I want to update you on yesterday’s Lunch Tray post, in which I shared Nancy Huehnergarth’s excellent reporting on a Gatorade video game which was explicitly designed to teach kids that “water is the enemy” of athletic performance.
In that piece, Nancy linked to a video created by Gatorade’s media agency in which it explained the strategy behind the game (research showed that teen athletes believed water was adequately hydrating) and in which it crowed about how successful the game has been in countering that (entirely true) belief.
Nancy’s post garnered a lot of attention (I noted that the New York Times‘ Mark Bittman tweeted it this morning) and, clearly feeling the heat, Gatorade pulled down the video yesterday.
Fortunately, Civil Eats, the outlet in which Nancy’s piece appeared, had at the ready a complete transcript of the video which now appears in the original post.
Meanwhile, Nancy has been asked how we, as consumers and parents, can express our concern over this particularly egregious, kid-targetted campaign. She writes on Civil Eats:
My suggestion is to write your state attorney general and ask him/her to investigate Gatorade’s claim that Gatorade is superior to water and that water is the enemy of athletic performance. Here is a link that gives contact information for each of the U.S. state attorney generals: http://www.naag.org/current-attorneys-general.php –
I’ll keep you posted of any further developments.
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