Is Gatorade junk food?

There's a debate in Congress, and elsewhere I suspect, as to whether drinks like Gatorade, that have a surprisingly large quantity of sugar and salt, are junk food. This is something I've been concerned about for a while - the level of salt in our packaged food. I only started looking at salt a few years ago, when mom mentioned that fat and calories weren't the only things to watch out for on food labels. I used to be a regular drinker of V-8, two fine glasses a day, until I read the fine print - 480 mg of salt per serving, meaning those two fine glasses of "pure" vegetables were giving me 40% of my daily recommended salt intake (there is a low-sodium version that's pretty disgusting).



Then there's cottage cheese, another "health food." Mom ruined that one for me too, when she showed me that I was eating 911 grams of sodium with each one cup serving - again, a good 40% of my daily required salt intake in "healthy" cottage cheese.

What is it with our country and the crap these companies put in our food? From trans fats to insane amounts of sugar (do Coke and Pepsi really need that much sugar? and why won't they ever make a half-sugar half-artificial-sweetener version? it's not bad) to Sodom and Gomorrah-like quantities of salt, the food industry is killing us. Congress should regulate these bastards more than they do now, and people should sue anyone who puts 40% of your recommended daily salt intake in a single serving of anything. When health food needs a warning label, you know we're in trouble.