Nothing Sharper

For recovering from illness-related dehydration, you need a pretty hefty amount of water and electrolytes, but sugar? Not so much, which is why a doctor who’s paying attention would probably prefer to prescribe you Pedialyte than Powerade.

In a moment of feverish vacillation on Wednesday, I grabbed a bottle each of Gatorade and V8 at the gas station. After all of the sports drinks I chugged during last year’s daring liver ambush by the Epstein-Barr virus, I’m still not able to bring myself to drink fluorescent orange crap, but I did wolf down the V8 (viscous red crap is apparently a-okay). When I was done, I slammed the empty bottle down, and it just so happened that the food labels for it and the ‘Ade were staring each other down.

Let’s see what an 8 oz. serving of each gets you:

		  G'ade	     V8	 P'lyte
Calories	     50	     50	     25
Fat		      0	      0	      0
Sodium (mg)	    110	    480	    253
Potassium (mg)	     30	    470	    193
Total Carbs (g)	     14	     10	      6
   Fiber (g)	      0	      2	      0
   Sugar (g)	     14	      8	      6
Protein	(g)	      0	      2	      0
RDA %s
  Vitamin A	  trace	     40	      0
  Vitamin C	  trace	    120	      0
  Calcium	  trace	      4	      2
  Iron		  trace	      4	      0

So, that gallon or so of V8 I drank yesterday seems like a pretty smart health move, considering solid food was still dicey – it gave me some much needed Calories, loaded me up on vitamins, minerals, and electrolytes, and didn’t dope me up with sugar. all for less than half the cost of the Pedialyte. Oh, and it gave me roughly 32 servings of vegetables, considering their claim that each 8 oz. is two servings of veggies. I should be good on greens through St. Patty’s.

The only drawback seems to be V8’s thickness, but if you were to throw back a pint of it followed by a pint of water and then repeated the process a couple of times, you’d probably be in very good shape. Keep that in mind next time you desperately need to rehydrate but solid food isn’t too high on your list of things to ingest.

Gatorade nutrition facts
V8 nutrition facts
Pedialyte nutrition facts