G2 Is the New Pedialyte, which Was the New Gatorade

Serious endurance athletes will not be surprised to read that Pedialyte, a liquid whose ostensible purpose is the rapid rehydration of diarrhea-stricken babies, is the preferred beverage of many professional athletes and die-hard triathletes. As the New York Times reports, long-distance runners started exploiting the powers of the neon-tinted concoction of sodium, potassium and glucose back in the 1980s. Now, the paper tells us, from the beverage cart on the Anaheim Ducks’ team flights during the
2007 Stanley Cup playoffs to the training camps of the National
Football League,
Pedialyte has found its place in the kit bag of professional athletes. In fact, according to this report, Pedialyte’s popularity was the main reason that in 2005 Gatorade launched Gatorade Endurance, a mass market drink with nearly twice as much sodium per serving as traditional Gatorade. On Friday, the Times reports, Gatorade introduced G2, which, like Pedialyte,
has far fewer calories than regular Gatorade and can
ensure athletes arrive on the field with enough salts in their system
without delivering a dose of carbohydrates too high for muscles at rest.
Read more in the New York Times.