Rawvelo Organic Hydration Drink Mix

You're bang on the money Simon. A bottle of posh squash from M&S will cost £1.60,if you must a kg of maltodextin will cost about £8.00. That's £9.60 to make between 5 and 6 litres of sports drink (and that's just on the basis of the amount of squash you've got). You don't need added salt but if you really, really do you've probably got some in your kitchen cupboards. Alternatively you could forgo the maltodextin, buy the posh squash and spend £9.99 on Christine Aschwanden's excellent book 'Good to Go'. That way you'd have spent the grand total of £11.59 which is still cheaper than the reviewed product and you'd never fall for the snake oil salesmen's 'Sports Nutrition' pitch again whilst still being as well hydrated as your ever likely to need to be. 

Depends how much effort you put in. When I ride, I'm heaping out a lot of sweat, and the electrolyte input helps to rebalance my system. I can get leg and get cramps from a lack of salt for a while after my rides.

My favourite most cost effective drink is still SIS Go Electrolyte, which you can tend to find on offer quite frequently.

Buy 2x1.6kg tubs on eBay and there is currently a 20% voucher, meaning £28.78 for 3.2kg. No need to faff around mixing your own. 64 drinks at 45p a serving, decent value.

Not to be pedantic, but it's not 400mg of salt, it's 400mg of sodium. Per 25g serving it's actually just 1.0g of salt.

The BHF recommends no more than 6mg a salt and 2500mg sodium each day, so you're probably ok to have a couple of servings in a ride, especially given you're losing salts from your body when you sweat a lot.

I always monitor my daily salt intake and try to avoid processed foods and aim to only eat whole foods, with minimal seasoning, so I'm happy to add salt my drinks but I can see why there may be concern for those who consume too much salt, but frankly hydration sachets are not the main issue here, it's poor diet that's the problem.

Fwiw, I do buy hydration sachets but if I don't have any I just tend to add a bit of sugar and salt to squash. No big deal either way - whichever route people want to go I'm sure they'll be happy.

HollisJ wrote:

Not to be pedantic, but it's not 400mg of salt, it's 400mg of sodium. Per 25g serving it's actually just 1.0g of salt.

And you think 1g of salt for an hour or so of riding is a good thing? I don't.

HollisJ wrote:

The BHF recommends no more than 6mg a salt and 2500mg sodium each day, so you're probably ok to have a couple of servings in a ride, especially given you're losing salts from your body when you sweat a lot.

Thanks for the correction re 400mg/1g.

Unless you're riding across a desert or racing for 4 hours in the Vuelta d'Espana at 35°C in August you're likely to be losing far less salt/sodium during a ride than you've been led to believe. If you're eating foods that contain salt then it's really not at all necessary to add it to energy drinks.

There are medical professionals that take issue with the widely quoted figure of 6g of salt (or 2,500mg of sodium) a day. The American Heart Association advises a maximum of 1,500 mg of sodium per day, for example.

And like speed limits, that's a maximum, not a target.

Simon E wrote:

And you think 1g of salt for an hour or so of riding is a good thing? I don't.

I didn't say that - I was merely pointing out the difference between what you stated and what the ingredients actually say. Unfortunately I'm not qualified to say how much salt intake in a given time frame is good or otherwise.

Simon E wrote:

Unless you're riding across a desert or racing for 4 hours in the Vuelta d'Espana at 35°C in August you're likely to be losing far less salt/sodium during a ride than you've been led to believe. If you're eating foods that contain salt then it's really not at all necessary to add it to energy drinks.

There are medical professionals that take issue with the widely quoted figure of 6g of salt (or 2,500mg of sodium) a day. The American Heart Association advises a maximum of 1,500 mg of sodium per day, for example.

And like speed limits, that's a maximum, not a target.

Certainly, I'd agree with that - less salt is always better. It's fair to say that you probaby can't put everyone in the same boat, though, as everyone sweats differently and loses salts to a lesser or greater degree.

Anecodatal as it is (so take it with a pinch of salt…) I tend to sweat a lot and I can actually see all the salt on my helmet straps after a ride. I used to get pretty bad headaches just drinking water or squash (even in large quantities), but have found that hydration mixes with some salt in them help to mitigate that.

HollisJ wrote:

Not to be pedantic, but it's not 400mg of salt, it's 400mg of sodium. Per 25g serving it's actually just 1.0g of salt.

The BHF recommends no more than 6mg a salt and 2500mg sodium each day, so you're probably ok to have a couple of servings in a ride, especially given you're losing salts from your body when you sweat a lot.

Let's at least get the pedantry right ...

"Just" 1.0g is 2 and a half times as much as 400mg, so the correct figure is worse than the one originally quoted, not better as you imply, although you are correct that salt is 40% (ish) sodium, so 1g of salt equates to 400mg of sodium. 

It also means that, using the maximum recommended 6g (not mg) of salt per day, you are ingesting 1/6 of your maximum recommended daily salt intake in one single bidon. A couple of servings would then make it 1/3 of the maximum, before you account for any of the food you have eaten/will eat that day. 

Just to make you feel even better ... a slice of bread is generally 0.3-0.5g of salt per slice and bacon around 2.5-2.8g per two rashers, so two bidons and a bacon sandwich at the cafe stop will pretty much get you to the limit.

Yes, I do have high blood pressure ... why do you ask?