Which Oral Rehydration Solution Tastes Best?

Children preferred Pedialyte and Pediatric Electrolyte to Enfalyte.

Some children refuse oral rehydration solutions because they taste bad. In a blinded crossover study from a Toronto emergency department, researchers randomized 66 children (age range, 5–10 years) without respiratory or gastrointestinal symptoms to one of six tasting sequences of three fruit-flavored oral rehydration solutions. For each solution, children were instructed to drink as much as they wanted for 15 minutes and then rate the taste by marking a 100-mm visual analog scale, with 0 indicating the worst taste and 100 the best taste.

Children consumed similar amounts of all three solutions (mean volume, 15 mL of Enfalyte, 17 mL of Pediatric Electrolyte, and 22 mL of Pedialyte). All three measures of taste were significantly worse for Enf…

Reviewing Author

Howard Bauchner, MD

Disclosures

Grant / research supportHuman Resources and Services Administration; NIH; NIH-NHLBI; USDA; GlaxoSmithKline

Editorial boardsArchives of Disease in Childhood (Editor-in-Chief)

Howard Bauchner, MD

Disclosures

Grant / research supportHuman Resources and Services Administration; NIH; NIH-NHLBI; USDA; GlaxoSmithKline

Editorial boardsArchives of Disease in Childhood (Editor-in-Chief)