Osmolality and pH of sport and other drinks available in Switzerland

Abstract

Sports drinks are widely used during exercise to avoid or delay the depletion of the body’s carbohydrate stores and the onset of dehydration. Both the osmolality and the pH of a sports drink can infl uence its effectiveness and its impact on mouth health. Unfor-tunately, data about osmolality and pH are usually missing on the labels of commercially available sports drinks and are unknown in the case of homemade sports drinks. Therefore, we analyzed the osmolality and pH of 35 sports and recovery drinks, as well as that of 53 other beverages usually consumed in Switzerland. The osmolality of the analyzed sports and recovery drinks varied over a relatively wide range (157–690 mmol/kg) with the homemade sports drinks being at the lower end and some commercial recov-ery drinks at the higher end. The osmolality of some commercial sports drinks, which are designed to be consumed during exercise, tended to be in the hypertonic range, although such drinks should rather be slightly hypotonic. The pH of nearly all analyzed sports drinks was in the range of about 3 to 4, which is of some concern because of the potential of low pH solutions to erode teeth. Al-though some of the tested sports drinks did not have an optimal osmolality, issues like individual tolerance and fl avor preference of the drinks must also be considered before generally discourag-ing their consumption. Future generations of sports drinks should, however, also address the pH of the drinks to minimize their im-pact on dental erosion.