bk here, i'm the husband referred to in the initial post. liz has asked me to contribute to the blog with an eye toward the more nutritious and sports oriented foodstuffs, so here's my first post: Homemade Sports Drink!

1/4 tsp Salt
1/4 tsp Morton Lite
1 pkt unsweetened Koolade mix
10 tbs Sugar
2 cups hot water
7 cups cold water

Mix salts, Koolade and sugar in a pitcher. Add 2 cups of hot water (i use hot from the tap) and stir until all ingredients are thoroughly dissolved. Add 7 cups of cold water to create full volume. Makes 9 8oz servings. 53 cal., 0g fat, 14g carb., 14g sugar, 0g pro., 113mg sodium, 32mg potassium compare to Gatorade™ which is: 50cal., 0g fat, 14g carb., 14g sugar, 0g pro., 110mg sodium, 30mg potassium

I've tried this recipe with both orange and lemon-lime Koolade packets and both taste similar to their commercial counterparts. (I like the lemon-lime better though)

The trick to making your own sports drink is to make sure you have the electrolytes as well as the carbs. While the simple carbs are indeed the most important nutritional need during and right after a workout, the electrolytes are also very important.

In that vein, Morton's Lite Salt is a key ingredient because it is made up of roughly half sodium and half potassium. A 1/4 tsp of Morton's Lite is the exact right amount of potassium you need. Add 1/4 tsp of regular salt to get the extra sodium you need and you have a sports drink that is almost exactly the same makeup of Gatorade™.

A big benefit about making your own sports drink is the cost savings. A good price on Gatorade™ is about $0.25 per serving while this homemade recipe is less than $0.04 per serving. Just for me, that's a yearly savings of almost $200.

A bigger benefit with making your own sports drink is that you know the exact source of carbs going into your drink. A lot of cheaper sports drinks (like Powerade™) will use High Fructose Corn Syrup as their simple carb and even some Gatorade™s use HFCS. Table sugar, on the other hand, is 100% sucrose.

I won't go into details about why HFCS is not desirable (that would be a very long and technical post), but sufficeth to say that sucrose is simply a better source of the energy you need during and after a workout than HFCS.