Why We Don’t Recommend Gatorade or Powerade | SportsDrinksUSA

Why We Don’t Recommend Gatorade or Powerade

At SportsDrinksUSA, we review sports and hydration products to help you make informed, responsible choices — not only for performance and health, but also for ethics. We believe the companies behind the bottle matter. Effective July 2025, we will not be promoting any brand that indirectly supports Genocide in Gaza.

After reviewing the corporate practices and affiliations of both Gatorade (owned by PepsiCo) and Powerade (owned by The Coca-Cola Company), we have chosen not to recommend either brand — due to their ties to companies profiting from the Israeli occupation and what many experts and institutions now consider to be a genocide in Gaza.

🚫 Gatorade & PepsiCo

PepsiCo owns Gatorade and has acquired or co-owns companies that support the Israeli military and settlements.
SodaStream, a PepsiCo subsidiary, operated in an illegal Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank for years.
Sabra Dipping Company is jointly owned by PepsiCo and the Israeli Strauss Group, which has openly funded IDF units involved in war crimes.

🚫 Powerade & Coca-Cola

The Coca-Cola Company has a major bottling plant in Israel and is listed as a proud sponsor of the Israeli economy, even during military escalations in Gaza.
Its Israeli bottling partner, Central Bottling Company (CBC), has operations in illegal settlements and openly supports the Israeli army.
Coca-Cola has consistently remained silent on Palestinian human rights and continues business as usual during military offensives.

🧯 The Genocide in Gaza

Since October 2023, Israel’s assault on Gaza has killed over 61,800 Palestinians, most of them civilians — with thousands of children among the dead. Over 200,000 children are at the risk of starvation to death according to some sources. Entire neighborhoods have been wiped out, hospitals bombed, and essential infrastructure destroyed.

In January 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) stated there is a “plausible case for genocide.” Dozens of human rights organizations, UN experts, and legal scholars have called for sanctions and boycott.

🌍 Why We Take a Stand

We don’t believe sports nutrition should come at the cost of human rights. Supporting companies that fund or profit from military occupations or apartheid systems is not a neutral act. As a result:

We do not recommend Gatorade or Powerade
We encourage you to support independent or ethically sourced hydration brands
We stand with international law and human dignity over corporate convenience

✅ What to Try Instead

We recommend exploring hydration brands that are not affiliated with PepsiCo or Coca-Cola — and not tied to documented human rights abuses. Here is a list of sports drinks brands that doesn’t support IDF according to our information:

📚 Sources

This page was published by SportsDrinksUSA as part of our commitment to ethical consumer guidance. We update our recommendations as new evidence or company policies emerge.