Trickle Down Episode 11: The Elixir of Life Part 1 (Sample)

QAA Podcast

Julian Feeld, Travis View & Jake Rockatansky

News

4.5 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 10 December 2023

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

There are many reasons why Gatorade became the king of sports drinks. It had a compelling origin story. Its partnership with the NFL led to the iconic “Gatorade Dunk,” where celebrating athletes would pour a giant container of Gatorade over their coach. There was the hugely successful “Be Like Mike” advertising campaign, which featured Michael Jordan sipping Gatorade. But one of the reasons is the belief that Gatorade is a science-backed product. To secure this belief, Gatorade’s owners helped establish the Gatorade Sports Science Institute. On these two episodes of Trickle Down, we’ll explore how Gatorade influenced the science of hydration on the way to becoming a multi-billion dollar brand. Subscribe for $5 a month to get an extra episode of QAA every week + access to our archive of premium episodes and ongoing series like PERVERTS, Manclan, and The Spectral Voyager: https://www.patreon.com/QAA Theme by Nick Sena (https://nicksenamusic.com). Additional music by Pontus Berghe. Editing by Corey Klotz. https://qanonanonymous.com REFERENCES Wikipedia: Elixir of Life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elixir_of_life Fitzgerlad, Mattt. Diet Cults: The Surprising Fallacy at the Core of Nutrition Fads and a Guide to Healthy Eating for the Rest of Us (2014) Rovell, Darren. First in Thirst: How Gatorade Turned the Science of Sweat into a Cultural Phenomenon (2005) Noakes, Timothy. Waterlogged: The Serious Problem of Overhydration in Endurance Sports (2012) Noakes, Timothy. THE HYPONATREMIA OF EXERCISE https://www.crossfit.com/essentials/the-hyponatremia-of-exercise-part-1 Cleveland Clinic: Electrolytes https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diagnostics/21790-electrolytes

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	In 1983, the Quaker Oats Company purchased the Sports Strength Brand Gatorade from the firm Stokely Van Camp. Before the purchase, Stokely made some extraordinary
0:16.4	claims about the effectiveness of Gatorade, such as that it moved through the body at
0:20.8	12 times the speed of water.
0:23.2	This claim hadn't been scientifically validated,
0:25.6	so Quaker wrote executive Phil Maranoa
0:28.1	ordered for a lab to test Gatorade
0:30.6	to find out its exact qualities. They found that Stokley's claims were way off.
0:35.8	Gatorade worked as fast as water, not 12 times faster as originally advertised,
0:41.1	but that initial testing just to learn more was enough to start a new era of Gatorates marketing.
0:47.0	Marinot said this, when I heard that, I knew that we had the ammunition to win.
0:52.0	It sounds small, but if it weren't for the test results that said what it did, we wouldn't be here.
0:57.6	Marinel realized that in order for the brain to stay on top, Quaker would have to constantly prove that Gatorade was the best thirst-quenching product in the world at all times,
1:08.4	and that required science, or at the very least the backing of scientific papers and scientists.
1:15.3	So Marino oversaw the creation of the Gatorade Sports Science Institute,
1:20.0	and he even took a position on the board of the procedures American College of Sports Medicine.
1:25.0	He explained his strategy this way.
1:27.0	What I was concerned about was that somebody was going to out-gator-aid, gator-aid.
1:32.0	Our goal was to use our relationships with
1:34.7	researchers to stay ahead of the curve on the latest in Thirst Science.
1:40.0	This campaign didn't just help turn Gatorade into a multi-billion dollar brand.
1:45.0	It also twisted how millions of athletes and regular people thought about hydration.
1:51.0	I'm Travis View and this is Trickledown, a podcast about whatration. I'm Travis View and this is trickle down, a podcast about what
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Julian Feeld, Travis View & Jake Rockatansky, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Julian Feeld, Travis View & Jake Rockatansky and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.