Gatorade is Nasty Stuff

Let's get down to brass tacks. The blood contains minerals, known as electrolytes. For us to be healthy, these have to be in balance. One should be taking in twice as much potassium as sodium. Taking in a lot of sodium means depleting the stores of potassium. If a person gets too much sodium, grave health consequences can happen. One of the most obvious is edema, especially in pregnant mothers. Edema can cause all kinds of damage. I am living proof of that, myself.

And I think this is only the tip of the iceberg. How many other conditions do you think are prevalent because we consume way too much sodium? Want to take a guess? Cancer may even be one of them! See this web site: Life Science Mission. Although it isn't mentioned, I know people who have successfully sent cancer into remission for years by balancing their electrolytes. I'm not endorsing this to "cure" cancer, but I am suggesting that doctors need to do research on this! What they discover may surprise them!

Gatorade, and potato and corn chips, are loaded with salt. Gatorade has a token amount of potassium; potato chips usually don't have any. Potato and corn chips, if flavored, often also contain monosodium glutimate, another source of sodium. To make matters worse, monosodium glutimate is a deadly neurotoxin. I go into detail on that elsewhere. Food companies that manufacture Gatorade and chips buy shelf space in grocery stores. That's why you see so much of these, as opposed to other foods and other brands.

Having too much sodium in the body can also cause a lot of other nasty health problems. Muscle cramps are one. If you wake up in the middle of the night with horrible muscle cramps, you have probably been getting waaaay too much sodium in your diet. Be glad it wasn't a heart attack instead. In fact, I am shocked that the families of some of the basketball players that have dropped dead from heart attacks haven't sued Gatorade. I wish they would. What do you want to bet that was the favorite sports drink of some of these players?

I recently talked to a woman at the fitness club. She said that although it hadn't started out that way, recently she had been getting horrible muscle cramps when she works out. I asked her what she drinks while working out. She said, "water". Obviously, she was not replenishing her electrolytes. I suggested she do so. I have no idea what she did. There is a lot of deadly dangerous misinformation circulating, and people are believing it.

Awhile back, Annheuser-Busch was making a sports water that contained a number of electrolytes. It was balanced. I used that drink with great success until they took it off the market. When I inquired as to the reason, I was told that they had decided to concentrate on making beer. However, the formula would be available for sale, cheap. I spent some time trying to locate someone who would be willing to produce it, without success. And that's the way things stood until recently.

Recently, I discovered that Reebok is marketing what it calls "fitness water." It is everything that the Annheuser-Busch product was, and more. It contains NO sodium at all. It is most likely located with the juice mixes such as Snapple. Or it might be with the water, in the grocery store. It is called "Fitness Water" and the brand name Reebok is readily visible. It is bottled by Clearly Canadian. The plain flavor has only the electrolytes. Since I have been able to buy and drink this water, I have had much more stamina in taekwondo class. This was invaluable to me as I prepared for testing for second degree black belt decided, and actually went through the testing. It could easily have made the difference in my being able to be prepared.

I personally cannot recommend any fitness water other than this one. There are others out there, but they contain sodium. Look at your labels. If it contains sodium, it's NOT the one I would recommend. Nor would I recommend any of the competitors to Gatorade, such as Powerade, because although they have less sodium, they are still very heavily weighted toward sodium, and therefore, they are almost as dangerous.

When I complained to various sports drink manufacturers about the high sodium content, the response I got from them was that the amount of sodium in them is much less than in products like chips. Big deal! Chips are very much too high, and this is nothing to use as a benchmark! In response to them, I pointed out that people drink water to satisfy thirst, and that sports drinks with sodium do not satisfy thirst (which is why they put sodium in them, I think, so they'll sell more of them) so people drink more of them, and this actually increases the amount of sodium in the body to unacceptable levels and throws the electrolyte balance out of whack. I said it is the balance that is critical and not the absolute amounts. No one has supplied a response to my argument.

Let's use our buying power to make sure that Reebok's product stays on the market!!! Tell your friends. Use it. Tell your local grocery store why you won't buy Gatorade, and get online and email Gatorade and tell them why you won't buy their product. Use every opportunity to get others to do the same. Please copy and email this page to others.

PLEASE NOTE: FLAVORED REEBOK FITNESS WATER CONTAINS SUCRALOSE! AVOID IT! It would be nice to let Reebok know they need to take the sucralose out of their product, but they're a lot harder to reach than the other companies! Contacting Clearly Canadian directly would be a lot more useful. You can also call this comment line: 1-800-735-7180.

For more information on sucralose, please see the following web sites:

http://www.mercola.com/2000/dec/3/sucralose_dangers.htm, The Potential Dangers of Sucralose.

http://www.holisticmed.com/splenda/, Sucralose Toxicity Information Center.

Now what about those chips? Well, here is what I have discovered. There are some chips on the market that are healthier, and don't contain MSG even though they are flavored. For example, Terra produces some very interesting flavors, such as olive oil potato chips, sweet potato chips, and taro chips. They are also loaded with salt. Most flavors are available only in health food stores. For a short time, Albertson's carried a good selection, but recently, they merged their store space with Osco. Bad move, from my perspective! And in the process, they cut back tremendously on the shelf space for groceries. Why is it that a grocery store chain that is doing what it does best decides to do such a stupid thing? Everybody needs to eat. Not everyone is interested in poisoning their bodies with drugs. Even though drugs cost more, people buy a lot less of them. I have NO idea why they did it! One of the casualties was most of the flavors of Terra chips. But even if we get Albertson's to reverse their decision and start to stock the interesting flavors again, we have other battles to fight. We have to contend with that practice of the big food producers buying shelf space. It is quite obvious they do this with chips. And most of them are still loaded with MSG, lots of it. We need to do everything in our power to buy chips from people like Terra. But that is only stage one. We also need to induce Terra to stop loading their chips with salt. Sure, they have less salt than the "commercial" products, but it is still waaaaaay too much! Presumably, companies could use potassium chloride as their salt instead. Why don't they use it? Well, for one thing, salt on chips greatly increases their shelf life. And there is a certain concern about liability from using that much potassium on a product, because alkalosis isn't any fun, either. People don't tend to blame a food manufacturer for using too much salt, but I can only imagine what would happen if someone made the switch and started using potassium chloride instead. Presumably they could use both, and strike a balance. That would be better. But they might not taste salty enough for people. Still, I think it is a good idea to try to get people like Terra to try it. The bottom line in the flavor game is that most companies use salt because it is cheap. The other flavors are much more expensive. Even using other flavors, companies are tempted to throw in too much salt and MSG, because that brings out the flavors more, and means they don't have to use as much of the expensive flavors.

Once more, let's use our buying power. Let's complain to companies by email. Let's make a difference!

When you write to these companies (the offenders, not the good guys), remind them that there is legal liability for selling foods loaded with salt, because it is becoming known that this is a major cause of disease.

Here are some convenient links:

Gatorade:
Feedback
Web site

Powerade:
Web Site. Their web site uses javascript windows. Phone number: 1-800-343-0341.

Albertsons:
Dear Albertsons Feedback. Short cut: Email: cs_online@albertsons.com
Web site
Phone number: 1-888-746-7252.

Frito-Lay (You'll have to call them. They don't take email.) 1-800-352-4477 Weekdays 9:00am to 4:30pm central time. Don't forget to commend them for coming out with flavored chips in recent months that don't have MSG in them!

Terra:
Email:
consumeraffairs@hain-celestial.com
If you prefer a form:
Talk to us
Web Site:
www.terrachips.com
Hey, here's a company that really cares what we think!