 A lot of you have seen these sports drinks. You can't miss them really. They come in all sorts of garish colors that aren't really found in nature. This is kind of like a phosphorescent green. They have blues, purples. And the design of these drinks originally I guess was as an electrolyte replacement substitute for when you're engaged in some physical activity. You do a lot of sweating. The sodium potassium balance within your cells gets skewed. So these were originally designed to replace that balance and give you that energy boost which you may need after heavy activity. But if you look at the ingredients, this particular one, and I'm not picking on any brand here. They're all pretty much the same but they contain water, sugar, dextrose which is another type of sugar, natural and artificial flavor, citric acid, salt, sodium citrate, malic acid, monopatassium phosphate, modified food starch, yellow number five which is a dye, glycerol ester of razon which I had to look up. It's some sort of a chemical that allows oil to be dispersed properly and it's used as a as a cosmetics ingredient. And blue number one, I think we can do better than this. In fact, one of the reasons I enjoy reading history so much is because you see that people have had the same type of issue before and you can see how they dealt with it. Now in my opinion nobody works harder than farmers and nobody worked harder than farmers in the 19th century before the industrial revolution really took off in North America. Consider they're out in the hottest part of the year, generally in the hottest part of the day, and they're doing intense physical labor usually by hand or behind some kind of a plow animal. So they had the same problem, they had the same issue, how do you quench your thirst when water alone isn't enough. And interestingly, they did have an answer to this. It's probably the original sports drink and it's called swichle. It's also known as haymakers punch because when you're out in the hay field, that's what you drank. And what they would do is they would create big batches of this stuff and put it in gallon jugs and take it out with them and put it in a stream to keep it cooler, put it in the shade, and they would sip it throughout the day, kind of like what this was intended to be used for. It's very easy to make. It has only three ingredients if you don't count the water, and it's very, very healthy. And let me show you what's in it. There's a recipe that I've adapted this from, which is for making an entire gallon. So now I'll put that in the description box, but this has been modified this recipe to make single eight ounce serving. So what I'm going to do is to the eight ounces of water, I'm going to add the first ingredient, which is raw apple cider vinegar. Now, apple cider vinegar and raw vinegar, especially has been known to have health benefits, at least going back to hypocritees. It's loaded with antioxidants, amino acids, enzymes, and potassium. I remember potassium is one of the elements that is used to keep the cells in balance. It's pathogenic to certain bacteria, meaning it kills a lot of dead bacteria. It may improve insulin sensitivity. So if you are diabetic or pre-diabetic type two diabetes, this could have a benefit for you. It's a major component in folk medicine, especially in New England. So anyway, we take one teaspoon of this apple cider vinegar. And by the way, the raw unfiltered apple cider vinegar, you can see it's cloudy, and it usually has a massive, it looks like thin cotton inside. That's called the mother. It's very good. It's, it's, it shows that it's alive and doing what it's supposed to do. So give it a little shake and add a teaspoon of that to the, to the water. Try not to spill it. Okay. A wee bit over a teaspoon, but that's fine. Okay. Next ingredient, unsulfurred molasses. Now molasses is another one of these underrated, wonder foods. It's loaded with magnesium. Oh, and by the way, make sure it's unsulfurred. Sulfur is added to food to make them right faster, right then faster. And the, the body doesn't really utilize sulfur. And it's, it's not really a necessary component. So look for the unsulfurred molasses. You should do that anyway when you're buying dried fruits, for example. You'll see there are sulfured and unsulfurred raisins, apricots, these kinds of things. It's always better to get the least amount of chemical additive than, than not. So this, for this adaptation, also one teaspoon of molasses. I've, tablespoons of molasses gives you 50% of your daily calcium allotment, 95% of your iron requirements and 40% of magnesium. So we're going to add a teaspoon of molasses to this. Okay. And the third ingredient so far, this is what we have. The third ingredient might sound a little surprising, but it's ground powder ginger. Now one of the things that was surprising to me was discovering that they did have powder ginger in the 1800s. And not only did they have it, they used it a lot. It was a major component in baking and they used it for its medicinal qualities. What are its medicinal qualities? Well, it contains a substance called ginger roll, which is an anti-inflammatory. You know, we all know it treats nausea, motion sickness, morning sickness. It's very good for the stomach. And it has been shown to reduce muscle soreness and muscle pain, which makes sense because if you're working out in the fields or on a long hike, you know, this is what you want to want to have happen. So I'm just going to add maybe a slight pinch of the ginger. I mean, do it to taste. I happen to like ginger. And it does dissolve pretty well. So you don't even notice it's in there. And that's it. Let's give it a stir. I'm a messy cook as you can tell. It's a nice color. And that's pretty much done. Switchle. Let's give it the old taste test. Excellent. I mean, I've been drinking this stuff for a while, so I know what it tastes like. But I guarantee if you give this a try, you'll be pleasantly surprised. And it's easy enough to make. You can have it on hand and on those really hot summer days when you don't want to ingest the chemicals. This is the way to go. Once again, thanks for stopping by. Hope this was helpful. And we'll see you on the next one. All right, give it a try. It tastes just like durian. You remember how you liked that? No, kidding, kidding. Good. Come on. It's good, right? What do you think? Come on, try it again. Come on. No, I really taste like that. She loves it.