Drink Up!

Chocolate Milk Beats Sports Drinks for Muscle Recovery
Two years ago, in a study funded in part by the dairy industry, researchers at the University of Illinois determined that chocolate milk did as much or more as most "sports drinks" to help athletes maintain peak performance. Now comes another study, this one conducted at James Madison University, suggesting that chocolate milk "provides equal or superior muscle recovery compared to a high-carbohydrate recovery beverage with the same amount of calories."The new study put 13 college soccer players through "normal" training for one week, and gave them either lowfat chocolate milk or a high-carbohydrate recovery beverage daily after intense training for four days. After a two week break, the athletes went through a second round of "normal" training, followed by four-day intensified training to compare their recovery experiences following each beverage. The researchers found no differences between the two beverages in effects on, soccer-specific performance tests, subjective ratings of muscle soreness, mental and physical fatigue and other measures of muscle strength. But when they looked at muscle recovery, the researchers found that chocolate milk drinkers had significantly lower levels of creatine kinase – an indicator of muscle damage – than the drinkers of a carbohydrate beverage.