Whenever we go past the beverage aisle of the grocery store - my kids immediately recognize a popular sports drink (starts with a "G", rhymes with "atorade") and request to get it. We usually don't.
Way back in my college days, one of my professors broke down/explained the actual cost to make this sports drink . I was shocked to learn that the cap was the most expensive piece to make, followed by the label, the bottle itself, and then lastly the ingredients (costing maybe 1/10 of the resale price).
He then shared the following knock off recipe (which is obviously much cheaper to make yourself):
1 Quart Water (warm to dissolve sugar)
5 T. Sugar
1/2 t. Salt
1 Package unsweetened Kool-Aid (flavor of your choice)
Mix together and chill (then dig through your recycling bin to find old sports drink bottles, clean them out and refill - your kids might not even know the difference).
While I think water is really the optimal choice for hydration and try to limit our sugar intake, I do make this on occasion for my kids (and husband) as a special treat.
I also recently came across this recipe for a more natural sports drink (which gives the alternative of using tea, water or coconut water as the base and only stevia or honey as the sweetener) from Wellness Mama that I'm looking forward to trying.
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Tea or lemon juice sweetened with stevia make great no-calorie drinks for kids and adults. Any fruit juice can be precisely diluted to make an excellent sports drink recipe. My favorite flavors are watermelon-lime sports drink and apple cider sports drink.
my husband is always buying and giving our son gatorade- I'm not a fan for giving it to a kid, but IMO it also beats sodas. Thank you so much for this post. Can't wait to go home and try it out with both of them to get their opinion =) On my end, I prefer sticking to coconut water for my dose of extra electrolytes.