0
Posted September 27, 2015 by Amy in Family Fiends
 
 

Fueling the Future: A Body Armor SuperDrink Review

2013LINE_slide
2013LINE_slide

Fall sports are in full swing, and finding just the right drink to quench your athlete’s thirst is no small task in today’s saturated market. Ideally, the perfect drink isn’t loaded with added sugar – after all, you want your athlete healthy, not riding a sugar high. You also want something that quickly replenish electrolytes that are lost during heavy exertion, particularly during the temperamental fall season, where it can be a comfortable fifty degrees one day and a sweltering ninety degrees the next. Dehydration is nothing to mess around with. And with all that, of course the perfect sports drink has to taste great – no one wants to swig something that tastes awful, even if it comes in a cool bottle.

Today, we’re sampling Body Armor SuperDrink, which promises “superior hydration for your home team”, and we’ll be putting it through the paces to make sure it ticks all three boxes of sports drink superiority – great taste, low added sugar, and electrolytes. Without even cracking open the bottle, we can explore a few of those by checking out the nutritional information, and in that category Body Armor scores pretty highly.

Body Armor is made with coconut water, which is the latest craze in health drinks, which is unique for most sport drink brands. It also has added potassium (which bumps up the electrolyte count to 704 mg), as well as added B vitamins, and vitamins A, C, and E. And it’s not just a smidgen of extra vitamins in each bottle. A serving of Body Armor offers a full 100% suggested daily consumption of niacin, folic acid, pantothenic acid, and vitamins B6 and B12, along with lesser amounts of several other vitamins. Each serving has seventy calories and eighteen grams of sugar, which is in line with your average Gatorade of the same size.

And now the big question – how does it taste? Particularly if you’re purchasing sports drinks for young athletes, a drink that is refreshing and tastes good is a definite must. Body Armor drinks are currently offered in eight different flavors (fruit punch, orange mango, strawberry banana, tropical punch, grape, lemon lime, mixed berry), so there is some wiggle room in finding the flavors you enjoy. In our taste test, we tried out six different flavors to see how they compared with other leading sports drinks. Overall, they are a sweet drink with pretty pronounced flavor. It doesn’t come across as just a sugary soft drink, because you can really taste the fruit flavors coming through. Though they are a little watery compared to Gatorade, they have a nice taste to them (and though they do contain 10% coconut water, they don’t really taste of coconut, which can be a plus or minus depending on your personal taste).

Overall, we found Body Armor SuperDrinks to be a high quality alternative to the major players currently on the market. With about the same amount of sugar and calories as Gatorade, but loads more vitamins, they’re a great alternative for parents who want a healthy drink fueling their young athletes.


Amy

 
U.S. Senior Editor & Deputy EIC, @averyzoe on Twitter, mother of 5, gamer, reader, wife to @macanthony, and all-around bad-ass (no, not really)