Last week, several parents at a Bethesda, Maryland high school expressed concern over the planned attendance of a Gatorade sales rep at a mandatory pre-season meeting for student athletes.
As reported by Bethesda magazine, the rep would be on hand to “chat about hydration while also providing samples of the company’s products.” But one outraged parent wrote on a local listserv, “The fact that samples are being provided suggests that this presentation is focused at least as much on marketing as it is on providing objective and scientific information to our kids about their hydration needs.”
I learned of the Bethesda meeting from a source at the Center for Science in the Public Interest and became intrigued. Was this type of meeting a standard marketing tool for Gatorade or an anomaly? I soon learned that for several years the PepsiCo-owned sports beverage company has employed what it calls its “G-Force” — a team of hybrid sales and marketing representatives dedicated exclusively to gaining access to high schools around the country to promote the company’s G Series line of products.
Given its overall market dominance, reaching out to high schools makes sense for a company in need of new growth opportunities. According to a 2013 Ad Age article about the G Force team, “Gatorade’s G Force Leaves No Sweat Behind,” the ultimate goal is to win over every “point of sweat” — the company’s own term for the high schools it targets. Or, as a quoted beverage industry analyst put it more bluntly: “There tends to be quite a bit of brand loyalty among sport nutrition users, so [it’s important] to hook them when they’re young.”
“Hooking them when they’re young” includes offering coaches special discount Performance Packages on G Series products and also implementing the “G Weeks” program in which G Force sales reps visit a school for several days and blanket the campus with samples and other promotions. Here’s how one high school newspaper reporter described G Week:
Gatorade came to Brentwood School hosting their “G” Week on campus for our high school student-athletes. The event kicked off with a presentation during lunch describing the products available to our athletes and their impact, benefit, and importance of hydration on athletic performance. A few lucky attendees walked away with their own Gatorade bottle or NFL style Gatorade towel and everyone attending received a sample Gatorade Prime Energy Chew. Over the course of the three day program, our fall athletes will be able to sample the Gatorade package during their respective practices and games starting with the pre-performance Prime Energy Chew, the in-game Thirst Quencher, and the post-workout Protein Recovery Shake. The program aims to highlight the value of proper hydration and nutrution [sic] and its effect on the body during physical activity.
But Gatorade sees high school athletes as more than just potential new customers. As one high school coach describes in this short YouTube video, the company also exploits students as part of its social media marketing. This coach approvingly tells viewers that during G Week at his high school, Gatorade “sent a marketing company down” to:
sign student athletes up using their Facebook account, and each one of the athletes got a wrist band to wear during the day. . . . The company took pictures of our athletes drinking and using the Gatorade products . . . during the week at practice and at their games. . . . After practice and games our students could go by and view their pictures and then tag and code them with a scanner . . . . They could just put their wrist band up against the scanner and their pictures would automatically be tagged to their Facebook account. So it’s pretty cool for them to get some pictures of them drinking and using the Gatorade products.
And just what are these G Series products being so aggressively marketed to kids?
As part of their “educational” presentations on proper hydration, G Force sales reps encourage student athletes to first “prime” for a game or practice by consuming six Gatorade Prime Energy Chews (100 calories, 16 grams sugar), then “perform” by drinking Gatorade Thirst Quencher (21 grams of sugar and 75 calories per 12 ounces) and then “recover” afterward by consuming a Gatorade Protein Shake (270 calories, 31 grams of sugar).
Assuming, conservatively, that an athlete drinks only two Thirst Quenchers during a game or practice, this prescribed G Series regimen contains over 22 teaspoons of sugar. But according to the American Heart Association, teenaged girls should consume no more than 5 teaspoons of sugar daily and teenaged boys should consume no more than 8-9 teaspoons daily. Moreover, the American Academy of Pediatrics has opined that “Water, not sports drinks, should be the principal source of hydration for children and adolescents.”
But what about athletes who compete for long periods of time or in particularly hot weather? According to Jill Castle, MS, RDN, CDN, author of the new book Eat Like a Champion: Performance Nutrition for Your Young Athlete, “The athlete who would most benefit from this specific system is the one who is truly active during the entirety of the game or actively participating in practice for over an hour.” But Castle cautions, “The athlete who is ‘warming the bench’ during the game, who participates in a less intense sport, or exercises for about an hour doesn’t need this level of nutritional intake.”
Castle also notes that even for very active athletes, hydration and replenishment of lost carbohydrates and protein could also “be accomplished with food and water” instead of the G Series regimen. And there are good reasons why a parent might prefer their child to consume the former: in addition to their high sugar content, the G Series products contain an array of artificial flavors, artificial food dyes, the controversial additive carrageenan and various other emulsifiers and stabilizers.
Having never attended a G Force hydration talk, I can’t say whether the company’s sales reps inform students that food and water could accomplish the same goals as the G Series products. But given that this information could leave a precious “point of sweat” unexploited, I tend to doubt it.
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