If you have been following my blog then you know I am pretty much about health and taking personal responsibility for it. And over the last couple of weeks I have shared my beliefs that for the most part corporate American has very little invested in you living a healthy life style.
So let me share something that I got from a company that has a lot to do with you living a healthy lifestyle. Carifree is a company that makes products to help reduce the risk of cavities that you get. Southern California Dental Health Associates carries these products because they are all about preventing disease in the first place.
Gatorade has a mobile app called Bolt! which ran most of last year. It starred Olympic sprinter Usain Bolt. Gamers navigated a Bolt avatar going through an obstacle course and picking up bottles of Gatorade along the way to make him go faster. But here is the rub; during the game it told the gamers that to keep Bolt’s level of performance as high as possible to drink Gatorade, at the expense of drinking water. In fact, the actual words used by the game were “keep your performance level high by avoiding water”
According to Nancy Huehnergarth, a food activist and blogger for civileats.com, she found a video that stated the entire campaign was about driving home the message that Gatorade is better than water. She eventually filed a complaint with the NY Attorney General and the game was eventually pulled. But listen to these amazing stats. It garnered 4 million Facebook likes and was downloaded more than 2.3 million times, according to the video describing the game and marketing that accompanied the award’s submission and has since been taken down. The game, which is no longer available, was played more than 83 million times and 73 percent of those players were between the ages of 13 and 24, according to the video which was used by Huehnergarth to support her criticism.
Now just so you know, there have been many studies that show unless you are a high functioning athlete there is no nutritional value for Gatorade, it is just extra sugar for consumption of calories, kids can get all their electrolytes back from drinking water. In addition, Gatorade has a pH of 2.95, which is pretty acidic. What drives the bacteria in your mouth to behave badly..that would be an acid environment.
Can you imagine the damage this free app did with its anti-water message. And by the way, all Pepsi, the parent company of Gatorade had to do was give a contribution to the Drink Up campaign about drinking water. A charitable donation………
And you wonder why are kids are not healthier today than they were 40 years ago.
Just saying