Hydration Drink Mixes Price Per Pound

I've tried a several sport drink/hydration mixes at varying prices and wondered if you really get what you pay for. The lowest cost mix that I know of is good ole Gatorade. I've found the lemon-lime at Costco for around $7 for a giant container -- I think it was 6lbs. I don't care for lemon-lime so this just wasn't palatable at any price. I can get the orange flavor at Target for $4.44 for 1.125 pounds. This is quite affordable a $3.95 per lb and I find the orange flavor quite tasty. Ingredients include:

sucrose, dextrose, citric acid, salt, sodium citrate, monopotassium phosphate, natural flavor, modified food starch, calcium silicate, yellow 6

Fortunately it does not have high fructose corn syrup as most cheap drinks do. It does not contain magnesium and I could do without the artificial color.

Last year I decided to try Cliff Shot Electrolyte. This sells for about $18 on Amazon for 2 lbs, so $9 per pound. I got the cran-razz and found it to be the tastiest of the drink mixes I evaluated. The Cliff product labels itself as organic. The Cliff Shot ingredients include:

organic brown rice syrup, organic dried cane syrup, citric acid, salt, natural flavors, beet powder, dipotassium phosphate, dicalcium phosphate, magnesium oxide and green tea extract.

The last mix I tried was Scratch Labs. This is a local company and the ingredients are all natural, so I thought I'd give it a chance. At $19 per pound it's by far the most expensive mix around. It's not as sweet as the others but of course sweetness can be controlled by just adding more mix. The orange flavor was decent. The ingredients include:

sucrose, glucose, sodium citrate, citric acid, oranges, magnesium citrate, calcium citrate, potassium citrate, and ascorbic acid.

Interestingly, the main ingredients in both Gatorade and Skratch Labs are essentially the same (Dextrose is Glucose according to Wikipedia). I suppose I could add magnesium citrate to gatorade and get any missing benefits. Oddly enough this ingredient is best known as a laxative

In conclusion, I didn't feel like a performed any better with the more expensive drinks, so I'll be sticking with Gatorade for the near future and saving money.

In preparation for a ride I usually drink about 16-24 ounces about 30 minutes prior to a ride. Then I bring another 8 ounces or so in a water bottle, in a concentrated form. Then I put water in my Camelback. For long rides I'll put Gatorade in the Camelback but it's a pain since if any sugar is not rinsed out it starts to grow mold.