A recent article in BMJ by Deb Cohen entitled “The truth about sports drinks” got a lot of people very excited, me included.  The article seemed well written to me but I don’t know enough in this area to be legitimately critical.  And that was the problem with the article.  Most of us know relatively nothing about an area but read a seemingly good article in a well respected big medical journal and its easy to take everything at face value when perhaps it shouldn’t be.   Fortunately others know better about sport drinks and have started to write rebuttals.  Of course, these rebuttals or counterpoints should have been included alongside the original piece - that lets us be the informed consumer of science.  There are two sides to everything in this grey, gray, not black, not white world of body science.  Below is the original article and some responses from the involved and often maligned parties.

Deb Cohens initial piece ” The truth about Sports Drinks”

Dr. Stu Phillips from McMaster University initial response here

Dr. Michael Sawka interesting response here