Coca Cola…Hydrating? | That’s What They Say
April 18, 2008 by Scott Wharton
Filed under Men's Health
Yes…three drink posts in a row. But this one is all my own. I bought a 12 pack of Coca-Cola today for my parents who are coming in to town this weekend and I noticed something it said on the bottom. It says:
“All beverages hydrate to include soft drinks. So if you are looking for hydration, but want the delicious and refreshing taste you get from Coca-Cola, don’t compromise - go for it! You’ll be hydrating your body with each and every sip.”
Maybe if all the water in the world is gone and Coca-Cola is the only thing left to hydrate yourself with it would be a good statement. You can not substitute water for ideal hydration. If you rely on Coke or any other soft drink to keep you hydrated in hot weather, you’re making a bad decision. The more Coke you drink the more caffeine you take in and the more you will be urinating and the more water will be expelled from your body. Don’t be stupid…drink water and not Coke to hydrate and don’t take a marketing ploy like this seriously. They are just asking for a lawsuit here.
You are most definitely right on point! I agree and from personal experience…
Heat exhaustion is not a pleasant experience and I got it while working on a construction crew in 100 degree heat drinking the wrong thing - coke.
Learned my lesson and lived, thankfully. If you really want to hydrate, water is the deal! For a quick pick me up, go Gatorade…
I thought this was just stupid when I saw it. I once had a friend that thought you could hydrate by taking a shower after a long night of drinking. He had a lot of issues though.
Definitely false advertising! They should be stricter on labelling as this is downright wrong.
Actually, according to a professor emeritus at the Dartmouth Medical School, coke is hydrating. There was no difference observed between those drinking water, caffeinated soda, non-caffeinated soda, or coffee.
http://www.timeinc.net/web/partners/pb/9things.html
Technically, a drink only dehydrates you if the salinity exceeds the salinity of the liquid stored up in some doodad that your body uses to run a “comparison” to see if it can pull water out of your waste. So coke hydrates you.
Gatorade and its ilk, incidentally, hydrates better than water, not just because of the electrolytes, but also because the salt in those drinks is just at the level necessary to trigger your thirst mechanism, which allows you to drink more without suddenly feeling the need to vomit.
Four years of cross country informed me that there are probably about five million things that hydrate better than water after a race, and coke, incidentally, is actually one of them
So…would you hydrate yourself with Coke before a track meet? If you were stuck in a desert with only one thing to drink…would you rather have coke…or water?
I think you misunderstood me. There’s a reason I specified “after” a race. Trying to hydrate with water after a well-run 5k is just asking to lose your lunch to the nearest bush.
Before a race? Neither. Gatorade, all the way. After a race? If I had my pick, some weaker, watered-down Gatorade (taste at that point matters less than the balance of the contents, and Gatorade has a little more salt than it needs). If my choices were water and coke though… coke.
I’m not saying coke is “better for you” than (clean) water, that’d be foolish. I’m just saying that there’s a time and a place for everything. Coke will not dehydrate you and there’s times when I’d rather hydrate with coke than with water, so accusing coke of false advertising is a little harsh, I think.
As per track meets, I wouldn’t know. I’ve never run track.
Desert?
In Anza Borrego I tended to prefer (as always) Gatorade, but when I couldn’t get it (often) plain water worked. Problem was with the sheer quantity of sweat you’re talking about in a desert (reeeeally dry air), your body is losing a lot of things that water can’t give it back alone. I remember one day when I’d eaten some “healthy” bar food instead of baked beans (was getting tired of the gas), by the end of the day I was having these weird fond flashbacks to the days when I used to lick my hamster’s salt-wheel.
Hydration isn’t just about H2O.
I still don’t think they should advertise is as being hydrating without a good explanation. Like I said, if someone solely relied on Coke as an alternative to water as a source of hydration, the effects of caffeine not only on the cardiovascular and nervous system, but on the diuretic effects could prove to be disastrous in the long run.
It says on the box “ALL beverages hydrate to include soft drinks.” If that’s the case then Budweiser could be the next to deploy this advertising campaign, and we all know the effects of alcohol and dehydration.