Potential Ergogenic Effects of Chocolate Milk
If you like chocolate and you like milk, you are in luck!
Recent scientific studies show that drinking a glass of chocolate milk after progressive cycling exercise will help the athlete exercise longer to exhaustion in a second cycling trial 4 hours later. Trained cyclists performed three different testing sessions in which endurance was compared after drinking chocolate milk, Gatorade or another carbohydrate replacement beverage, Endurox(1).
Cycling endurance time may be increased up to 50% with the chocolate milk, compared with the other two fluid replacement drinks. Why might this be? Water intake during the endurance trial was higher after drinking chocolate milk than the other two trials. Also, the fat content in the chocolate milk may have provided the athletes with a greater supply of plasma free fatty acids during exercise. This response may have prevented the premature use of muscle glycogen and prolonged exercise.
Another recent study in male runners was performed in which men ran at a moderate intensity for 45 minutes then drank a carbohydrate beverage or chocolate milk(2). After 3 hours of recovery, these men ran a run trial to exhaustion. Like the cyclists, the runners who drank the chocolate milk had a higher time to exhaustion than those who drank the carbohydrate beverage. Why did this occur? The scientists found that skeletal muscle protein breakdown was lower after drinking chocolate milk.
While these studies were small, they provide exciting applications for the use of an inexpensive and readily available option for enhancing performance after cycling or running!
Read these articles online to learn more:
- Thomas K, Morris P, Stevenson E. Improved endurance capacity following chocolate milk consumption compared with 2 commercially available sport drinks. Appl Physiol Nutr Metab. 2009 Feb;34(1):78-82.
- Lunn WR, Pasiakos SM, Colletto MR, Karfonta KE, Carbone JW, Anderson JM, Rodriguez NR. Chocolate Milk & Endurance Exercise Recovery: Protein Balance, Glycogen & Performance. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2011 Sep 7. [Epub ahead of print]
