Inventor of Gatorade Dies

[DangerousDave]

Of kidney failure! Coincidence or not? Well, the guy was 80. I'll give Gatorade the benefit of the doubt, but it has changed recipes/ingredients over the years. Back in the 1970's- early '80s, it made me have to urinate often, very soon after drinking it. Does'nt seem to do that now.

[kman]

Rest in Peace, Dr. Robert Cade.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/hea ... 33218.html

Gatorade inventor Dr. Robert Cade dead at age 80

By DAVID BARRON

Pick a flavor — Rain, Frost, Lemon-Lime, Fierce, AM, Xtremo — and drink a toast today to Dr. Robert Cade, inventor of the concoction once nicknamed "Cade's Cola" and now known as Gatorade.

Cade died Tuesday in Jacksonville, Fla., from kidney failure, according to officials at the University of Florida, where he and three colleagues invented the billion-dollar sports drink industry in the mid-1960s. He was 80.

Much as Cade began his career at Florida as a relatively anonymous researcher and ended it as the star of a TV commercial — he's the one who says "We called our stuff Gatorade" on the company's ad narrated by sports announcer Keith Jackson — Gatorade has morphed from local curiosity to worldwide juggernaut, said CNBC anchor Darren Rovell, author of First In Thirst: How Gatorade Turned the Science of Sweat into a Cultural Phenomenon.

"Nike does $14 billion in sales, and that is for every single thing it does from shoes to apparel," Rovell said. "Gatorade is a singular item, and it does $5 billion in sales. It's probably the second most-relevant brand in all of sports."

Cade and three colleagues developed Gatorade in 1965 to help the Florida Gators football team replace carbohydrates and electrolytes lost through sweat while playing in the swamp-like heat of Gainesville, Fla. The first batch cost $43 in supplies, and "sort of tasted like toilet bowl cleaner," Dana Shires, one of Cade's collaborators, told the Associated Press.

Researchers added sugar and lemon juice for flavor, and they left the rest to the likes of Steve Spurrier, the Florida quarterback who won the Heisman Trophy in 1966 while being fueled by Gatorade.

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