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Food

The Best Sports Drink Is Plain Old Sugar Water

Researchers at England's University of Bath have found that a spoonful of sugar mixed into a bottle of water is actually a better aide for athletic endurance than the energy drinks that were created to do the trick.
Photo via Flickr user Derek Bruff

Ah, Sugar.

Few things on this earth are able to simultaneously engender both delight and disdain like that sultry mistress of temptation known as sugar. Even if you were to ignore its pretty blatant unhealthiness, sugar and its trade are pretty much what modern globalization was built atop. Historically speaking, there's no way to avoid all the bloody acts that were committed in the name of the world's favorite sweetener. Jump forward to contemporary times, and sugar is basically health enemy number one. But as a society, we still love nothing more than our sweets.

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READ: This Is Why Sugar Is So Damn Addictive

So it's with sincere concern for your sanity that we tell you to sit down before you read what's next: Researchers at England's University of Bath have found that a spoonful of sugar mixed into a bottle of water is actually a better aide for athletic endurance than the energy drinks that were created to do the trick.

The study, which was just published in the American Journal of Physiology: Endocrinology & Metabolism, looked at 14 long-distance cyclists. The cyclists drank various beverages—water, water with sugar, and glucose-based sports drinks—to see if different types of carbohydrates helped to avert the decline of liver glycogen levels and tiredness during exercise.

Turned out that sucrose—yes, good old table sugar—in water was more effective than either water alone or glucose-based drinks in helping endurance athletes feel good and exercise well.

Sucrose, glucose, fructose. We know: Your head is spinning. But here's the difference: Each sucrose molecule is actually made up of a glucose and a fructose molecule linked together. So, sucrose is a combination of different sources of sugar, and is absorbed more quickly from the gut, thereby allowing athletes to access carbohydrates when they need them the most.

Although some sports drinks are now using sucrose, many are mixtures of glucose and fructose. Others rely on glucose alone.

According to The Guardian, Dr. Javier Gonzalez, the lead researcher and a lecturer at the University of Bath said, "We … found that the exercise felt easier, and the gut comfort of the cyclists was better, when [the cyclists] ingested sucrose compared to glucose. This suggests that, when your goal is to maximize carbohydrate availability, sucrose is probably a better source of carbohydrate to ingest than glucose."

READ: How to Stop Eating Garbage and Whip Your Ass Into Shape

According to The Telegraph, for optimal performance during exercise lasting over two and a half hours, researchers recommend diluting eight grams of sugar (about two teaspoons) in every 100 milliliters of water (about half a cup), and say you can allow yourself up to 90 grams of sugar per hour.

Maybe Mary Poppins was on to something after all.