And yes to chocolate milk
Drink of Champions--Chocolate Milk?
Several years ago, a high-school swimmer in Bloomington, Ind., handed his coach a sports drink to see what he thought of the beverage. The ingredients looked familiar to Joel Stager, an exercise physiologist at Indiana University Bloomington and director of the Counsilman Center for the Science of Swimming. But it took a trip to the grocery store to find the supplement's nonsynthetic cousin, chocolate milk.
Soon Stager was handing his swimmers, many of whom struggled with their twice-a-day practices, a glass of chocolate milk after their early morning workouts. The effect was dramatic. Many of their problems disappeared "almost immediately," he says.
The benefits did not escape the swimmers' parents, who didn't need academic research to convince them that low-tech chocolate milk was a super fuel for exhausted muscles, and kids.
"When I'd get to practice in the morning, there would be a couple of gallons of chocolate milk waiting for me," Stager recalls. "It was great. It sent a good message to the athletes that eating well is important."
Stager took chocolate milk into the controlled setting of his IU laboratory and tested its effect on cyclists. It performed as well as Gatorade and almost twice as well as another sports recovery drink, Endurox.
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