Day: August 17, 2025

• Electrolyte drinks for hydration are a hot market, but many contain added sugars — some more than soda.
• To save money and cut back on sugar, make your own electrolyte drink with a sports dietitian’s recipe.
• It uses simple ingredients like sea salt, lemon, and orange juice to replenish key nutrients.

Hydration is having a moment.

As wellness becomes a priority for consumers, electrolyte drinks are booming. Demand for sodas is dwindling. Instead, people are flocking to products designed to quench thirst and replenish nutrients.

Gatorade, PepsiCo’s OG sports drink, is now vying for cooler space alongside BodyArmor (from Coca-Cola) and Electrolit (owned by Keurig Dr. Pepper). A host of electrolyte powder packets are also competing for consumer attention.

They all promise an extra dose of electrolytes, key minerals like sodium and magnesium that maintain the body’s fluid balance and help the nerves function. We lose these nutrients when we sweat, and depleting them too much can risk symptoms of electrolyte imbalance ranging from mild headache to serious, even life-threatening seizures.

The problem is, many electrolyte drinks contain a surprising amount of sugar, sometimes as much as soda. Leading brands have as much as 36 grams of added sugar per bottle — the upper daily limit recommended for adults.

That can be helpful if you’re a pro athlete or practicing an endurance sport, since sugar is a quick way to top up your body’s glycogen stores, the key fuel source.

But most of us aren’t working out for hours at a time, and our typical diets are already loaded with added sugar, which can increase our risks of heart disease and cancer.

Here’s an alternative:

How to make a healthy electrolyte drink at home

For a healthier option that also saves you some cash, you can make your own sports drink at home using sea salt to provide electrolytes.

Sports dietitian Angie Asche of Eleat Nutrition shared a recipe with Business Insider from her cookbook Fuel Your Body.

To make it, combine:

• ½ cup orange juice
• ½ cup coconut water
• juice from ½ a lemon
• a pinch of sea salt

The fruit juice contributes added nutrients like vitamin C and potassium (another electrolyte) along with carbs for energy, at a fraction of the sugar in a typical sports drink. Coconut water provides other electrolytes like magnesium and calcium.

Depending on where you shop and if you buy in bulk, the ingredients cost just over a dollar per serving.

Asche recommends sticking to a hydration ratio of about three servings of water for every one serving of electrolyte drinks, depending on your activity level and how much you sweat.

• Household names turn to the Big Four professional services firms for consulting and accounting.
• But the Big Four are moving into industries like space and venture capital.
• One industry observer says this helps distance them from a reputation for being “stodgy” as consulting changes.

This year, Deloitte became the first of the Big Four consulting and accountancy firms to launch a satellite into space.

No, really.

You may know Deloitte, EY, PwC, and KPMG for consulting, accounting, audit, and tax, which embed them in some of the world’s biggest organizations and generate billions in annual revenue for each firm.

But space, advertising, and venture capital are among the buzzier projects they’ve been developing.

These ventures are a way for the companies to show they are adapting to industry changes, Tom Rodenhauser, managing director of the consulting industry research firm Kennedy Intelligence, told Business Insider.

They “demonstrate their innovation and creativity” while distancing the Big Four from their “stodgy audit reputation,” he added.

They also boost their profiles and serve as a recruitment tool, he said.

The initiatives also bring consulting arms closer to tech companies and AI innovators, Rodenhauser said, as the firms pin their future success on the technology.

“I do expect more of these as consulting becomes even more technical,” he added.

Here are some Big Four’s ventures that may not come to mind when you picture accountants and consultants.

EY Studio+

Your creative ad campaign isn’t typically led by a team of corporate suits, but EY has acquired 37 agencies and firms specializing in design, marketing, and customer experience since 2014.

In June, it announced that it was launching a business unit focused on marketing and sales, called EY Studio+. The division launched with 7,000 employees, and EY said it plans to expand it by 10% to 20% in the following year.

EY was playing catch-up with rivals Deloitte, which has offered marketing solutions through Deloitte Digital since 2012, and Accenture, which created Accenture Song in 2022.

EY Studio+ offers design, marketing, sales, customer service, and customer technology services. Its website features case studies that set out how it can advise clients on the back-office systems and strategies of marketing departments — as with its existing consulting work — but also take the lead in designing customer experiences.

Laurence Buchanan, global leader of EY Studio+, told Business Insider, that they were targeting chief marketing officers who were “under increasing pressure to re-imagine their customer experience and business models” because of AI.

When it launched the studio, EY said that the new unit marks “a significant milestone” in CEO Janet Truncale’s “All in” strategy to reshape the firm to tackle client “issues that are more complex and inter-connected than ever before.”

Deloitte-1 Satellite

Deloitte — the largest of the Big Four, by annual revenue and employee numbers — has had a space division since April 2023 and launched a satellite in March in collaboration with SpaceX and Spire, a space data company.

“We’re driving space-enabled innovation and shaping what’s possible for industries both on and off this planet,” Jason Girzadas, CEO of Deloitte US, said in a LinkedIn post.

In July, Deloitte announced that it had built and installed a cyber defense system on its satellite, called “silent shield.”

Brett Loubert, leader of Deloitte’s US space practice, said it would help clients protect their space-based assets and “understand and manage the risks to their missions, strengthen their cyber resiliency and protect against evolving cyber threats.”

KPMG and Hippocratic AI

Like the rest of the Big Four, KPMG has long had healthcare organizations among its advisory clients, but it’s recently moved to direct collaborations with healthtech companies.

The industry is booming, and in July, KPMG announced it was working with Hippocratic AI to deploy teams of medical AI agents.

The AI agents are designed to address backlogs in healthcare systems by conducting “non-diagnostic patient-facing clinical tasks,” KPMG said in a press release.

Hippocratic AI developed the agents, while KPMG’s role is to analyse and improve operations, upskill care professionals, and plan for the expansion of AI “across the entire care continuum.”

PwC Raise | Ventures

PwC has three core lines of business — assurance, advisory, and tax. But the firm has also developed its own venture capital division called PwC Raise | Ventures, which operates in the UK.

Raise | Ventures supports rapidly growing startups seeking Series A funding as well as larger businesses looking for further investment to grow, per PwC’s website.

An online guide says it can help founders improve pitch decks, introduce them to a network of investors, and help with due diligence.

Its website tells prospective clients that working with PwC Raise | Ventures will “increase the probability of achieving a successful fundraise on good terms.”

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at pthompson@businessinsider.com or Signal at Polly_Thompson.89. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here’s our guide to sharing information securely.

• My husband and I were in our mid-40s when he retired from the Navy.
• Many of his colleagues and our friends were downsizing, but we decided to buy a bigger house.
• We wanted to plan for our future, and 10 years later, we’re happy with our decision.

When my husband retired from the Navy, we were in our mid-40s and ready to settle into civilian life. While many of his colleagues were downsizing and preparing for their “empty nest” years, we were heading in the opposite direction.

We had waited to start a family until the last few years of his naval career so he wouldn’t miss too much of their young lives. With two preschoolers at home, our lives weren’t slowing down; they were picking up speed. So when it came time to decide where we wanted to settle down and what our future might look like, we did the unexpected: we bought a bigger house.

We wanted to set ourselves up for the future

At the time, we got a lot of questions: “Isn’t that too much house?” “What will you do when the boys leave home?” and “Won’t you just be downsizing in 10 years?” My husband was starting his second career as a teacher, and I work from home, so the extra space felt practical. After decades of having our plans dictated by the military, we were finally putting down roots — and we wanted room to grow. I also didn’t want to move again.

We weren’t just thinking about the little kids we had, we were thinking ahead to the teenagers and young adults they’d become. We wanted a house where they could have friends over, a backyard big enough to plant a garden and still have room to play, a workspace for me, and enough room so that we could all have privacy when we needed it. And with 42% of young adults living at home these days, we thought: why not plan for that now?

It took a year, but we found our home

We searched for a home that could serve us for the long haul — a place to raise kids and, eventually, age in place. We considered neighborhoods, school systems, healthcare facilities, and the number of bedrooms we’d need, but we also looked for features like a first-floor primary bedroom and laundry.

We cast a wide net, spending a year narrowing our options, scrolling through hundreds of listings, and visiting dozens of houses across three states before we finally found one that checked all the boxes. We were home.

Ten years later, with our boys now 13 and 15, I’m more convinced than ever that we made the right decision. The house that felt too big the day we moved in now feels just right. With their bedrooms upstairs, the boys have space to spread out, and we’re not on top of each other.

During the pandemic, my husband and I must have said a hundred times, “I’m so glad we bought this house.” Even now, during school breaks or sick days, there’s enough room for everyone to retreat when they need quiet — including us.

It’s not lost on me that we’ve given our kids a sense of permanence. This is only their second home, and it’s the place they’ll remember best. There’s comfort in that, for them and for us. During my husband’s Navy career, we were lucky to stay on the East Coast and only moved four times, but “home” was always more about being together than where we were. Now we have both.

We’re in no hurry to move again

Of course, a bigger house comes with tradeoffs. The utility bills are higher. The cleaning sometimes feels endless. And no, we don’t need this much space every single day. We occasionally discuss whether we might want to move somewhere smaller when the boys leave for college.

But knowing we have room for them if they need a place to land — whether between college and a first job, or to save money while getting on their feet — will likely keep us here. And when they eventually fly the nest for good, we’ll still have a home that works for us until we’re ready for the next chapter of our lives.

• Alicia Strata struggled to find a marketing job after graduating during the Great Recession.
• She faced another challenging search more than a decade later, but secured her dream job last year.
• She shared her top advice for people who are struggling to find work.

Alicia Strata, 38, is a marketing creator and integrator at Alabama World Travel, a luxury travel agency based in Montgomery, Alabama. In July, Business Insider wrote about how Strata and seven other Americans who graduated in the Great Recession navigated early career challenges — and what Gen Z college grads can learn from them. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I’ve tried to launch my career during a hiring slowdown twice — first out of college, and again last year after 10 years at home raising my children.

The second time was worse — it took me over a year to get hired. But my journey ended with me landing my dream job.

Joining Teach for America taught me resilience

I graduated from Columbia College Chicago in May 2010, when the Great Recession had pushed the unemployment rate to nearly 10%. I had a marketing communications degree and hoped to land a role at an advertising agency. But the job market was tough, so I decided to pivot.

Teaching was completely out of my area of study, but I was looking for something that felt both purposeful and possible in a shrinking job market. Teach for America offered that: a paycheck, a mission, and structure during chaos. The summer after graduation, I moved to South Dakota to begin my placement as a 4th-grade teacher.

My placement was on a Native American reservation in South Dakota, where the closest Walmart was two hours away. Some of the kids were dealing with serious challenges at home, and it was hard to make them care about learning their multiplication tables. I had to get creative and develop real resilience.

I also learned to get over my ego. If you want to find out what your insecurities are, go into a classroom of middle schoolers.

Although TFA didn’t directly further my marketing career, it helped me develop personally and as a leader. It gave me life experience and helped me build the resilience and adaptability I needed in future job searches.

I became a stay-at-home mom when my kids were born

After finishing the program in 2012, I spent a year working at an international school in South Korea, where my then-boyfriend lived. We got engaged and moved to Chicago, and I found a full-time graphic design job.

But after getting married in 2013, I unexpectedly got pregnant right away. I worked through the pregnancy but left my job and became a stay-at-home mom after my child was born. I now have three kids, between the ages of six and 10.

From 2015 to 2020, I did some remote, part-time marketing work for a digital advertising company, but it was very minimal — and definitely not something that looked exciting on a résumé. The gig ended in early 2020, shortly before the pandemic-induced recession, after the company was sold abruptly.

I had just had my third kid and was struggling to juggle everything, so I felt it was, in some ways, good timing.

Taking a part-time seasonal job and then being let go was a hit to my ego

In 2021, we moved to Montgomery, Alabama, and about a year later, I found myself in a kind of sink-or-swim moment when my marriage ended. Overnight, I was navigating single parenthood, a sparse résumé, and the urgent need to rebuild my career from the ground up.

At the beginning of my renewed job search, I was hopeful. I got the kids to school, started on all the online job boards, and didn’t wrap up until eight hours later when it was time to pick up the kids.

However, the results were extremely discouraging. I was applying constantly, managing full-time parenting, and facing rejection after rejection.

In 2023, I landed a part-time seasonal job at Hobby Lobby. That hurt my ego, but I needed to get some momentum, particularly because the job market was starting to take a turn for the worse. There were plans for me to stay on after the season ended, but in early 2024, they ended up letting me go. The idea that I couldn’t even keep a part-time retail job was hard to stomach, but I tried to stay resilient, pick myself back up, and start applying again.

I found my dream job when I wasn’t looking for it

In February 2024, I applied for a job as an administrative assistant at an accounting firm, even though I couldn’t be less interested in accounting. I didn’t get the job, but the third-party recruiter the company worked with said there was a part-time office support job at a luxury travel agency that he thought might be a good fit for me. I was skeptical, but agreed to the interview.

The morning of the interview, I sent a group text to some of my close friends, saying, “I’ll let you know how the interview goes. Don’t want it, so the odds are in my favor of getting it” — just being tongue-in-cheek. But when I walked into the office, it had a really good vibe. Everybody was quietly plugging away at their desks, and everyone I met was just so warm.

The interviewer started by asking me basic questions, but they kept asking about marketing, which I found a little confusing since I was interviewing for the office support role. Halfway through the interview, they slid a piece of paper across the table. It was a job description for a marketing creator and integrator role — exactly the kind of job I’d hoped to find since graduating from college, but hadn’t been able to secure.

I literally looked around and thought, Is somebody filming this right now? Am I being pranked? It turned out, they’d been looking for a marketing person and felt I sounded like a great fit. I burst out laughing because I couldn’t believe it.

It was amazing to walk into the interview not even wanting the role, and walk out thinking it could be my dream career.

My advice for others struggling with the job search process

I started working at the company in March 2024. My initial instincts about the company have proven correct — my co-workers have become like a second family, and the working environment is great.

Later on, I happened to meet the woman who had gotten the admin assistant job I didn’t get at the accounting firm. She was another single mom with four boys who had been on the verge of losing her home when she landed the job. You don’t often get to see what’s on the other side of a job rejection; that full-circle moment has really stuck with me.

My biggest advice for people struggling to find work — whether you’re a recent college graduate or have been in the workforce for decades — is to be open to different opportunities and stay engaged in the process. If you’re going to do something, do it wholeheartedly.

While I wasn’t interested in the job I thought I was interviewing for, I gave myself fully to the interview.

Even if it wasn’t the right role, something better at the company could’ve opened up later. If you don’t have your foot in the door anywhere, you can’t move up from anywhere.