REMEMBER BULLDOG PUNCH? NO?

UF celebrates Gatorade's history

By KIM WILMATH, Alligator Staff Writer

Like a lime-green, sticky flagship, Gatorade led UF to research greatness.

Now, after enjoying more than 40 years of electrolyte-laced hydration, UF is venerating the drink with a historical marker and a ceremony outside the O'Connell Center today at 1:30 p.m.

The dedication will be the first in a series of three-foot-tall markers to honor UF's triumphs in research, service and education, states a memo from UF's History Advisory Council to UF's deans, directors and department chairs.

About 200 people were invited to the event, including Gatorade's original researchers.

The historical marker program is sponsored by the UF Alumni Association, and the first marker cost $1,460, said Carl Van Ness, UF's historian.

"When it came time to pick the first one, Gatorade was easy," Van Ness said. "It combines everything-innovation, research and, of course, the sports program."

Sweet roots

In 1965, four researchers in UF's College of Medicine created a drink to replenish fluids, electrolytes and carbohydrates lost during exercise or sports.

Van Ness said the UF football team first tested the drink during practice.

The first time players guzzled it during a game was when UF played then-fifth-ranked Louisiana State University, he said.

"We were heavy underdogs, but we ended up beating them," he said. "We outlasted them."

Van Ness said LSU team members and spectators were amazed by the amount of energy the Gators team sustained throughout the game.

Rewards and concerns

The rest is Gatorade history, and UF still reaps the monetary benefits of sweet, liquid success.

Over the last five years, UF received about $12.58 million in royalties from Gatorade sales, wrote Steve Orlando, UF spokesman, in an e-mail.

But that piece of the pie could crumble if national health regulations call for public schools to remove the sports drink from their cafeterias.

Sen. Tom Harkin, a Democrat who represents Iowa, recently introduced a bill that would set new nutritional standards in public schools, according to a report from The Washington Post.

Public health advocates are pushing to ban sports drinks and sweetened waters, citing high sugar, sodium and calories as nutritional downfalls.

Janis Mena, GatorWell Health Promotion Services nutritionist, said removing Gatorade from school cafeterias could help curb obesity at a young age.

Gatorade wasn't created for children, Mena said.

Even when used during exercise, it should be diluted and consumed in small amounts.

Orlando said UF officials would not comment about whether stopping sales of the drink at elementary or high schools could severely hurt UF's revenue but said UF would certainly not remove Gatorade from campus.

Making history

UF hopes to erect three to four historical markers on campus each year, Van Ness said.

The next two will commemorate UF's Everglades research and the UF Baldwin Library of Historical Children's Literature.

He said the idea for the marker program came from a similar one at Penn State University.

Like Penn State, UF will eventually offer walking tours from marker to marker around campus to showcase UF's historical contributions, he said.

He said he couldn't estimate how many posts might someday dot UF's campus because the number will continually grow.

"As long as we keep making history, we'll continue to put in historical markers," Van Ness said.

WE WERE ALWAYS TOLD IT WAS THE DEPT. OF DAIRY SCIENCE THAT DEVELOPED GATORADE....

Gatorade

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Gatorade sports drink logo.

Gatorade is a non-carbonated sports drink marketed by the Quaker Oats Company, a division of PepsiCo. Originally made for athletes, it is now commonly consumed as a snack beverage. The drink is intended to rehydrate and to replenish the carbohydrates (in the form of sugars sucrose and glucose) and electrolytes (sodium and potassium salts) depleted during aerobic exercise, especially in warmer climates.

History

Gatorade was created by Dr. Robert Cade at the University of Florida in 1965 for the school’s football team and named after the university’s mascot, the Gators. Cade entered into an agreement with the Indianapolis-based fruit and vegetable canning company Stokely-Van Camp, Inc. (S-VC) to produce the product, which he had already patented. In 1973 Cade and S-VC settled a lawsuit with the University of Florida, which had claimed the University owned the rights for the drink's formula. Since that time the University has received more than US $80 million in Gatorade royalties.

Gatorade bottles

Only a year after its commercial introduction Gatorade was reformulated, as its initial recipe contained the sweetener cyclamate, which was banned by the FDA.^[2]

The Gators football team, at the behest of head coach Ray Graves, began using Gatorade officially in 1967 and went on to win their first Orange Bowl title. They beat the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, whose coach Bud Carson, when asked why they lost, replied: "We didn’t have Gatorade. That made the difference."^[3] Through his friendship with Graves, Hank Stram, head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs, secured large amounts of Gatorade for his players; the Chiefs attributed their Super Bowl title of the 1969 season to the University of Florida sports drink.^[1]

Marketed with images of dramatically perspiring athletes, the drink became popular with non-athletes, and dietetic and low-sodium versions were added to the Gatorade product lineup.^[1]

The Quaker Oats Company bought S-VC in 1983, after a bidding war with rival Pillsbury. Quaker licensed manufacturing of Gatorade in some worldwide markets to PepsiCo, but sued Pepsi in Australia in 1998, alleging Pepsi had misappropriated Gatorade trade secrets to manufacture its own sports drink, All Sport. Quaker won the Australian case.^[2] In August 2001, Pepsico acquired Quaker (after another bidding war, this time with arch rival Coca-Cola Company). Both bidders valued Quaker largely because of the Gatorade brand.^[1]

Along with Johnson & Johnson, Gatorade is one of the founding sponsors of the National Athletic Trainers’ Association. It is also the official sports drink of the National Football League, Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association, National Hockey League, NASCAR, Major League Soccer, Women's National Basketball Association, NBA Development League, US Soccer Federation, and many other pro and college organizations, providing supplies of the drinks to the teams in all flavors available.