Gatorade Inventor Dies at 80

Wednesday, November 28th 2007, 7:32 am

By: News On 6

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) - Dr. J. Robert Cade, who invented the sports drink Gatorade and launched a multibillion-dollar industry that the beverage continues to dominate, has died. He was 80.

Cade died Tuesday of kidney failure, according to the University of Florida, where he and other researchers created Gatorade in 1965 to help the school's football players replace carbohydrates and electrolytes lost through sweat while playing in swamp-like heat.

Now sold in 80 countries in dozens of flavors, Gatorade was born thanks to a question from former Gators Coach Dwayne Douglas, Cade said in a 2005 interview with The Associated Press.

He asked, ``Doctor, why don't football players wee-wee after a game?''

``That question changed our lives,'' Cade said.

Born James Robert Cade in San Antonio on Sept. 26, 1927, Cade, a Navy veteran, graduated from the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas.

Cade was appointed an assistant professor in internal medicine at UF in 1961. He worked until he was 76, retiring in November 2004 from the university, where he taught medicine, saw patients and conducted research.