Should You Be Downing A Sports Drink?

Lindsay Lohan.

You're at the gym, standing in front of the vending machine. Do you cough up $3.50 for a sports drink  or a bottle of the old faithful H2O? It's a tough call. Sports drinks – specially designed to keep your body hydrated during exercise – can be beneficial for your muscle strength but as a general rule: anything under an hour typically doesn't cause you to sweat enough to make a sports drink essential for hydration.

You need to remember that there are a lot of hidden calories in sports drinks. I think nutrition expert Dr David Katz summed it up best when he said: "It's a way of peddling soda to the health-conscious crowd."

According to Dr Katz, "If you're in training for the NFL, then having Gatorade at the sidelines is reasonable, but most people use them badly. Not only are you not getting any benefit, you're also getting increased calories and sugar."

So just how much is sugar in a sports drink? Well, a 240mL serve of Gatorade (less than half a regular-sized bottle) contains 14g of sugar, and in Powerade you'll find 19g – that's just marginally less than what's in a same-sized serve of Coke.

So the bottom line is, if you are amping up your exercise and trying to shed a few kilos, you need to make sure that the sugar and calories you're consuming in your sports drink are coming out of your diet elsewhere.