Chocolate milk contains carbohydrates, protein, and fat, as well as water and electrolytes, making it a surprisingly good candidate for a recovery drink. In a recent meta-analysis, a team of researchers investigated other studies that looked at how well chocolate milk fared in this regard, compared to a placebo or other products. The results, as some would say, will surprise you.
In recent years, the health industry has experienced a boom. Just go to any market that sells specialty products (or even the health aisles in many supermarkets) and you’ll see a myriad of products, often almost indistinguishable from one another. While some are indeed more effective and science-based, it’s hard to know how to find them among the unknown crowd on shelves.
But what if a familiar product was also effective?
Chocolate milk was reportedly created in Jamaica by Hans Sloane, an Irish physician, naturalist and collector. It took him a while to become popular, but today, he has become one of the most popular drinks on the market. The main draw is the flavor, as the mouthfeel of the milk masks the dietary fibers in the cocoa solids, and the dark richness of the chocolate works well with full-fat milk (although more recently, nonfat chocolate milk or skim has also become popular).
The health benefits of chocolate milk are still hotly debated, and sugar is a particularly contentious topic, especially when it comes to infant nutrition. However, the drink can also be useful in some situations, such as recovering from a workout.
A study led by Mojgan Amiri, currently at the Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands and formerly at the University of Medical Sciences in Yazd, Iran, looked at the effects of chocolate milk as a recovery drink. The team analyzed 12 previous studies on the subject.
“Chocolate milk (CM) contains carbohydrates, proteins and fats, in addition to water and electrolytes, which can be ideal for post-exercise recovery. We systematically reviewed the evidence on the efficacy of CM compared to water or other “sports drinks” on markers of post-exercise recovery,” the researchers write in the study.
Several previous studies have suggested that ingesting chocolate milk improves measures of recovery and performance, especially a metric called “time to exhaustion” or TTE – the time (at a given power or intensity) after which an exercise cannot be sustained. However, singular studies often focus on small sample sizes or a singular metric, while a meta-analysis (a study of studies) can offer a larger-scale picture. Although this is a fairly small meta-analysis, it is one of the most comprehensive efforts to date.
When it comes to chocolate milk as a recovery drink, studies don’t always agree. Some have found that nonfat chocolate milk increases TTE, while others report more mixed results. It is exactly in this type of situation that meta-analyses can provide a clearer picture. In this case, the researchers admit that larger studies are needed, but finally conclude:
“Chocolate milk provides similar or superior results compared to placebo or some other recovery drink. Overall, the evidence is limited and high-quality clinical trials with better controlled methodology and larger sample sizes are warranted.”
This does not mean that recovery drinks they don’t have their use and you should just replace everything with chocolate milk. These products can vary greatly in quality and some are better than others; They can also be modified, and you can find specialty drinks with different levels of protein, electrolytes, or carbohydrates, depending on exactly what you’re looking for.
Chocolate milk can also have its own shortcomings. It often contains a lot of sugar (twice as much sugar as low-fat milk), fat (if not fat-free), and possibly other additives. There are also potential health problems with milk (most people on the planet are lactose intolerance) and ethical reasons, linked to greenhouse gas emissions and animal treatment.
With these caveats, however, the ability of chocolate milk, which many would treat as a mere dessert or unnecessary treat, to function as a recovery drink is remarkable. With larger studies still pending and the exact improvements yet to be discovered, chocolate milk appears to be an affordable and readily available recovery drink substitute.
The study was published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
