottles. Which is cool, which is great, totally
applaud that kind of work. But yeah, that's where stuff
like the soda stream came in and and Gatoraid's focus
on these like powders and stuff like that. Also recent
(36:30):
news and probably something you're going to see if you
watch the aforementioned large game of football. Gatorade returned to
its nineteen nineties early two thousand's ad campaign is It
In You? As of twenty twenty four. If you don't
remember these ads, they featured celebrities like Michael Jordan in
(36:52):
like very like like like monochrome kind of very intensely
lit in contrasting ads, and then they would have this
this colored fluid sweating out of them.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
M hm.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
And because the Gatorade was in them along along with
the you know, proverbial it whatever it may be, whatever.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
It may be. Yeah, it was an effective ad campaign.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
It was. It was I'm making fun of it because
it's objectively funny at a certain point, but.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
Like, yeah, but it it stuck. It was. It was
a very effective thing. And I think when we're talking
about Gatorade, it's it's hard to overstate how much of
an impact they had on the sports streets industry.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
Yeah, it would not be what it is.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
Without Gatorade, it would not be what it is. And
if you do watch the Big Game, you will run
in to Gatorade. You will not escape it.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Yep, the branding will be there. I'm sure there's going
to be a commercial in there somewhere. Yes, yeah, m
hm m h. It's a whole thing.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
It is a whole thing, and there really is a
lot of if you if you do want to learn
more there, there's a lot of material out there.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
Oh yeah, yeah, And I can say, like having been
you know, having gone to the University of Florida, there
is a lot of lore just in the air about
it there because like what so so fun fact, by
the time I went there, uh, the campus drink company
was Coca Cola, but we had like a special provision
(38:45):
written in that Gatorade would be the sports drink of choice.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Yeah. See, this is the stuff I love. I love
the dry legal stuff. Yes, I do love it. Yeah. Well,
I would love to hear from listeners if you have
any experience, oh yeah, thoughts about Gatorade. Please let us know.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
Please, absolutely, we do already have some listener mail for
you though, and we are going to get into that
as soon as we get back from one more quick
break for a word from our sponsors, and we're back.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you, and we're back with.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
Oh yeah, it was either battery, confetti cannon, and I
felt good about it either way.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
Either way, that was a good one. Judy Rope, hello there,
first time writing in. I first tried skier on a
trip to Iceland in twenty eighteen and it was so delicious.
I came back home to Canada and found some in
the grocery store, but it didn't taste the same. It
(40:17):
was not as smooth and creamy and had the same
sour astringent aftertaste, more in line with yogurt. I highly
recommend visiting Iceland. There's also delicious icelandic rye bread. You've
got to try rouge bread, which is made by burying
(40:38):
the dough in a milk cart near a hot spring,
and loved to bake all day. I still think of
it to this day. Yeah I would too.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
I love a bread. I love a rye bread. I
love burying your dough and a milk carton near a
hot spring to bake.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
That feels so like dungeons and dragon.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
Oh man, I love this, I like strongly want a
Game of Thrones remake that's just about the food, and
I want this to be going on at Winterfel.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
Yes, I agree. I agree. It does add a whole vibe,
like the way those kinds of ways of making food.
I'm like, yeah, okay, yeah, I am in this space
right right, Let me bury my bread near those hotspreads.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
I mean, yeah, it's a genius. That's terrific. Oh. I hope,
I hope that you do find a skier that that
fits your your memory. Yeah, in Canada, But.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
If you're telling us to go to Iceland, oh.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
That's okay too. Sure, so thank you, done and done,
done and done. Mary B wrote, I just had to
stop listening to listen on the Mandarin Orange episode as
soon as they mentioned chilies imported from New Mexico. Okay,
I'm a native New Mexican who loves hatch green chilies.
(42:10):
The amazing thing about this chili is that it's like
no other. I believe I sent you a small can
somewhere around the beginning of the pandemic, and I'm unsure
if it ever got to you. These chilies can be
eaten two ways, green or red. Green chili sauces usually
just include the fire roasted flesh of the green chili,
along with a thickening agent and maybe some garlic and onion.
Red chili sauce is its own special type that can
(42:32):
have anything from ground red chilies in it to whole ones,
depending on the family recipe. People will say that green
chilies from Colorado or Texas are acceptable, and they are
very wrong. There is a special flavor that comes from
a green chili grown in New Mexico, especially around the
Hatch area. Yes, this is a very strong opinion. The
(42:52):
amazing thing about green chilies is that they can go
in anything. It's very easy to end up having them
at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I hope one day you
can do an episode on them.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
Yes, I love this. I love this so much. Delightful.
Thank you. We love strong opinions. You know you did.
We did get those people love hats chilies. I have
to say yeah, rightfully so because after I tried them,
I was like, yes, understood that. You are not the
(43:28):
first person who's written in and been like, hey you
need to try these, do an episode on these, and
this is the acceptable way.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
No, it's amazing. Again, yeah, like, I mean, like we
everyone everyone is just in their own little little pocket
of the universe about food and so so hearing from
people from those different pockets is the best because right,
like I never knew about that Icelandic hot spring rye bread,
like I I've never heard this impassion depend about Hatch
Chili's and heck yass, heck.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
Yeah, it's beautiful and they are. I after I got
a taste, I was hooked. So I try to find
them whenever I can. I know I'm not getting I
usually can find a can. Sometimes we do get them.
I don't know how legit they are, but when they're
in season here in Georgia. But I I'm a convert.
(44:30):
You've got me, so any recipes sent them my way?
Speaker 2 (44:35):
Yeah, always, Oh my gosh. And I just entered it
into our idea spreadsheet just now, so it's in there.
Speaker 1 (44:45):
Yes, yes, I think it's in there multiple times, but
now it's at the Thank you to both of these
listeners for writing in. If you would like to write
to us, you can Our email is Hello at savorpod
dot com.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
We're also on social media. You can find us on
blue Sky and Instagram at saver pod and we do
hope to hear from you. Savor is production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, you can visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Thanks as always to our super producers Dylan Fagan and
Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening, and we hope
(45:18):
that lots more good things are coming your way.
Savor News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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