Around the world, the energy drink market is estimated to be worth billions of dollars. You don’t have to look too far to see ads for drinks like Gatorade or Powerade. You also don’t have to look beyond pretty much any grocery or corner store to be able to buy them.
But Matt Gross, a Brooklyn-based writer and editor, says most of us don’t need to be comsuming these — and for some of us, he says we probably shouldn’t be.
Matt Gross in a recent piece he wrote for the nonprofit news site Food & Environment Reporting Network, Gross argues, as the headline says, “Don’t eat like a pro.” Basically, he says, unless you’re an elite athlete or taking part in endurance sports, you don’t really need energy drinks and gels.
Gross joined The Show to talk about it.
Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: Matt, as you write, these products are becoming more and more popular among people who are not big-time athletes and I’d like to start by asking why you think that is?
MATT GROSS: Oh, that is a big question right there. The big why. Performance beverages have, you know, been around for about 60 years now, ever since the introduction of Gatorade in 1965, but they are just growing and growing and growing into, I think it's gonna be about a $36 billion industry within a couple of years, which means it's not just elite athletes drinking this stuff. It is everybody. It's my 12-year-old daughter and people who don't get any exercise at all, and I think, I mean, there's a lot of reasons for this.
I think we Americans like to have this idea that what we consume makes us better. This category is called performance beverages. Wouldn't you want to drink a beverage, Mark, that makes you perform better?
MARK BRODIE: Absolutely.
GROSS: Even if you never perform?
BRODIE: Well, so I guess that's the question like, is it a psychological thing because, you know, at the risk of alienating, you know, big performance drink and food, like I've had some of these, and they don't taste amazing.
GROSS: No, they don't, but they're sugary. We love sugar, right? I mean, we're human beings. We run on sucrose. These drinks have a lot of sucrose or sucralose or some version of an easy to digest carbohydrate that our bodies want and some salt too, which our bodies also want, and they come in cool colors. So, what could be better than that?
BRODIE: Yeah, well, so and this sort of brings us to one of the points that you make in your piece, which is that these are beverages and and foods that are designed to help elite athletes replace electrolytes or give them fuel, give them protein to keep running or keep doing what they're doing. But, as you say, for some number of people who are eating or drinking those who are not doing those athletic endeavors, it can actually be harmful to your body.
GROSS: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, these are, you know, essential nutrients, but if you consume too much of them, they are not going to be very good for you. There was a meta-analysis in 2023, that's an analysis of all the existing medical literature on the subject, and that analysis concluded that you're really just better off drinking water if you're not an athlete, and that if you drink too much of this stuff, too much Gatorade, too much Powerade, too much aid, you know, it contributes to things like obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and actually it makes people smoke more, which is sort of interesting.
But you know, this is just not good for you if you are not engaged in the kind of activities that are going to burn up and use up all of those nutrients.
BRODIE: So is that the calculation that you have to do? Because yes, your 12-year-old daughter enjoys a Gatorade. My kids enjoy the occasional Gatorade or some of these other kinds of drinks and you know, while they are active and run around and play some sports, they are certainly not out running, you know, five, 10 miles a day or anything. So, like, do you have to sort of calculate how much energy you are burning? How many electrolytes do you think you need replacing before you decide if it's OK to drink one of these?
GROSS: That kind of calculation, I feel like it can get a little too twisty and naughty, and as a runner, I try to avoid equating my actual exercise with very specific calorie burns because there's a lot of eating disorder stuff that gets wrapped up in that. I just try to, myself, consume energy drinks or energy gels, one or two if I'm doing something that is really exertionful. Is that a word? Exertionful.
One of my, my former colleagues at Runner's World, Heather Meyer Irvine, who was the nutrition editor there, her rule of thumb was, if you are running for more than 60 minutes, then, you know, consider bringing an energy gel or an energy drink, but anything less than that, and you probably don't need that. I will go and run for, you know, 90 minutes on a hot day, and all I drink is water from the fountain.
BRODIE: Do you see a difference between energy drinks and the energy gels in sort of a maybe even just the way that they're marketed? Like I've seen commercials for Gatorade and Powerade and all those for many years. I can't remember seeing a, for example, a TV commercial for one of these gels.
GROSS: Well, yeah, I mean, energy drinks, you know, you can show a sexy athlete spattered with sweat and water, chugging a red or blue drink and looking awesome. There's no way to consume an energy gel that looks cool. They come in these little foil packets, you kind of gotta squeeze them out. You don't really ever see them, I assume that, ooze lemon lime flavor is vaguely yellow colored, but you know that stuff just comes straight out of the packet and into my mouth and into my stomach. It doesn't look good. So, advertising that stuff ... is a bit of a trick.
I don't think the marketers have quite gotten there yet. And frankly, the energy gels, they're not refreshing. They don't taste good. They taste worse than the energy drinks, but we runners — and I assume other endurance athletes — carry them around with us on these mega runs that we do because we need some calories along the way, especially during a race.
BRODIE: Well, does that make it maybe more of a niche kind of product for specifically runners or other endurance athletes? As opposed to ... the marketing of energy drinks, which, you know, you can buy at any supermarket and you see, you know, as you said, Michael Jordan drinking them and any athletes drinking them. ... Does that maybe make it less common that you'll see the non-elite athletes using the the gels?
GROSS: Yes and no. I think you won't see non-athletes, you know, picking up a goo or a Maurten gel or a Spring Energy, you know, power packet. But what you do see is a lot of newer runners, people who, you know, have just gotten into it in the last couple of years who think that they need lots of extra energy on what are often shorter runs.
BRODIE: I want to ask you about places like Phoenix where, you know, obviously it gets extremely hot during the summer. And you know you talked about, you know, sort of that rule of thumb if you're out, you know, running for maybe 60 minutes or more, then one of these gels or, you know, an energy drink might be worthwhile. But I wonder in a place maybe that's undergoing a heat wave or a place like Phoenix which is particularly hot, does that maybe make it more acceptable if you're running for maybe or exercising for a shorter amount of time? Or spending more time outside but not, you know, not an hour or so to be using these products?
GROSS: I think it's fine once in a while, but you mostly don't really need them. The studies keep showing that actually water is really going to do most of what you need it to do. You know, yes, you're gonna need some electrolytes at some point. Yes, you're gonna need to recover and consume some actual food. But, water is the key to life. Get more of that, put that back in your system before you do anything else. That's the easiest way to do it.
