Chocolate milk wins battle of the sports drinks

20 April 2009

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Whether you're kicking off the new footy season, or sweating it out at the gym – chocolate milk could be your new best friend. In a post-exercise energy recovery trial that pitted chocolate milk against commercial sports drinks, childhood favourite – chocolate milk – has taken first place

Milk and exercise Researchers from England's Northumbria University recently compared the effects of three beverages on performance in a cycling endurance test.¹ The three beverages were chocolate milk, a commercially available sports drink, and a commercially available fluid replacement drink.

On three occasions, nine trained male cyclists completed a glycogen depletion workout, drank one of the three test beverages during a four-hour recovery period, and then cycled in an endurance capacity trial.

When the cyclists were given chocolate milk, they were able to cycle 51 percent longer in the endurance test before exhaustion than they did when they were given the sports drink and 43 percent longer than when they were given the fluid replacement drink.

The researchers noted that participants cycled longer after drinking chocolate milk than after sports drink, despite the beverages having very similar calorie (or energy) contents. They said the difference could be due to differences in carbohydrate type and (or) fat content between the beverages.

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