The Wellness Brew - Issue 22

Walk into any grocery store and you'll find an entire shelf that didn't exist ten years ago. Electrolyte powders, sticks, drops, tablets, all promising better hydration than the water you were already drinking. Somewhere along the way the category convinced a lot of people that ordinary life is one big dehydration event. It isn't, for most people. But there's a real version of this conversation underneath the marketing, and it's worth having.

But first, we filtered the noise — here's what's worth knowing this week.

Procter & Gamble announced Tuesday it's acquiring Thorne for $3.8 billion, adding it to a portfolio that already includes Metamucil, Align, and New Chapter. The deal follows Unilever buying Grüns in April and reflects a broader pattern: rather than build supplement brands, the CPG giants are buying the ones that earned consumer trust the slow way. Whether ingredient quality holds post-acquisition is an open question rather than a foregone conclusion, and it's worth watching. The difference with the Thorne acquisition is that unlike other brands that were family-owned, Thorne has been owned by L Catterton, one of the largest consumer PE firms in the world. The practical takeaway: don't switch brands on news of a deal, but re-check the labels in twelve to eighteen months.  — Thorne, press release, August 2026.

Most "avocado oil" chips aren't made with avocado oil

UC Davis researchers tested 54 processed foods labeled as made with avocado oil and found 48 were adulterated with cheaper oils like canola and safflower. Broken out: 93% of chips, 71% of mayonnaises, and 100% of salad dressings. As a control, they ran the same tests on 20 olive oil products and found a single failure, a gap the researchers attribute to decades of regulatory scrutiny on olive oil that avocado oil has never received. This builds on earlier UC Davis work finding 82% of bottled avocado oil was rancid or mixed. If you're paying a premium specifically to avoid seed oils, most of these products are handing them to you anyway. The practical takeaway: a chip is a chip and mayo is mayo. They’re not healthy regardless of what oil is used and you should consume them sparingly. For dressings, use high-quality olive oil and make your dressing at home. — Wang et al., Applied Food Research, 2026.

Vitamin D and stress fractures in athletes

A study of 802 NCAA Division I athletes tracked over six years found that those who stayed below 40 ng/mL of vitamin D had a 12% higher rate of stress fracture than those who reached or maintained that level. The threshold is the notable part. The Endocrine Society defines deficiency as under 30 ng/mL, so an athlete can be technically sufficient by clinical standards and still be in the higher-risk group here. Context worth having: one meta-analysis found 56% of athletes carry low vitamin D levels, and the same research group's data showed levels dropping sharply from August to February regardless of whether the sport was indoor or outdoor. This is a cohort study, so it shows association rather than causation. The practical takeaway: if you train hard, it’s worth having your vitamin D levels tested and supplementing if below 40 ng/ml. — Millward et al., Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine, 2020.

Somewhere in the last five years, electrolytes stopped being a sports product and became a daily one.

The pitch is everywhere now. Drink one when you wake up, because you dehydrated overnight. Drink one at your desk, because coffee is a diuretic. Drink one after a walk, after a sauna, after a flight, on a hot day, on a hangover. The category has quietly reframed ordinary life as a series of depletion events, each with a corresponding packet.

It's worth asking the obvious question. Do we really need it?

Your body needs less than 500 milligrams of sodium a day to function. [3] That's about a quarter teaspoon of salt.

The average American eats around 3,400 milligrams a day. The federal recommendation is to stay under 2,300, and roughly 90% of Americans are over it. [1] [2] More than 70% of that sodium comes from packaged, processed, and restaurant food rather than the salt shaker [3] [4], which is why most people underestimate their own intake by a wide margin. A sandwich, a bowl of soup, and a handful of chips will clear the daily limit before dinner.

Now in regard to exercise, it's worth putting a number on what you actually lose. The largest dataset we have comes from 1,303 athletes tested with standardized sweat patches. Endurance athletes in the group averaged about 1,190mg of sodium per hour of training. [10]

With that context in mind, the daily-use pitch for the average person is really hard to defend. One LMNT packet contains 1,000 milligrams of sodium. That's 43% of the entire recommended daily limit in a single drink. For someone who consumes the average of 3,400mg of sodium per day from their diet, an hour of average sweat at the gym is simply offsetting the surplus they already have. Adding another 1,000mg of sodium is unnecessary. 

None of the above means the category is useless. It means it's been marketed to the wrong ninety percent.

There are real conditions where sodium replacement matters, but the variable isn't exercise or no exercise. It's the volume of sweat and concentration of sodium you're actually losing and for how long.

Let me take you down memory lane for a moment…

The year is 2008. I was just starting my senior year of high school and had just finished our first football game of the season. I played offense and defense, which meant I rarely left the field. After the game ended, we had about an hour drive back to our school. During that bus ride, I experienced full body cramps that left me rolling around the bus aisle, screaming, laughing, stretching one cramp only for another to start. For the rest of the season, I made sure to drink pickle juice before every game – the original electrolyte drink.

Fast forward to the summer of 2025. I had recently begun training for a full Ironman and was struggling with muscle cramps most nights after hard workouts. I decided to do a lab test that examined my rate of sweat, as well as the concentration of sodium I was losing. It turns out that I'm an elite sweater – go figure. I lose almost 3,000mg of sodium per hour during a run in 80-degree weather.

Individuals can have sweat rates and sodium concentration rates that vary widely from person to person. [10] So while the average person may lose around 1,000mg of sodium during an hour of exercise, others like myself can lose significantly more. This is where electrolyte supplementation becomes necessary. Stack that up over multiple hours of exercise and all of a sudden electrolytes become absolutely critical.

To sum this up, below are the scenarios when you may actually need electrolytes:

This is where the category gets frustrating, because the products that market themselves hardest as clean hydration are frequently the ones with the most going on in the ingredient panel.

What to avoid

Pedialyte powder is worth singling out because it's the most misunderstood. As a medical rehydration product for a sick kid, it works and it's well-formulated for that job. But the powder packs contain sucralose, acesulfame potassium, and Red 40 or Blue 1 dye depending on the flavor. [5] [6] It's a reasonable trade-off for 48 hours of a stomach bug, but it's a poor daily beverage.

Gatorade powder leans on sugar, roughly 32 grams a serving, with Yellow 5 in the lemon-lime and Red 40 in the fruit punch. The Zero line swaps the sugar for sucralose and acesulfame potassium. [7] Neither version is what most people picture when they think hydration.

DripDrop uses sucralose. Liquid I.V.'s original formula carries about 11 grams of added sugar per serving, which is a third of the daily added sugar ceiling in a drink you were told was health-forward.

Unflavored is the cleanest answer. Most of the sweetener question disappears if you're willing to drink something that tastes like salt water, and a handful of products are built exactly that way.

LMNT Raw Unflavored is three ingredients: salt, magnesium malate, potassium chloride. Same 1,000mg sodium as the flavored sticks, no stevia, no maltodextrin, no flavoring. Built for heavy sweating and low-carb eaters.

Redmond Re-Lyte Unflavored uses Redmond Real Salt as its sodium source, which carries trace minerals that refined sodium chloride doesn't. Clean panel, and Redmond applies more ingredient transparency to the unflavored version than the flavored ones.

Saltivate Raw Unflavored runs 800mg sodium, 240mg potassium, 60mg magnesium from three mineral compounds and nothing else. A middle dose with about as short an ingredient list as the category offers.

The catch is honest: none of these tastes great. That's the whole tradeoff. 

If you want flavor, stevia and monk fruit are the least-bad options available. Every flavored electrolyte uses something, and the realistic choice is between stevia and monk fruit on one side and sucralose, acesulfame potassium, and added sugar on the other. Given that, the plant-derived ones win.

Promix runs 1,000mg sodium, 200mg potassium, and 60mg magnesium, sweetened with monk fruit and zero sugar. What sets it apart is what's doing the coloring: black carrot juice, turmeric, and beets rather than synthetic dye. That's the same distinction the Gatorade and Pedialyte panels fail. Sodium source is Himalayan pink salt, so you get trace minerals alongside it. 

Transparent Labs Hydrate runs 500mg sodium, 250mg potassium, 50mg magnesium, stevia-sweetened, third-party tested. A sensible middle for moderate sessions.

Nuun Sport sits at roughly 300mg sodium with about a gram of sugar and stevia. The lower sodium dose is a feature, not a shortcoming.

Cure uses a coconut water base at around 240mg sodium, sweetened with stevia and monk fruit. Good at the light end.

Worth naming the caveat rather than burying it: WHO's 2023 guidance on non-sugar sweeteners covers stevia and monk fruit alongside the synthetic ones, and recommends against habitual use. Plant-derived isn't the same as free of concern, and monk fruit isn't clearly safer than stevia — it's just less studied. So the flavored versions are a real trade, not a clean pass. If you're drinking one a few times a month after long efforts, that's a different exposure than one every morning.

The three things to check on any label: the sodium number against what you actually lose, whether there's added sugar and how much, and what's doing the sweetening. Sucralose, acesulfame potassium, and synthetic dyes are the first ones out.

Water. Food. Salt your food.

That handles hydration for the overwhelming majority of days for the overwhelming majority of people. The packet is a tool for specific conditions — long, hot, sweaty, sick, or low-carb. Used that way, it's genuinely useful and I keep them around.

Used as a daily habit, you're paying a dollar-fifty a day to add sodium you already had too much of, and in a lot of cases to drink sucralose while doing it. For those who simply don't like the taste of plain water, learn to like it. Sorry not sorry.

The wellness industry is very good at turning a situational tool into a daily identity. This is one of the clearer examples.

Three things you can do this week:

1. Figure out whether you actually need electrolytes or not.
Run the list: are you sweating hard past 60–90 minutes, training in real heat, going back-to-back days, sick with fluid loss, or eating low-carb? If none of those describe your week, then you don’t need supplemental electrolytes. 

2. If you do qualify, match the dose to the loss.
Electrolyte supplements tend to have anywhere from 200mg to 1,000mg of sodium per serving, but that has nothing to do with what you personally lose. A long hot run and a 45-minute lift are very different things. Do your best to supplement what you need vs relying on standard serving sizes.

3. Read the sweetener and color lines before anything else.
Sucralose, acesulfame potassium, and synthetic dyes are the first ones out. Unflavored is the cleanest answer if you can tolerate it. If you want flavor, stevia and monk fruit are the better options — not a clean pass, just a better trade.

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Wellness, filtered.

The Wellness Brew

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Disclaimer: The Wellness Brew is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. The content published here is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or health condition. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before making any changes to your diet, supplement routine, or lifestyle.