Sugar: why 3 g, not 30 g
Classic sports drinks are built on sugar. We use a fraction of it — and there's a reason it's there at all.
30 Jun 2026 · 4 min read
Most sports drinks lead with sugar — 20 to 40 grams in a single serve, sometimes more. It is the first ingredient and the loudest. SALT uses 3 g. Not none, not a lot. Here is the thinking.
Why there's any sugar at all.
A small amount of sugar does a real job: it helps your body take the sodium on board, and it makes the drink taste like something you will actually finish. Three grams is enough to do both — for taste and for uptake — without turning a hydration drink into a soft drink.
Why not more.
A wall of sugar makes sense if your drink is really a sugar drink with electrolytes added as decoration. Ours is the other way round: electrolyte-led, with just enough sugar to help. For something you might drink every day in the heat, a heavy sugar load is the last thing you want.
Why not zero.
Zero-sugar reads well on a label, but a totally unsweetened electrolyte drink is hard to drink enough of — and you lose the small uptake benefit that bit of sugar brings. We picked 3 g as the honest middle: enough to help, not enough to be the story.
SALT is low-sugar by sports-drink standards — not zero-sugar. 3 g per serve, declared, doing a job.
What this means for your bottle.
One sachet in 750 ml carries 3 g of sugar — a fraction of a classic sports drink, printed on the pack like everything else. The electrolytes are the point. The sugar just helps them land.
Built for heat