I found a few "secret" gatorade recipes to share:

Below are some posts from runners forums and web pages:

My own personal tests suggests this:

in a standard 1 litre Nalgene water bottle half the original recipe to look like this:


• 1/2 packet any flavor of unsweetened Kool-Aid
• 4-5 tablespoons sugar
• 1/8 and 1/16 teaspoon of salt
• 1/16 teaspoon salt substitute that contains potassium chloride
• 1 litre of water

The secret is the potassium chloride you need to balance the salt and the sugar and the potasium chloride just right. In the Local supermarket, in Ontario
(Burlington) I found "No Salt" which tastes like extra salty salt but it is potassium chloride. You only need HALF of 1/8 teaspoon in the 1 Litre water bottle to be able to taste it. (really). No Salt is under the salt in the spices and salt section it was about $5.99 for 311g (which should last you a life time! really) That and 1/8 teaspoon (plus a "pinch") of salt and basically you have a homemade gatorade.

Somewhere I read about replaceing dextrose with regular sugar, but I don't know where to get it.

Cheers

-Tom W

Notes from other web pages:

Homemade Sports Drink

Sports drinks like Gatorade (tm) can be very useful for longer runs and races. Unfortunately, they are also very expensive. I've found a couple of ways of making sports drinks that are effective and cheap. The ideas for the recipe, like most good running ideas, first came to me from The Dead Runners' Society.

Gatorade (tm) has worked hard to come up with what they feel is a good balance of carbohydrates and electrolytes for extended physical activity. Most researchers agree that the optimal concentration of carbohydrates in a sports drink is about 6%. This concentration actually allows the water to be absorbed more quickly in the body than plain water alone. I don't think we need to use sports drinks. I don't use them unless I'm doing a run that going to be over 90 minutes long. However, for long runs, the water, electrolytes, and carbohyrdates help a lot.

Gatorade has a formulation that gives the following for an 8oz serving:
14grams Carbohydrate (5.9%)
110 mg Sodium
30mg Potassium
52 calories

Assuming that is a pretty good formula, we can get close by using one of the following recipes:

Recipe #1

10 tbs. sugar (5/8 cups or 120 grams)
.75 tsp Morton Lite salt (4.2 grams)
1 package of unsweetened Coolade mix for flavor
Water to make 2 liters
The recipe will give a total of 124 grams of solute which in 2 liters water gives a total of 6.2% concentration. For an 8 oz serving this gives:
14.2 grams carbohydrate (6%)
53 calories
103 mg Sodium
121 mg Potassium

You'll notice that the amount of potassium is quite a bit higher than Gatorade, but the rest is pretty close. If you wanted to reduce the potassium, another option would be to use 1/2 tsp. each of regular salt and the Morton Lite Salt. This would change it to:
104mg sodium
40mg potassium

Recipe #2

If you wanted to reduce the amount of potassium, or simply didn't want to buy some Morton Lite Salt, here is another option.

1/2 cup orange juice
9 tbs. Sugar
3/8 tsp Salt
Water to 2 liters

This gives, per an 8 oz serving:
14.4 grams carb (6.1%)
104 mg sodium
28.4 mg Potassium

I believe that you could substitute 2 tbs. of lemon juice for the orange juice and it would come out the same (or at least close).

Remember, the exact proportions aren't as important as just using it for your long runs.

AND

*

You won't believe how close this sports drink recipe is to a commercial product. It has 110 mg of sodium and 38 mg of potassium per 8-oz. serving. Cost is only about 30 cents per half gallon. Compare that to $3 for Gatorade! You can adjust the sweetness to taste. -- John R.

? 1 packet any flavor of unsweetened Kool-Aid or similar product for making 2 quarts
? 8 tablespoons sugar
? 3/8 teaspoon of salt
? 1/8 teaspoon salt substitute that contains potassium chloride
? 2 quarts of water

Awesome....

Hey John....you should be able to pick up dextrose at most pharmacies....

Kirk

Dextrose is glucose which comes from corn, ie. corn sugar. You can pick it up at a beer making supply shop.

Tony

aka_tom_w,
You can also use maple syrup.

You may put my company out of business, but I doubt it. We make Gatorade in bottles (liquid) it is to heavy to carry on a trip. We run 24-7, go figure.
You have a very good recipe.

Bill

Looks good. I can't wait to try it and find out whether it mixes better with Rum or Vodka.

Be careful with how you make this, or you will not have the desired rehydration effect. You must use an exact recipe for what is know as "oral rehydration therapy" (ORT) otherwise you basically making a salt water / sugar solution that will not hydrate as quickly as may be needed (the reason for drinking Gatorade in the first place).

The technical explanation for this is that proteins embedded in the intestinal lumen will only allow the efficient transport of water molecules under exacting concentrations of glucose (sugar) and sodium (salt). The addition of potassium chloride is supplemental and does not help with the properties of ORT .

The recipe for a simple homemade ORT solution contains 1 Liter of water, 40 ml (eight teaspoons) of sugar, and 5 ml (one teaspoon of salt).

Another recipe containing fruit juice and honey can be found here:
http://sprojects.mmi.mcgill.ca/tropmed/ ... herapy.htm

I just used the posted "gatorade" recipe on a recent six day canoe trip. Taste is not bad and seemed to rehydrate me OK. I used unsweetened lemonade Kool Aid for the base. I packed ingredients for a quart into little ziplock bags and poured them into the water bottles.

It was a LOT cheaper than buying the one quart packets of Gatorade from CampMore.

Now, Canoe Junkie, are you saying that if I pour a quart worth of crystals into a liter bottle, it will be the wrong concentration and not work???

Erica

I'm saying that any concentration of salt/glucose other than eight teaspoons of sugar, and one teaspoon of salt in one liter of water will hydrate you at the same rate as drinking a can of soda, rather than gatorade. In other words, in order to have the Hydration properties of ORT, you need to be as close to that concentration as possible.

I know its kool and all to make your own gatoride, I actually wouldnt mind trying it myself. But for trips, if your honestly that worried about getting the ingredient amounst right, why not just buy the powdered gatorade from your local grocery store? i know it may be a bit more expensive, but isnt it worth it? no hassel, better taste, and ya know its got the right amount of ingredients. But hey, thats just my two cents

-AJ-

Without getting into questions about exact concentrations needed for optimal effect, I believe that those Gatoraide recipes have at least twice the amount of sugar as that of ORT.

The WHO recipe that we used as well as the pre-mixed pouches have about 2 tablespoons of sugar for each litre of water. Those above mentioned recipes are quoting 4 to 5 tablespoons.

Our WHO manual also mentioned that as long as we used the same measuring tools for all ingredients it didn't matter whether it was UK or US. (UK is 4 teaspoons per tablespoon whereas US is 3 teaspoons per tablespoon.). From this my take is that it is not an exact science and that approxmals will do. Our standard was 8 1 1 as in 8 teaspoons of sugar, 1 teaspoon of salt into 1 litre of good water.

fwiw, Ted