I'm not a big fan of most sports drinks, as their sugar content often far outweighs any benefits they may hold for the average person—often, too, they have ingredients that just scare me with their names. The same holds true for any of those packets you can buy in the grocery store (Lipton, Crystal Light, etc.)...if you skip the sugar, you pick up a nice helping of aspartame or other scary artificial sweeteners (Acesulfame anyone?).
But lets face it: it can get boring just drinking water on the trail, day in and day out. When we stumbled across Nuun in a climbing store in Seattle, we thought we'd try it (especially after reassurance from my friend and the clerk).
I give it a mostly thumbs up:
The taste is pretty great for a portable tab you dump into your water bottle. They have a wide range of flavours, including banana and kona cola. I like the berry flavour, but a friend of mine hated that one enough to mail it to me (thanks M ;)
The portability is pretty awesome, too. Nuun comes in tabs in a plastic tube, so you aren't left with little packets when you use one. The tube is not large, and easy to throw in the side pocket of cargo shorts (or an outer pocket on your pack, or your bike bag, or whatever).
Nuun tabs contain electrolytes (salt), potassium, and calcium. The calcium is an added bonus over others, and something both men and women should be paying attention to. (Go Nuun!) They do not contain sugar, for those folks who need to watch that kind of thing.
Which brings me to the sugar: these guys are low-cal, which is great. But they do use sorbitol, which is apparently "naturally occurring in stone fruits" but is made artificially for food. Sorbitol is very safe and as far as I'm reading not a carcinogen; still, it's artificial. For a great comparison of the artificial sweeteners, refer to this chart. Note: sorbitol can, in very large quantities, cause *ahem* lower digestive distress; Nuun tabs don't have enough to cause problems—unless you ate several tubes at once, I'm assuming. Then you're on your own for being a weirdo.
They have something else called polyethylene glycol which adds experience (a richer feeling in your mouth), not nutrition. For the purists out there, you don't want to jump on that one and probably want to stick with water. I really dislike that they added this when it's so unnecessary.
So, negative points for the artificial stuff. Still, a good choice for mixing it up with the water. Bonus points for adding calcium.
Grade: A-
I starting using nuun as a recommendation from EB as an alternative to gatorade. Having a salt deficiency, I need to drink electrolytes everyday to help stay balanced, but having a yeast allergy, I have to limit my sugar intake. Nuun gets bonus points for customer service. They researched the manufacturing process of their tablets to make sure there was no yeast in that process (a lot of dissolving tablets use yeast as a manufacturing compound). Later I inquired about the ingredients of the berry flavor because I am allergic to strawberries and they came through quickly with helpful allergen information. I personally like the orange ginger and the lemon+lime. I found the citrus fruit to be ok in flavor, but it smells like sweat which is a total turn off. I had an aversion to the berry flavor, even though it was completely strawberry safe, it still has strawberry flavoring and for me anything strawberry flavored is vile. :P
ReplyDeleteA lot of the folks at our shop love nuun.
ReplyDeleteI consider some sort of electrolyte additive to my water to be a MUST in the summer when running or hiking. It really makes all the difference in the world. I have gone from feeling like death and literally shaking to A-ok in 3 minutes from this addition to my routine... Typically I use packets, which I buy in bulk at The Vitamin Shoppe.
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