Everyone's Health

Gatorade or Chocolate Milk

Study touts chocolate milk over sports drinks

It comes in only one flavor – no Fierce Grape or Riptide Rush available – and you certainly won't see your favorite basketball star gulping it down on the sideline during a timeout.

But a group of scientists recently discovered that one of the most effective drinks to help athletes recover after exercise is the same thing moms across America have been giving their kids for years.

A simple glass of chocolate milk.

To be forthright, the study by the scientists from Indiana University, published in the International Journal of Sports Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism, was supported in part by the Dairy and Nutrition Council.

Still, their findings are compelling.

The small group of nine fit athletes who took part in the study were asked to work out strenuously on a stationary bicycle, then drink low-fat chocolate milk, a fluid-replacement drink like Gatorade and a carbohydrate replacement drink like Endurox R4. A few hours later, they were asked to cycle again until they reached exhaustion.

The test was repeated three times – once with each kind of drink – and the data showed that the cyclists were able to go between 49 and 54 percent longer on the second stint after drinking chocolate milk than when they drank the carbohydrate drink. The difference between the milk and the fluid-replacement drink was not significant.

“My way of explaining it is, there's really nothing magic about the powder in a can that you mix with water,” cycling coach Scott Saifer said of the carbohydrate drink. “It's water, carbs, proteins, maybe minerals and electrolytes. What's in chocolate milk? The same thing. There's no reason it shouldn't be as good for recovery as a carb drink.”

The milk folks tout their product as a less-costly and healthier alternative to the more traditional energy drinks.

They have some data to back up the physiology of the issue. Among their points are that milk also provides much-needed calcium and might be more efficiently absorbed into the system than the other drinks.

The Indiana study netted different results than an earlier study that found participants exercised 55 percent longer after drinking Endurox than they did after drinking Gatorade. The Indiana study concluded the aberration may have been because of methodological differences in the experiments – most notably that subjects in the other study exercised at a more strenuous pace than in the Indiana study.

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