Facts About Gatorade

Gatorade is a sports drink, especially for athletes, which has been designed specially to ensure proper supply of carbohydrates so that they provide proper replacement to the fluids and sodium lost during the workout or exercise. It is a brand that is only concentrated on sports theme and is manufactured by PepsiCo. Gatorade is very popular worldwide and is available in almost 85 countries.

In the year of 1965, it was first developed by a team of researchers at the University of Florida.

They started the whole thing just keeping in mind on how the whole sodium, electrolytes, water lost from the body can be replenished.The name Gatorade arrived from the nickname of the university’s athletic team which is names, ‘the Gators’. 

It was originally produced by Stokely-Van Camp as well as marketed too. But in the year of 1983, it was purchased by a popular Oat-meal making company known as Quaker Oats Company.

This was again sold to PepsiCo in 2001. The retail sales of Gatorade worldwide have made it the 4th largest selling brand by PepsiCo. The major competitors of this product are Powerade by the Coca Cola Company and the Vitaminwater brands.

However, Gatorade fares better when we check the total sales report, approximately close 70% of the market sales are in favor of this sports drink.

Products Of Gatorade:

In the beginning, Gatorade brand only concentrated upon a single line of product, i.e., its Gatorade Thirst Quencher.  It had a couple of flavors- orange and lemon-lime. For at least two decades they stuck to these two flavors only.

In the year of 1983, they added one more flavor called the fruit punch. In the 70’s, the Gatorade brand introduced a chewing gum in the market known as Gator Gum. It was available in Gatorade’s trademark flavors.

But this was discontinued in 1989. Again in 1996, they added a few more flavors. Those were Cherry rush, Strawberry- Kiwi, and M’mmmandarina flavor.

Then in the year 1997, a new product was launched called Gatorade Frost with the intent of enlarging the brand appeal. In 2001, Gatorade made its entry into the solid food.

It brought up with a bar containing protein, carbohydrates with puffed grains and corn syrup.  It was named Gatorade Energy Bar. In 2002, they introduced Gatorade Ice which was again rebranded in 2006 in the form of Gatorade Rain.

Other than all these, Gatorade introduced a series for the athletes between 2008 and 2010. It was known as G-series, which later was subdivided into G-series Pro, G Natural and G-Series Fit.

Composition Of Gatorade:

When the original Gatorade was made, it was just a mixture of salt, water, citrus based flavoring and sugar. The only thing that was kept in mind while making the drink was combating dehydration. Later on plenty of new things were added.

It has sucrose, dextrose, sodium chloride, monopotassium phosphate, citric acid and sodium citrate. Gatorade Thirst Quencher, according to 8 US fluid ounces or 240 ml, contains about 50 calories, 110 mg of sodium, 14 gm of carbohydrates and 30 mg of potassium.

During the 90’s corn syrup containing high fructose level was used to add more sweetening taste to the drink. If we talk about today, that is 2011, the drink is sweetened with the combination of sucrose and dextrose.