Chocolate Milk Does a Body Good

Chocolate milk is just about the best thing an endurance athlete can drink after a hard workout.

Forget the fancy packaging and multi-syllabic scientific terms that are used to describe the nutrition benefits of expensive powders, gels, and other liquid concoctions found at General Nutrition Stores. Muscle Milk and its similar-marketed cousins of the “endurance fuel” family have nothing on moo milk and Hershey’s syrup. Seriously.

With the increasing demand and use of protein and carbohydrate drinks aimed at the hard-core athlete, the New York Times published comments from an un-scientific taste and performance test of leading post-activity sports drinks designed to optimize recovery. In “Gear Test: How About a Spin and Tonic?“, Gatorade Protein Recovery Shake, Met-Rx RTD, EAS Myoplex Read-to-Drink, Powerbar Recovery, and Cytopsorts Recovery Drink were sampled.

I could not help but notice how expensive all these drinks were. And the image of chugging any of these drinks after a workout brought to mind a picture of a mechanic topping-off the fluids in a race car after a hard drive. It seems as if the marketing of these products appeal to an idea in our head of our bodies as machines that need to be re-fueled with fancy chains of lab-designed amino acids, carbs, and proteins.

Then I remembered of hearing an anecdote that Michael Phelps drinks Carnation Instant Breakfast between races. For Michael Jordan, “It’s gotta’ be the shoes!” For this Michael, maybe, “It’s gotta be the milk!”

In 2006, the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism published a study conducted at Indiana University that found:

Chocolate milk contains an optimal carbohydrate to protein ratio, which is critical for helping refuel tired muscles after strenuous exercise and can enable athletes to exercise at a high intensity during subsequent workouts. It is a strong alternative to other commercial sports drinks in helping athletes recover from strenuous, energy-depleting exercise. (Source.)

How effective? Co-author Joel Stager says, “Chocolate milk was nearly twice as effective than the synthetic products [such as those taste-tested by the NYT] as a recovery product.” (Source.)

“The researchers found that cyclists who drank chocolate milk during the rest period were able to bike nearly twice as long before reaching exhaustion than those who consumed the carbohydrate replacement drink.” (Source.)

Bonus: “And the athletes liked the taste a lot better.”

Double bonus: Chocolate milk is relatively inexpensive, especially when compared to the $3-4 cost of a single-serving of Muscle Milk.

What is so great about chocolate milk? And what about that sugar? That can’t be good for you, can it? Well…

Chocolate milk has the ideal ratio of carbohydrates to proteins — 3 or 4 grams of carbs to 1 gram of protein — for optimal post-exercise recovery. Regular milk does not have this same ratio.

It’s not just the ratio of carbohydrates to proteins that makes a difference. There seems to be something special about milk itself that cannot be replicated in the lab. “Endurox, which has the same carb-to-protein ratio as chocolate milk, fared poorly” in the study.

What gives? One researcher supposes that “It may have to do with the different composition of the sugars in the milk. The sugars in the milk may be better absorbed in the gut than those in the Endurox.” (Source.)

Whatever the reason, Mother Nature and Hershey’s know what’s best. Pass me some milk and chocolate syrup!

Play, think…
J.R. Atwood

Further reading: Swallow This by Gretchen Reynolds discusses the trends and science of post-workout recovery nutrition.

Filed under: Sports, Play & Games, The Body, Health & Exercise , carbohydrate to protein ratio, Carnation Instant Breakfast, chocolate milk, cycling, endurance, endurance fuel, exercise, health, Hershey's, joel stager, Michael Phelps, milk, moo milk, Muscle Milk, nutrition, post-workout recovery, recovery drink, sports, sports drink