What to know about Prime Hydration, the expensive sports drink hyped on social media

A sports activities drink so well-liked within the United Kingdom that grocery shops have needed to ration it’s now out there in Canada, however vitamin specialists say the social media hype surrounding it’s simply that.

Prime Hydration is a line of fruit-flavoured sports activities drinks fortified with nutritional vitamins and minerals. In Canada, it retails on-line for $10 per 500 ml bottle or $38.55 for 5 bottles, and it’s additionally out there for buy in some Circle Ok shops.

There’s no added sugar, so the drinks are sweetened with aspartame, like many sugar-free gentle drinks.

Aside from the absence of added sugar and the addition of “10 per cent coconut water,” Prime Hydration seems to be much like merchandise already in the marketplace, equivalent to Gatorade and Glaceau’s Vitamin Water. One factor that does differentiate it from these different manufacturers, although, is its influencer origins.

Prime Hydration was launched by rapper and boxer KSI and YouTube content material creator Logan Paul in January 2022, and each founders have leveraged their platforms and enormous social media followings to advertise.

“Our goal was to create a fantastic hydration drink that can fuel any lifestyle,” reads a joint assertion by KSI and Paul on the Prime Hydration web site.

“Over the past year, we’ve worked countless hours to formulate the product from scratch, lock in deals with the largest retailers in the world, and build a multi-hundred person team to get our products to the shelves.”

With its social media clout, vibrant packaging and vary of seven flavours – blue raspberry, ice pop, and one thing referred to as “meta moon” – the drink has garnered lots of curiosity, together with making promoting inroads with NASCAR because the official sponsor of Timmy Hill’s #13 automobile. Arsenal Football Club, the London-based Premier League staff, additionally introduced a joint advertising settlement with the model in July this 12 months.

It has flown off cabinets within the U.Ok., in keeping with TikTok posts bearing the hashtags #primedrinkuk and #primehydration that present consumers fruitlessly looking the cabinets of British grocery store chain Asda for the sold-out product. On Prime Hydration’s U.S. web site, each flavour of the drink is marked as offered out.

KSI addressed the obvious shortage of the drink throughout an interview for The Fellas podcast, saying it wasn’t resulting from a scarcity of effort on the corporate’s half.

“It’s not like we’re not supplying enough,” he mentioned on an episode of the podcast revealed on Aug. 19. “We’re supplying loads!”

Instead, he accused Asda staff of hoarding the product and promoting it on the facet.

“Asda employees aren’t even putting it on the shelves anymore,” he mentioned. “They’re like, ‘What’s the point? I put it on the shelf, it’s gone instantly…I’m just going to sell it on the black market myself.'”

When requested to touch upon KSI’s allegation, Asda’s senior press officer Elliott Lancaster mentioned the corporate has not seen “any evidence of that.”

“It is a very popular product and we are receiving regular deliveries to stores which are stocking it,” Lancaster mentioned in an e mail to CTVNews.ca on Wednesday.

As a results of the drink’s reputation, the chain restricted gross sales of the drink to 3 bottles per buyer this fall. Lancaster confirmed that restrict remains to be in place.

Elsewhere within the U.Ok., social media customers say the product has sparked a black market in colleges. On social news aggregation web site Reddit.com, customers who determine themselves as lecturers based mostly within the U.Ok. have described scenes of scholars obsessively shopping for, promoting and buying and selling bottles of the drink in school and on the varsity yard.

“It seems to have taken over my whole school over this last week, and the incessant chatter about it and attempts to negotiate deals in lesson time is becoming increasingly disruptive,” Reddit consumer OGU_Lenios wrote on the positioning in October.

“I’m just south of Glasgow and I had an 11 year old come in bragging about how they got a bottle for £5 from one of my other pupils. A 14 year old is going to Asda and buying 10 bottles first thing in the morning to sell them on in school,” added consumer Jenniferh9309.

EXPERTS WEIGH IN

For all of the drink’s reputation, specialists say it does not provide any advantages that common meals and water cannot present. In greater than average quantities, the drink even dangers displacing meals that provide precise dietary worth, warns Anisha Mahajan, a registered dietitian and a PhD candidate on the University of Guelph.

“If we have been consuming lots of merchandise with synthetic sweeteners, there might be an opportunity that we’re filling up on these and we’re not taking the nice nutritive meals,” Mahajan told CTVNews.ca in a telephone interview on Monday.

“So I might reasonably that the children get these meals first, in any other case there’s displacement of those good vitamins for synthetic sweeteners.”

The label of a Prime Hydration drink advertised on the company’s American website shows nutrition information and ingredients. (Prime Hydration website)

Mahajan said there’s limited data about the long-term health effects of aspartame consumption. Therefore, she said artificially sweetened drinks like Prime Hydration should always be consumed in moderation.

“There’s an absence of long-term impacts of overconsumption of synthetic sweeteners in kids. So like issues like, long run, do these trigger most cancers? Or how does it have an effect on the intestine microbiome?” she said. “But if any individual was having this as an occasional drink, that is effective.”

The drinks do boast high concentrations of vitamins C, B12, B3, A and E, but Jean-Philippe Chaput said that vitamin content is a double-edged sword. Chaput is a professor in the department of pediatrics, at the University of Ottawa and a senior scientist at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario’s Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research Group.

He pointed out that vitamins C and B12 are water soluble, meaning any amount consumed beyond a body’s daily requirement is expelled through urine. In other words, it’s no more beneficial to receive 200 per cent of the recommended daily intake of vitamin C from a bottle of Prime than to receive 100 per cent from a couple of clementines.

Vitamins A and E, he said, are fat soluble, which means the body can store them for later use. The risk is that any fat-soluble vitamin or mineral can become toxic when stored in the body in large amounts, putting strain on the liver. In order to avoid consuming an excessive amount of vitamin A, for example, a person would need to decide between eating carrots or drinking a bottle of Prime.

“With only one (bottle) you are on the max to your vitamin A. So you should not eat carrots or different stuff since you’re maxed,” Chaput said during a telephone interview with CTVNews.ca on Wednesday.

“If you drink three, 4 (bottles) of that, you can be in extra of vitamin A and vitamin D.”

Like Mahajan, Chaput advises consuming the drink in moderation or, to avoid sticker shock, opting for a tried and tested alternative.

“I believe the most effective drink is water,” he said, “and water prices $0.”