⚡ A look at what's actually on the labels of the most popular electrolyte drinks, what they're missing, and what to look for instead.
We pulled the labels.
Here's what the most popular electrolyte drinks are putting in your glass, in milligrams, per serving.
Gatorade Thirst Quencher. Sodium 270 mg. Potassium 75 mg. Magnesium 0 mg. Sugar 21 to 36 grams (depending on bottle size).
Liquid IV Original. Sodium 500 mg. Potassium 380 mg. Magnesium 0 mg. Sugar 11 grams.
Pedialyte Classic. Sodium 370 mg. Potassium 280 mg. Magnesium 0 mg. Sugar 9 grams.
Nuun Sport. Sodium 300 mg. Potassium 150 mg. Magnesium 25 mg (as magnesium oxide). Sugar 1 gram.
LMNT Recharge. Sodium 1,000 mg. Potassium 200 mg. Magnesium 60 mg. Sugar 0 grams.
A few things become obvious when you put them next to each other. Three of these brands include no magnesium at all. The ones that include it often include trace amounts in poorly absorbed forms. And the ones with the most marketing budget tend to have the most sugar.
This is not what your body needs from an "electrolyte" drink. Not really.
Why Sodium Gets All the Spotlight.
Sodium is the easy mineral to formulate around.
It's cheap. It's stable. It dissolves cleanly in water. It doesn't have FDA labeling caps that force annoying disclaimers. And critically, it's the electrolyte your body loses the most of in sweat, which makes it the most defensible thing for a "sports drink" to lead with.
The result: the marketing for hydration products has, for forty years, anchored on sodium. Sometimes paired with potassium. Sometimes paired with sugar (for absorption reasons we'll get to). Almost never paired with the full picture of what your body actually uses to function.
You can verify this yourself with a phone in any grocery aisle. Read the labels. Compare what's listed against what your body actually does with electrolytes. The gap is usually substantial.
What the Other Three Minerals Actually Do.
Your body uses four electrolytes for the bulk of its electrical work: sodium, potassium, magnesium, and chloride. (Calcium is sometimes included on the list, but its day-to-day role is structural, not electrical.)
We covered each one in detail in our piece on the four-mineral stack. The fast version:
Potassium is the inside-the-cell counterweight to sodium's outside-the-cell role. Without enough potassium, your cells can't maintain the gradient that powers nerve signals, muscle contractions, or heart rhythm. The WHO target is at least 3,510 mg per day. Most Canadians get nowhere close. Fewer than 40% of adult Canadians meet the recommended intake.
Magnesium is involved in more than 300 enzymatic reactions in your body. Energy production. Muscle relaxation. Sleep regulation. Blood pressure. Insulin sensitivity. According to Health Canada, more than 34% of Canadians over 19 are below the requirement, with that figure climbing past 40% in many adult age and sex groups.
Chloride travels with sodium in table salt and helps regulate fluid balance and stomach acid. You almost certainly get enough. Not worth thinking about for most people.
The point. Two of the three minerals the average person is actually short on are routinely missing from the drinks marketed to fix exactly that gap.
The Sugar Problem Nobody Wants to Talk About.
Look at the Gatorade and Liquid IV labels again. 21 to 36 grams of sugar per serving for Gatorade. 11 grams for Liquid IV.
That's not a small amount.
The defence the brands use is real, to a point. Sodium and glucose share a transport mechanism in your gut, which means a small amount of sugar can enhance the absorption of sodium and water. This is the principle behind oral rehydration solutions, the kind the WHO uses to save children's lives in cholera outbreaks.
The catch. Oral rehydration solutions use about 13 grams of sugar per litre. A Gatorade bottle delivers 21 to 36 grams of sugar in a single 591 ml serving, which is roughly 2 to 5 times the concentration. That's well past the absorption-enhancement threshold and into the "this is mostly a sugary drink" category.
For a hard-training endurance athlete burning serious carbohydrate, some sugar in your hydration drink can be useful. For everyone else, drinking 30 grams of sugar while replacing one electrolyte at moderate doses is a strange way to "hydrate."
How to Read an Electrolyte Label.
If you're standing in a store trying to figure out what's actually worth your money, here's what to look for. In rough order of importance.
Magnesium present, in a real amount, in a good form. Look for at least 30 to 100 mg per serving. Look for the form on the ingredient list. Magnesium glycinate, citrate, or malate are well-absorbed. Magnesium oxide is cheap and poorly absorbed compared to organic forms (Nuun, despite its decent reputation, uses oxide). If a drink claims magnesium but doesn't tell you the form, assume it's oxide and discount accordingly.
Potassium in meaningful amounts. Look for at least 150 mg per serving, ideally closer to 300 mg if you're using it during or after sweating. Anything under 100 mg is window dressing.
A reasonable sodium-to-potassium ratio. The WHO ideal is 1:1. The typical North American diet runs closer to 2:1 in the wrong direction. Most drinks lean heavy on sodium, which is fine for hard sweating but not ideal for daily use. A drink that pairs 500 to 1,000 mg of sodium with 200 to 400 mg of potassium is in a reasonable range for an active person. A drink with 3 or 4 times more sodium than potassium is heavily favouring one side of the balance.
Sugar under 5 grams, ideally zero, unless you're using it for endurance fuelling. Most daily-use hydration doesn't need carbohydrate. The "sodium-glucose absorption" argument is real but overstated for casual hydration.
No artificial colours, sucralose, or aspartame if you're using it daily. The science on these isn't catastrophic, but stevia, monk fruit, and allulose are cleaner options that don't carry the same long-term question marks.
Chloride. Don't worry about it. It rides along with sodium in any drink that uses sodium chloride (table salt). You're covered.
What to Actually Look For, by Use Case.
A few practical answers.
For daily use, no heavy exercise. A drink with moderate sodium (300 to 500 mg), real potassium (150 to 300 mg), magnesium in a good form (40 to 100 mg), and no sugar. Most people in this category would also benefit from just eating more leafy greens and legumes. The drink is a supplement to whole food, not a replacement for it.
For heavy training or hot-weather exercise. Higher sodium (500 to 1,000 mg). Real potassium. Magnesium. Some carbohydrate (5 to 15 grams) can be useful for sessions over 60 to 90 minutes. (For more on the training side of midlife nutrition, our piece on creatine for strength after 40 covers some of the surrounding ground.)
For illness, post-illness, or fasting. A balanced electrolyte drink without sugar, or a basic oral rehydration solution if you're seriously depleted.
For "I just feel tired most days." Worth reading our piece on why most people are quietly under-mineralised first. The fatigue answer is usually whole food, magnesium supplementation, and consistency, not a daily packet of anything.
If You Want to Make Your Own.
You can. It's cheap. It tastes worse than the branded versions but it works.
Mix into 16 to 20 oz of water:
- ¼ to ½ teaspoon of high-quality salt (sea salt, kosher salt, or pink salt). Provides about 500 to 1,000 mg of sodium plus chloride.
- ¼ teaspoon of potassium chloride (sold as a salt substitute under brands like NoSalt or Nu-Salt). Provides about 600 mg of potassium.
- A small magnesium supplement, taken alongside, in glycinate or citrate form, 100 to 200 mg.
- A squeeze of lemon or lime for flavour and a bit of vitamin C.
- Optional: 1 tsp of honey or maple syrup if you're using it for training and want some carbohydrate.
Total cost per serving once you have the ingredients: pennies. Total time: about ninety seconds. It's not glamorous. It works.
The point of all of this isn't that branded electrolyte drinks are bad. Some of them are genuinely well-formulated. LMNT, for what it's worth, includes all three of the main minerals at meaningful doses, and a few of the newer entries are catching up.
The point is that "electrolyte" on the front of a package is doing a lot of marketing work for what is, in many cases, sweetened salt water. The four-mineral picture is the whole reason this category exists, and most of the products in it have only built around the cheapest, easiest, most marketable one.
You can do better by reading the label. Or by making your own.
The minerals don't care which.