QAA - Trickle Down Episode 12: The Elixir of Life Part 2 (Sample)
Aired: 2023-12-19
Duration: 09:20


=== Expanding Sports Drink Markets (07:39) ===

[00:00:00]  [Music]
[00:00:08]  On a summer day in 2014, a 17-year-old student arrived at Douglas County High School in Georgia for the day's
[00:00:15]  football practice.
[00:00:16]  He had been suffering from medical issues in recent months, including cramping, dehydration, and migraines.
[00:00:22]  These conditions continued after practice, so in an attempt to quell the problem, he drank a lot of fluids, much more than anyone really needs to quench their thirst.
[00:00:31]  Two gallons of water and two gallons of Gatorade.
[00:00:34]  That helped his condition subside at first, but early the next morning, he collapsed in his home and was rushed to the hospital.
[00:00:41]  The huge fluid intake caused swelling around his brain and subsequently, the collapse of his nervous system.
[00:00:47]  He was placed on a ventilator, but after five days, it became clear that there was no hope for recovery.
[00:00:53]  No one will ever know why this young man drank so much more than necessary that night, but he didn't do anything that was counter to the common recommendations for athletes.
[00:01:01]  The most common advice was to drink up, always be thoroughly hydrated for peak performance, and perhaps Gatorade is superior to water for athletes.
[00:01:12]  The problem with this advice is that it did not emerge from neutral science.
[00:01:16]  It didn't even emerge from the experience of athletes.
[00:01:18]  Instead, this advice emerged from the need to sell sports drinks.
[00:01:22]  For decades, the billion-dollar sports drink industry developed increasingly sophisticated ways to convince people that they were not getting enough fluids.
[00:01:30]  This didn't just involve massive advertising campaigns.
[00:01:33]  It also involved controlling entire athletic organizations and even twisting the field of hydration science to help them sell more of the colorful liquids.
[00:01:43]  I'm Travis View, and this is Trickle Down, a podcast about bad ideas that flow from the top.
[00:01:48]  With me are Julian Field and Jake Rokitansky.
[00:01:51]  Episode 12, The Elixir of Life, Part 2.
[00:01:54]  So yeah, this is our second part of our exploration of the influence of Gatorade, which is a lot bigger than I thought
[00:02:08]  it was.
[00:02:08]  And I think it's really, really interesting because it flows from the unique selling proposition of Gatorade.
[00:02:15]  Now, imagine if it was your job to sell a commercial product whose main selling point was that it hydrates your body during or after vigorous exercise or some other athletic activity.
[00:02:25]  Now, as far as commercial beverages go, this is kind of a non-selling point.
[00:02:30]  Like Coca-Cola, it doesn't claim that it primarily hydrates your body.
[00:02:34]  The claim is usually that it's a tasty, refreshing treat that facilitates friendship or nostalgia.
[00:02:39]  There's no scientific component to it.
[00:02:41]  And so their competition is primarily other sugary soft drinks.
[00:02:45]  And like Budweiser, You know, alcoholics, it doesn't claim that their beer hydrates your body.
[00:02:50]  They claim that it'll make you cool and feel good and maybe make you like a, you know, a real American.
[00:02:55]  And so their competition is like other alcoholic beverages.
[00:02:58]  But people who make sports drinks say that their product is a thirst quencher and rehydrates you.
[00:03:03]  And so their main competition is water.
[00:03:07]  But even if you do successfully convince people to replace their water consumption with sports drink consumption, there's still a limit on how much of the sports drink that you can sell.
[00:03:16]  And that limit is created by the fact that people tend to stop drinking when they're no longer thirsty.
[00:03:21]  So if you wanted to expand the market for sports drinks, you'd have to convince people that drinking until you're no longer thirsty isn't enough.
[00:03:30]  You'd have to convince them to consume more beyond the elimination of thirst in order to reach your peak health and athletic performance.
[00:03:37]  You could convince them that Gatorade is the best drink to pour out for your homie who drank too much Gatorade and died.
[00:03:45]  Yeah, they haven't explored the pouring out on the streets and remembrance market.
[00:03:52]  Really leaving money on the table.
[00:03:54]  I gotta say though, I'm already taking heat for saying publicly on the last episode that I like the cucumber flavor.
[00:04:00]  I don't know how much I'm going to contribute here.
[00:04:02]  I feel like my Gatorade preferences are already on the cross, if you will.
[00:04:08]  When will people realize that you're innocent?
[00:04:13]  It's insane.
[00:04:13]  It's like, tired of listening to what your body is telling you?
[00:04:16]  Ignore it.
[00:04:17]  Drink more.
[00:04:18]  You know, if you wanted to really be effective at convincing people to drink a lot more, you'd have to convince people with authority that drinking beyond thirst is good.
[00:04:31]  Not just the general public, but like scientists and athletic organizations.
[00:04:35]  And that is exactly what Gatorade through the Gatorade Sport Science Institute did.
[00:04:40]  Before I get into that, I want to talk a little bit about drinking strategies, because there are two main competing fluid intake strategies that people might subscribe to.
[00:04:49]  Now, the first is drinking to thirst, which is also called by its Latin name, ad libitum.
[00:04:54]  Now, ad libitum, just like it sounds, consumption of fluid, whatever you feel like, and drinking, you know, as much or as little as you like.
[00:05:02]  It's fluid consumption guided by your natural, innate, biological impulses when you, you know, You feel thirsty when you drink, when you feel like you've had enough, you stop.
[00:05:11]  Pretty simple.
[00:05:13]  The second school of thought for hydration is programmed drinking.
[00:05:16]  This is drinking predetermined amounts of fluid with the purpose of minimizing fluid losses.
[00:05:23]  And this usually means drinking even after you've satisfied your thirst.
[00:05:26]  And this is based on the idea that like, you know, when you do vigorous exercise, you lose a lot of fluid, mostly from sweating, and this leads to a corresponding drop in body weight.
[00:05:38]  Proponents of this strategy argue that a more regimented hydration strategy is better at preventing dehydration and heat illness than merely drinking to thirst.
[00:05:47]  Before I get into the scientific backing of either position, I think it's worth talking about their history, because the idea of programmed drinking is fairly new.
[00:05:55]  Like I talked about in the last episode, for most of the 20th century, even top endurance athletes very often drink nothing at all during athletic events.
[00:06:03]  Also, not necessarily a good idea.
[00:06:05]  That's just the way it was.
[00:06:07]  But even after the invention of Gatorade, athletes generally drank the thirst.
[00:06:11]  There was no suggestion that you should just choke down large amounts of fluid for health or performance reasons.
[00:06:17]  This automatic preference for drinking the thirst slowly changed in the second half of the 20th century.
[00:06:22]  And this happened when some advice popped up, just like in the collective consciousness that related to very, you know, very specific advice on drinking.
[00:06:32]  Now, you might recall hearing the recommendation that you should drink at least eight glasses of water that consists of eight ounces of water each per day for a total of 64 ounces in a day.
[00:06:42]  This is sometimes called eight by eight.
[00:06:45]  Kind of weird advice when he says, like, everyone should do this, like, regardless of your health, regardless of your athletic activity, regardless of your body weight.
[00:06:52]  This is just the advice for everyone.
[00:06:54]  It's very, very odd that everyone just gets the eight glasses of water, eight ounces a day.
[00:06:59]  Where the hell does this come from?
[00:07:01]  When I was a kid, I would like, at the end of the night, I would realize, you know, oh, I, I don't think I've drunk enough water today, you know, because this was part of the accepted reality.
[00:07:11]  And I would go into the bathroom and we had these like, um, solo cup, you know, these solo cup dispensers with little, you know, wax cups or whatever.
[00:07:19]  And I would slam eight of them.
[00:07:21]  And I would go to bed just about every night with a belly just like swished full of water.

=== Stranger Advice Sinking Ships (01:55) ===

[00:07:26]  You know, I would feel like a ship, a ship sinking, you know, as I crawled, uh, crawled into bed.
[00:07:31]  But I thought that that was, I thought I was doing something good for myself.
[00:07:35]  We're all very grateful that Jake is still alive.
[00:07:39]  Yeah.
[00:07:40]  I mean, this is this is strange advice that, you know, affected perhaps impressionable neurotic people like Young Jeff.
[00:07:49]  Can you imagine me just in my jammies, just swish, swish, you know, eight big glasses slammed all at once.
[00:07:55]  I was I was all water.
[00:07:57]  And surprisingly, surprisingly, didn't I was not a you would think that bedwetting might come next.
[00:08:03]  But that didn't happen.
[00:08:05]  Don't ever.
[00:08:05]  Oh, that's good.
[00:08:06]  Yeah, make it clear.
[00:08:07]  Make it clear.
[00:08:08]  But I guess dating young Jake would be like owning a waterbed?
[00:08:11]  I mean, I was like 8 or 9.
[00:08:13]  I was 8 or 9.
[00:08:14]  I wasn't dating.
[00:08:15]  I wasn't thinking about... I was thinking about, you know, Batman.
[00:08:18]  So you stopped this activity later?
[00:08:20]  I did, yeah.
[00:08:21]  I am an under-hydrated person now.
[00:08:24]  I exist on the minimal amount of fluids to survive.
[00:08:29]  Yeah.
[00:08:29]  Maybe if Gatorade invented like a Gatorade pouch you could heat up between your thighs.
[00:08:34]  That would change.
[00:08:38]  Hey there.
[00:08:39]  You've been listening to a sample clip of Trickle Down.
[00:08:42]  This is a side project that I've been working on.
[00:08:45]  It's a 10 episode series about misinformation and bad ideas that flow from high authority sources.
[00:08:52]  I think it's fascinating and I mean it's a way for I guess me to explore the way people who Should know what they're talking about.
[00:08:58]  Don't always, actually.
[00:08:59]  Not gonna lie, some of it's kind of a bummer, but if you're anything like me, that's actually more of a reason to dive into the subject matter.
[00:09:06]  Like with the premium episodes of QAnon Anonymous, all the episodes of Trickle Down are available to people who support us through Patreon.
[00:09:14]  Still the same five bucks a month, double the extra content, same price that we've been doing since 2018.
[00:09:18]  We are inflation-proof.