NYU’s Student Health Center has invaded the privacy of Bobst bathroom stalls as of late with a poster encouraging students to “become and stay healthy.” Their suggestion for achieving this? A totally repulsive-sounding recipe for a “homemade sports drink.”

We felt it was our duty at NYU Local to try this concoction and report back before any of you brought it along to yoga with you and something disastrous took place.

Here goes nothing.

We weren’t optimistic but we were open-minded as we tried the original recipe, which calls for 3.5 cups water, ¼ cup orange juice, ¼ cup maple syrup, and ¼ teaspoon salt. It first tasted like salt water, then orange juice then fake maple syrup (we were NOT spending $19.50 on the real stuff. Aunt Jemima will do just fine). Each ingredient was totally transparent in taste and isolated from the others.

The worst part is that the smell reminds one of pancakes, a nightmare for the breakfast fiend who brought it along for their workout. And the color is, well, less than appealing.

At that point we decided to take liberty with NYU’s suggestion. Using the (questionably) healthy staples of the recipe as a base, we added honey, lemon and sugar. Much better but still yuck! Our impulse then was to look for more to add.

The next step was adding V8 Strawberry Banana juice. We found this in our fridge and suggest you use something comparable. The salt-water taste in the beginning and the maple syrup finish persisted, but somewhere in the middle there was a hint of something comparable to Gatorade. We added a little coconut water but nothing really changed. Leah suggested the solution was to add more salt so we did. It was a salt solution, certainly, but not a solution to the problem. The entire effort began to feel hopeless.

After all of these futile attempts at altering NYU’s recipe to something a little more palatable we felt desperate enough to try anything.

Our reactions to the final product?

“There’s so much Sriracha but it’s so sweet!” – Leah

“It’s like I want to keep it in my mouth forever so I never have to swallow.” – Ashley

It turns out the best alternative is something we knew about all along.

[Photos courtesy of the authors, last image via.]