Gatorade Zero is arguably the brand’s second-most popular product after regular Gatorade, and because it’s sugar-free consumers are often curious about if it’s good for you. Gatorade describes this product as “all of the electrolytes of Gatorade, with zero sugar.”
But is Gatorade Zero actually good for you? Does it contain any unhealthy additives? Is it healthier than regular Gatorade? And what was our experience testing it during a workout?
In this article we’ll answer all of these questions and more, as we analyze the ingredients in Gatorade Zero to give our take on whether or not it's good for you.
We'll also compare the healthiness of Gatorade Zero to original Gatorade, share our honest experience purchasing and testing this product during a workout, and explain why the powdered version of Gatorade Zero is healthier.
Key takeaways:
- Contains many ingredients we consider unhealthy
- Less added sugar and thus healthier than Gatorade in our opinion
- We do not consider Gatorade Zero to be good for you
Ingredient Analysis
The ingredients in the Grape flavor of Gatorade Zero are shown below:
image source: https://www.gatorade.com/
Rather than sugar, Gatorade Zero is sweetened with two artificial sweeteners, sucralose and acesulfame potassium.
Sucralose was shown to negatively impact insulin function in healthy adults in a clinical trial published in the Nutrition Journal.
Acesulfame potassium was found to cause intestinal injury and negative changes to gut function to animals in a 2021 clinical trial.
Citric acid is a preservative and flavor enhancer that was documented in a series of medical case reports to cause whole-body inflammation, as we referenced in our review of Athletic Greens.
Sodium citrate is the sodium salt of citric acid, and was shown in a clinical trial to improve exercise performance in endurance athletes.
Natural flavor is an ingredient that we recommend avoiding, because some flavoring agents are shown in clinical research to have toxicity concerns.
Blue 1 is an artificial food dye, and a meta-study published in the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health suggested that all artificial food dyes be removed from the food supply due to evidence of carcinogenicity (promotion of cancer) and genotoxicity (promotion of DNA damage).
This formulation contains some research-backed ingredients for improving exercise performance (electrolytes and sodium citrate).
We do not consider Gatorade Zero to be good for you due to the inclusion of all the flavoring and coloring ingredients highlighted above.
We Tested Gatorade Zero
As the author of this article, I wanted to try Gatorade Zero myself to share my thoughts on its taste and whether it helped my athletic endurance.
I usually just drink water when I work out.
I bought a large Cool Blue flavor at my local CVS and drank it while playing basketball for nearly two hours:
The taste is great, super refreshing and not too sweet or sour.
This zero-sugar version tastes exactly like the regular Cool Blue version to me, and even though I typically don't like "artificial" drinks, Gatorade does taste better than any other sports nutrition brand in my opinion.
One thing I preferred about this version to the standard Cool Blue version is that it feels "lighter" with zero calories any without all of the sugar. When you're running around for hours you don't want to feel like anything's weighing you down.
I noticed improved endurance after consuming this drink relative to just consuming water. It's likely due to the electrolytes, but after playing basketball for nearly two hours, I still wasn't very tired.
Overall, I rate Gatorade Zero 8/10 although I don't plan to purchase it regularly because I don't consider it to be healthy.
I like both Gatorade Zero and Gatorlyte better than regular Gatorade.
Gatorade Zero vs. Original Gatorade
The ingredient label of original Gatorade (12 ounce size) is shown below:.
image source: https://www.gatorade.com/
Our main issue with regular Gatorade is the substantial amount of added sugar it contains.
48 grams (g) per bottle is almost 50% more than a Coke of the same size.
Regular Gatorade also has many of the questionable additive ingredients that we highlighted in the ingredient analysis of Gatorade Zero, including flavoring agents, citric acid and artificial food dye.
Overall we do consider Gatorade Zero to be healthier than regular Gatorade due to its lack of added sugar, but we don't recommend either product.
Gatorade would likely provide better performance optimization for elite athletes that need to refuel during long training sessions, but we consider both products to be unnecessary (and unhealthy) for the vast majority of regular consumers and athletes.
Is Gatorade Zero Powder Healthier?
Gatorade Zero is also sold in a powder formulation.
The ingredients in the Grape flavor are shown below:
image source: https://www.gatorade.com/
The formulation is very similar to the liquid version.
Red 40 was shown in a medical review to be contaminated with carcinogens (cancer-causing compounds).
The one benefit of the powder over the drink (if the powder is mixed into a non-plastic container) is that there is no risk of ingesting plastic chemicals, which is a legitimate health risk when consuming acidic drinks from plastic bottles, as we highlighted in our recent review of Prime drink ingredients.
