Homeade Ade

I've been scouring the web for a good recipe for sports drinks (like Gatorade). As with so many other things, I'm a little bit fussy about my homemade-ness (although my standards went down after two weeks of searching): I wanted something that could be stored as a powder, not as a liquid, so that eliminated a lot of really good recipes that called for orange juice as a base. I was also hoping to find something that did not call for having Kool-ade or Tang or a similar prepared powder for flavour, because that adds in preservatives and artificial colours. Finally, budget ruled all. I wanted something cheaper than buying a massive container of Gatorade powder, which is what I've always done in the past (and it's not terribly expensive, btw; here in Austin, you can get 24 quarts' worth of powder for about $8); if I'm going to make something at home, by golly, it has to be cheaper than buying it at the store.

Nutrition facts, as
calculated by SparkPeople.

I found a delightful website called Sports Girls Play that had a recipe that was similar enough to all the others I had seen, and also had an analysis of the ingredients, the nutrients, and a short spiel about Gatorade itself (see that post here). I tried it as written first, but the saltiness was a bit overwhelming to someone who's used to the sweetness of Gatorade. I added a couple more tablespoons of sugar to get this recipe:

3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp Morton Lite Salt
1 pkg Flavor-Aid (or any drink powder; use the amount called for to make two quarts)

The recipe calls for Kool-Ade, but the Flavor-Aid is much, much cheaper: I bought a 12-pack for 92¢, compared to Kool-Ade at $1 for five (and any powdered drink mix that you like will work). I mixed it up in my former Gatorade container and use one tablespoon of mix per 8 oz water, which is the amount also recommended on the Gatorade package--the actual recipe on the site calls for mixing it up into two quarts of water straight away, which I don't want to do. Also, using one tablespoon per 8 ounces of water makes it taste fine, but it does mean that I'll end up getting more than two quarts' use out of the batch. I'm totally cool with that.

For excessive sweating,
this by itself is not quite
enough. Source.

For sweaty bicycle trips home in the 90-100° weather, I up the ratio of powder to water just a bit. As a runner in a sweaty climate, I live in fear of hyponatremia, and I'll risk going overboard on the sodium a bit to make sure I'm not going underboard.

On the budget side, after I added up the cost of ingredients and divided by the number of servings, I came up to 8¢ per serving for the Gatorade powder, and 2.7¢ per serving for this recipe. Obviously that will vary a bit depending on what the prices in your part of the world are like. In the end, I got two out of three of my criteria, so I'm calling that a success.

Do you use sports drinks at all? What kind do you like?