[Sca-cooks] Home Made Gatorade (OOP)

[Tara]

I'm afraid I have to agree with Alban here.  I always thought Gatorade
was junk - well advertised, nasty crap.  What most of us need is plain
ol' water.  What the few of us need above and beyond that can be
provided by orange juice, without the potential for diarhea that
Gatorade brings.  I've been in those high Pennsic temps, in three layers
of clothing including wool.  A decent diet kept my "elecrolytes" in
balance, and frequent hydration (water) was all I needed in addition.
I've also run 4-6 miles a day at noon (lunch break) in the same
weather.  I've never suffered for a lack of Gatorade.  Heck, I didn't
even drink water *during* the run, because it would give me side
stiches.  I'd drink plenty right before and right after, and eat a big
salad afterward.

More refined sugar is hardly what we need here in America.  It does not
provide an energy boost, it provides a 45 second sugar high.  Eating a
piece of fruit or drinking pulpy juice, which you must slowly digest to
get to the sugars, is a better way of getting that.  Better yet, complex
carbs will provide the best-timed release of carbohydrates for
exercise.  While you do need some amount of salt (electrolytes) because
of what you are sweating, a bit of extra salt on your food can provide
that adequately - and help prevent you from peeing out all the water
you're drinking before exercising.  Thus, I'd rather eat some whole
wheat pretzels before exercising than drink Gatorade during the
exercise.

What did people do before corporate intervention?  Did humanity suffer
severely for millennia because nobody had invented Gatorade yet?  14th
century England may have been cooler than 21st century America, but I
think it's a pretty safe bet that those people were working a heck of a
lot harder than most of us do on on average day.  Even an average day in
the SCA, in garb or in armor.  SCA fighting certainly is hard work.  For
about two hours.  Maybe three if you're a real gluton.  Compare that to
12-14 hours a day working the fields without machines in the heat of
summer, even in England, and I have little sympathy.  Yeah, walking
around a hot event in garb can be uncomfortable.  But, we don't have
fires burning in our homes even in the heat of summer because they can't
be allowed to die out.  Instead, we duck into Cooper's Store for a few
minutes of air conditioning and a refridgerated drink.  We keep drinks
in coolers to help cool us down.  We usually cheat about how much
clothing we're supposed to wear, and what kind of fabrics.  Few people
in the SCA wear three layers of clothing at all times, or wear wool or
silk most of the time.  And, there were people living and working just
as hard in, say, equatorial Africa.  How did they survive without
Gatorade?  Well, they ate fruit, vegetables, salted meals and pickles,
and drank water.  In Europe, they even often adulterated that water with
(say it ain't so!) alcohol to help prevent disease.

Why do we let advertising convince us that a natural, normal diet is
inadequate and can only be made suitable via intervention with highly
processed, expensive "miracle" junk food?  This is the same rationale
that caused pediatricians in the 50's and 60's to advise women not to
breast feed in favor of formula - Science knows better than nature.

Rhiannon, I do agree with you about "fruit drinks," though.  They are
*not* the same a fruit *juice*.  They contain little juice and lots of
sugar.

-Magdalena