After two columns addressing frivolous topics, namely the future of our school and the role feminist organizations can play on our campus, I feel it’s time to turn to a topic of real importance. Now, this is an issue we all face several times a day. It’s in our homes, our stores and our local restaurants. It affects those of every age and race without discrimination. However, the very young may be particularly at risk as their parents try to help them avoid addictive substances. We don’t talk about this much. I think this comes from two sources. First, there are powerful lobbies at work here. Very rich people are making a lot of money off our refusal to speak up. Second, some people are still fooled. We would rather help our poor friends and neighbors save face than do them the favor of pointing out the error of their ways. We have stayed silent long enough, but today the power of the press shall strike a blow for justice. I will speak the truth not because I am brave, but because I have confidence in the just hearts of those who will read this.

Blue Powerade is terrible. There are many low quality beverages in the world. Seltzer water is just bitter soda people pretend is good to be pretentious. Iced tea tastes like dish water. These, at least, have a semblance of taste and respect for what is necessary in a beverage. Blue Powerade flaunts all the rules. It has no flavor. What it does have is the vague, sickly air of food coloring. I have not recently read it’s ingredient list, but I imagine it goes somewhat like this: water, blue. (I have taken the artistic liberty of imagining that the manufacturers of such a horrific beverage might forget to number their food colorinings.) However, Blue Powerade is not water. It’s much more expensive and much less pleasant. It has all the trappings of a sport drink. It makes you feel guilty for not exercising, or, alternatively, it fails to refresh you when you have. However, it fails to live up to the standards set by other sports drinks. Blue Gatorade is in fact the best kind of Gatorade. The color blue is not at fault here. However, Powerade as a beverage is not either. Red Powerade, which has so sadly faded from our soda fountains, had a perfectly respectable flavor. It carried on the age old traditions of classics like Hawaiin Punch and Hy-Cee. The real problem comes only in Blue Powerade. Somehow this manages to be quite simply the worst beverage that is widely offered in our current marketplace.

One would like to think that a beverage this unpleasant would at least be some sort of health elixir to deliver eternal youth or no acne or something. However, Blue Powerade fails here too. Is Powerade secretly made from grains high in fiber? Nope. Is the blue color somehow caused by a tasteless, watery fruit high in vitamin-C? Unfortunately not. Perhaps there’s secretly calcium powder mixed in. This line of inquiry, too, comes up short. The label on a bottle of Blue Powerade reads as a bunch of zeros in all the potentially helpful categories and high numbers in everything a doctor would ask us to avoid. Despite the lack of any flavor to indicate its presence, a serving of Blue Powerade comes in at a whopping 46 grams of sugar. That’s like eating nearly five Pixie Sticks and having absolutely no fun at all in the process. All this sugar is paired with 190 milligrams of sodium, which is perhaps how everything manages to cancel out and taste like nothing. My roommate, Alison Farrar, who is pre-med and therefore an expert on everything having to do with nutrition, recently remarked that “It’s like hummingbird food for Smurfs.” Also, I would like the record to officially reflect that I did not buy or come in contact with any Blue Powerade to get this nutritional information. I Googled it.

I return again to our poor friends and neighbors who are still trapped by the Blue Powerade lobby in a perpetual state of beverage disappointment. My friend, Will McCrary, recently wrote “I don’t drink many sodas and at some places around campus, blue powerade is the only other option besides water. Blue powerade 4 life.” Will has pointed out the very escape that is our only hope: water. Blue Powerade is less health, more expensive blue water that tastes more unpleasant. Why not just have the real thing?

Blue Powerade is an insult to the American people and I, for one, will not stand by another minute. Tell your family. Tell your friends. Tell yourself. Further the cause of justice. Further the cause against Blue Powerade.

Allison Mollenkamp is a sophomore majoring in English and theatre. Her column runs biweekly.