Is Pedialyte Healthy? 14 Things You Should Know

Is Pedialyte a healthy beverage option?

Pedialyte is so interesting. It’s almost treated like medicine sometimes, as it’s often stocked by the pharmacy and baby formula. Meanwhile, many adults use it as a hangover remedy. Today, let’s explore: What does Pedialyte actually do for the body? Is it healthy?

Pedialyte is effective for rehydration after vomiting or diarrhea. It has double the electrolyte sodium and only one-third the sugar of sports drinks like Gatorade. However, Pedialyte also has highly processed artificial sweeteners and colors, making the long-term health impacts unclear.

Below, we’ll explore the ingredients and nutrition facts of Pedialyte in detail. We’ll break down whether it’s good for hydration, as well as weight loss. We’ll look at whether the sodium content is too high for you, and how much Pedialyte may be too much.

Is Pedialyte Good for You?

Here are the 14 questions we’ll address on Pedialyte nutrition. Click to skip ahead to any of them. Or just keep scrolling to read below:

1. What Ingredients Are in Pedialyte?
2. Does Pedialyte Have a Lot of Sugar?
3. Does Pedialyte Have Artificial Sweeteners?
4. Are the Artificial Colors in Pedialyte Safe?
5. Does Pedialyte Have Electrolytes?
6. Is Pedialyte High In Sodium?
7. Is Pedialyte Good for Hydration?
8. Is Pedialyte Good for Weight Loss?
9. Is Pedialyte Caffeine Free?
10. Does Pedialyte Count As Water Intake?
11. Is Pedialyte Good for You When You’re Sick?
12. Is Pedialyte Better for You Than Gatorade?
13. Can You Drink Too Much Pedialyte?
14. Is Pedialyte Vegan?

1. What Ingredients Are in Pedialyte?

Let’s start by looking at what Pedialyte actually contains. Pedialyte has quite a few different product lines, but let’s just review three of the most popular.

I’ll share my takeaway points below the table:

Pedialyte Drink	Ingredients
AdvancedCare Plus (Berry Frost)	Water, Dextrose; Less than 1.0% of: Galactooligosaccharides, Citric Acid, Potassium Citrate, Salt, Sodium Citrate, Natural & Artificial Flavor, Sucralose, Acesulfame Potassium, Zinc Gluconate.
Pedialyte Sport (Fruit Punch)	Water, Dextrose; Less than 1% of: Galactooligosaccharides, Salt, Potassium Citrate, Citric Acid, Natural & Artificial Flavors, Potassium Phosphate, Magnesium Chloride, Sodium Citrate, Sucralose, Acesulfame Potassium, and Red 40.
AdvancedCare with Immune Support (Strawberry Lemonade)	Water, Dextrose, Less than 1.0% of: Galactooligosaccharides, Citric Acid, Potassium Citrate, Salt, Sodium Citrate, Natural & Artificial Flavor, Sucralose, Acesulfame Potassium, Zinc Gluconate, Red 40, Blue 1.

Here’s what I notice about these ingredients:

• Pedialyte has added sugar. Pedialyte is sweetened with a mix of dextrose and artificial sweeteners. Dextrose is a form of sugar that is efficient at raising blood sugar. It can help with dehydration and hypoglycemia. But is it too much sugar to drink regularly? We’ll look more at Pedialyte’s sugar content below.

• Pedialyte has artificial sweeteners. Specifically, it has sucralose and acesulfame potassium. These sweeteners make Pedialyte more palatable to kids while keeping the sugar content ideal for rehydration. However, some research points to concerns with these sweeteners, mainly with gut health. More about this below.

• Pedialyte has added electrolytes. This is the main point of drinks like Pedialyte. They help replace electrolytes like sodium and potassium as you lose them in diarrhea, vomit, or sweat. Pedialyte has even far more electrolytes than Gatorade. But does Pedialyte have too much sodium for some people? We’ll cover that below.

• Most flavors of Pedialyte have artificial colors. The flavors I checked specifically have Red 40 and Blue 1. These dyes are controversial for their possible health effects‚ most notably for causing hyperactivity in some children. We’ll explore this more below.

Pedialyte has several ingredients that are not traditionally considered very “healthy”—added sugar, artificial sweeteners, and artificial colors. However, these ingredients do serve a purpose in Pedialyte.

The sugar has a direct purpose in rehydration, and the artificial ingredients are meant to make the drink more appealing to children, so you can get your kids to actually drink enough to get rehydrated.

So, in cases of actual dehydration, Pedialyte’s ingredients seem fine—they get the job done. However, if you’re considering drinking Pedialyte every day on an ongoing basis, then some of the processed ingredients could be a concern over time.

See the sections below on sugar content, artificial sweeteners, and artificial colors for details on what the specific long-term concerns would be.

2. Does Pedialyte Have a Lot of Sugar?

Pedialyte has 7g of sugar per 12 fl oz serving, which is relatively low sugar content compared to most drinks. Pedialyte AdvancedCare Plus has about one-half the sugar of Vitamin Water, one-third of the sugar of Gatorade, and one-fifth of the sugar of Simply Orange juice.

Pedialyte’s “sugar” is dextrose, which is basically the same thing as glucose. It’s a form of sugar that is absorbed into the blood very rapidly—so it’s great for raising blood sugar levels when needed. But that means it can also cause unwanted blood-sugar spikes.

When it comes to questions of getting “too much added sugar” on an ongoing basis, it doesn’t matter much if it’s “dextrose,” “sugar,” or “high fructose corn syrup.” They are all added sugar, after all.

The American Heart Association recommends a limit of 25g of added sugar per day for women and 36g per day for men. That’d be ~3.5 servings per day of Pedialyte AdvancedCare Plus for women, or ~5 servings per day for men, if you got no other sugar.

Here is a table showing Pedialyte’s sugar content, compared to other drinks for context:

Drink	Total Sugar (in 12 fl oz)
BodyArmor Lyte	2g
Pedialyte Sport	5g
Pedialyte AdvancedCare Plus	7g
V8 Tomato Juice	10g
Vitamin Water	15g
Gatorade	21g
Powerade	21g
BodyArmor	21g
Simply Orange Juice	34g
Coca-Cola	39g
Monster Energy	40g
Mountain Dew	46g
Welch’s Grape Juice	52g

As you can see, Pedialyte has less sugar than most of the sports drinks that also provide electrolytes. The lower sugar of Pedialyte makes it better for serious rehydration after diarrhea. Too much sugar can draw extra water into the intestines, making diarrhea worse. (source)

3. Does Pedialyte Have Artificial Sweeteners?

Pedialyte has two artificial sweeteners, sucralose and acesulfame potassium. Both of these sweeteners are FDA approved and generally recognized as safe, but there remains some controversy around the long-term health impacts of each.

First off—the artificial sweeteners in Pedialyte do serve a purpose. They make the drink delicious enough that kids will gladly drink enough of it for rehydration, without having too much sugar.

But do these sweeteners have any downsides? Well, the most controversial artificial sweetener is probably aspartame. Personally, I try to avoid aspartame because of the possible connections to depression. Pedialyte does not have aspartame.

Let’s look at the specific concerns around the artificial sweeteners Pedialyte does have—sucralose and acesulfame potassium.

First, let’s cover sucralose:

• Sucralose seems to be a migraine trigger for some people. (source, source)
• Sucralose may cause insulin resistance through multiple mechanisms (more on that below).
• Sucralose seems to be surprisingly unhelpful for weight loss. Replacing sugar with sucralose did not result in the weight loss you’d expect from the calorie reduction.

What about acesulfame potassium (acesulfame K)?

• Studies in the 1970s suggested that acesulfame K might cause cancer—but the studies were not good quality. (source)
• One breakdown product of acesulfame K—acetoacetamide—may cause damage to the thyroid. (source)
• In a study of lactating women, acesulfame K was the artificial sweetener most found to make its way into breast milk. (source)

Most of the health concerns around artificial sweeteners are not well-proven—they are just concerns—and research will keep telling us more in the years to come. But for some people, the potential risks feel scary nonetheless.

If you or your child are just drinking a few liters of Pedialyte to rehydrate as needed, you probably don’t need to worry at all. If you drink it often, you may want to do more research into sucralose and acesulfame potassium to see if you’re truly comfortable with them.

If you want to drink Pedialyte without artificial sweeteners, then you can try the Pedialyte Organic line. Those appear to be free of artificial sweeteners. However, they still have stevia, a natural zero-calorie sweetener.

4. Are the Artificial Colors in Pedialyte Safe?