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Field guide
Reading an Electrolyte Label: Sodium per Serving and Cost per Gram
An electrolyte mix is sold on its minerals: sodium, potassium and magnesium, often with chloride and calcium beside them. The label states each in milligrams per serving, and the electrolyte rankings price the shelf on one of them, sodium. This guide covers where those figures sit, the rows that look like a mineral but are the weight of a salt, and how cost per gram of sodium is worked out.
The counts below are computed each time the site is built, from the label data of the 49 electrolyte products this site publishes. Each count names what it is out of.
Two kinds of panel
Electrolyte products carry one of two panels. A Nutrition Facts panel, the food format, prints sodium as a nutrient line in milligrams beside calories, carbohydrate and sugar, and may print other minerals further down. Its ingredient list underneath names the salts that supply them, such as sodium citrate or potassium chloride, in descending order by weight and with no amounts.
A Supplement Facts panel prints each mineral as a row with an amount, usually naming the salt that supplies it in parentheses: "Sodium (as sodium citrate) 500 mg". The amount beside the mineral's name is the mineral; the salt in parentheses is where it comes from.
Salt weight is not mineral weight
Some panels also print rows named for the salt itself, with an amount: "Sodium Citrate", "Potassium Chloride", "Magnesium Glycinate". That figure is the weight of the whole compound, and the sodium, potassium or magnesium in it is only part of that weight. A 1,000 mg row of a sodium salt is not 1,000 mg of sodium.
This site takes a product's sodium from the panel's sodium line. Only where the label data has no sodium line does it use a sodium row the panel doses outside a blend.
What the shelf's labels state
- Sodium as a number: 49 of 49 labels.
- Potassium: 48 of 49. Magnesium: 42 of 49. Chloride: 29 of 49. Calcium: 40 of 49.
- Sodium, potassium and magnesium all stated: 42 of 49.
- Sodium per serving: across the 49 labels that state it, the median is 150 mg, and they run from 55 mg to 1,200 mg.
That spread is why a price per serving says little on its own on this shelf: one serving can carry many times the sodium of another.
Serving size and servings
The serving size line says what one serving is: a scoop or a stick in grams, or a number of tablets or capsules. Every mineral figure on the panel is for that serving, so a panel whose serving is "2 capsules" states the sodium in two.
When a size is priced, its servings are the count its store option prints, where it prints one ("30 Servings"). Where the option names none, they come from the package's weight over the serving weight on the label, from its count of sticks, tablets or capsules, or from the label's own servings per container. A printed count far from what the package itself gives is taken for a listing error and not used. The full rule is on how we rate.
The reference: none is scored for these minerals
| Ingredient | Why it is not scored |
|---|---|
| Sodium | replacement need is individual |
| Potassium | replacement need is individual |
| Magnesium | replacement need is individual |
The site's reference recognises sodium, potassium and magnesium and gives none of them a threshold, for the reason in the table, which is the method page's own. So no electrolyte product is marked as meeting or missing a dose, and dose integrity is not part of this shelf's score. Each product page prints the label amounts as they are.
From label to cost per gram of sodium
On this shelf, value is 40% of the score, and it is built on cost per gram of sodium:
- Price per serving: the store price divided by the servings in that size. Where a product is sold in several sizes, the lowest price per serving among the sizes on sale up to 5 kg is used.
- Sodium per serving, in grams: the sodium figure in milligrams divided by 1,000.
- Cost per gram of sodium: price per serving divided by grams of sodium per serving.
The two tubs below are hypothetical, with round numbers chosen to show the arithmetic. They are not real products.
Tub A costs $30.00 for 30 servings, each with 500 mg of sodium.
- Price per serving: $30.00 ÷ 30 = $1.00
- Sodium per serving: 500 ÷ 1,000 = 0.5 g
- Cost per gram of sodium: $1.00 ÷ 0.5 = $2.00
Tub B costs $20.00 for 40 servings, each with 100 mg of sodium.
- Price per serving: $20.00 ÷ 40 = $0.50
- Sodium per serving: 100 ÷ 1,000 = 0.1 g
- Cost per gram of sodium: $0.50 ÷ 0.1 = $5.00
Per serving, Tub B looks cheaper. Per gram of sodium, Tub A costs less than half as much. Today 47 of 49 electrolyte products have a cost per gram of sodium, with a median of $4.54 across those 47. The budget electrolytes list the shelf ordered on it.
Why sodium alone
The price divides by sodium only, not by the total of every mineral. Sodium is the mineral this shelf's labels state most consistently: 49 of 49 give a sodium figure, against 48 of 49 for potassium and 42 of 49 for magnesium. Pricing on that one quantity keeps the comparison like for like. A total would also charge a label twice for a mineral it does not quantify: once in label disclosure, and again in a smaller denominator. Pricing sodium does not say the minerals substitute for one another; each product page prints the full split.
The rest of the score
- Label disclosure (25%): whether the label states an amount for sodium, potassium and magnesium, each one it contains. A mineral the label names with no amount scores zero here; a mineral the product does not contain at all is not counted against it.
- Formula (20%): sugar and calories per serving, read from the panel. 16 of 49 labels state 0 g of sugar, 12 of 49 state more than 0 g, and 21 of 49 have no sugar row in the label data. For those, the formula part is not computed and the remaining parts are reweighted.
- Buyer rating (15%): shown on the brand's own product page, with the rules on how we rate.
Common label patterns
- Minerals inside a blend. 6 of 49 labels print at least one row inside a blend with no amount of its own. A blend member with no amount contributes nothing to any figure, and a blend's total is never divided among its members. The proprietary blends guide covers how blends are read.
- % Daily Value with no amount. A mineral row that prints only a percentage is recorded with no amount. The site does not turn a percentage back into milligrams, so that mineral counts as named but not quantified.
- A total "electrolytes" figure on the front. A front-of-pack number is not a panel row, and only panel rows are recorded. The panel's own mineral rows are the figures that count.
- The salt list under the panel. On a Nutrition Facts label, the ingredient list names salts in weight order without amounts. It shows which salts supply a mineral, not how much of the mineral a serving holds.
Every weighting the site uses is on how we rate. To compare products on cost per gram of sodium, start with the electrolyte rankings.
Data study: What 49 electrolyte labels say and what a gram of sodium costs: the same counts for the labels it studies, with the spread of cost per gram of sodium, how it changes with size, potassium, magnesium and the sodium-to-potassium ratio, and a CSV. All data studies.