Is Chocolate Milk A Good Recovery Drink

Audio Transcript

Question: Is chocolate milk a good recovery drink?

Michael: That’s a great question, and one that many runners, especially younger ones, really want to know the answer to.

First, I want to provide just a little bit of background.

When you exercise, your body breaks down muscle fibers and creates tiny micro tears in your muscles. Ideally, you repair these tears before the next session, but obviously that’s not always the case, in terms of when you’re sore, going into a workout or still really fatigued from the last one.

In a perfect world, nutrient intake begins as soon as you’re done with the workout. You have around a 90 minute window where it’s very important to get some sort of nutrition in, and it’s even better if it’s closer to within the 30 minutes of the workout being done.

The ideal recovery drink contains a three to one, or four to one ratio of carbohydrates to proteins. This could be from many different sources.

The protein should have most, if not all amino acids necessary for muscle repair, and the drink overall should replenish fluids, meaning it basically has enough water base and also replenish electrolytes.

Back to the question of, is chocolate milk an effective recovery drink? Yes, but it definitely has a catch. The good parts of chocolate milk are that it restores your glycogen stores, which are very severely depleted after a hard workout.

It’s the sugar in the chocolate that boosts the glycogen. Protein from the milk also helps your muscle fibers recover.

The big thing to remember is that, it’s actually not very good outside of training.

There was one particular study where chocolate milk was compared to both Gatorade and Endurax. Endurax is a drink mixed with both carbs and proteins.

Now this study basically took some cyclists and had them over a period of time take different drinks, Gatorade, chocolate milk and Endurax, measured their workout and then measured their recovery afterward.

This study found chocolate milk to be more effective than both Gatorade and Endurax.

There are a few potential explanations here. First is that chocolate milk is slightly more “natural” or at least a little less processed in both Gatorade and in Endurax, which can obviously make a difference.

Second is that milk does contain vitamin D, which is an essential hormone, obviously very important for recovery as well, but the third one is that admittedly the study was funded by the dairy industry which is certainly worth mentioning here.

We already mentioned that chocolate milk can be very effective after harder workouts, perhaps even some hard long runs, but there are two big exceptions that need to be noted here.

First is that it’s not really good for use after easy runs. Again, it’s really the harder workouts and the long runs where we’re talking about using these three to one, four to one mixes of drinks.

The second thing is that, it’s not really good at all outside of training.

That is to say that chocolate milk is not a very healthy drink to consume on a regular basis. Quick story here, I used to work several high school cross country camps and at one of them, the camp director was just raving about chocolate milk.

He quoted the same study that we talked about earlier, and he told the kids that chocolate milk is a tremendous recovery drink.

He did mention that it’s best after workouts, but he kind of put that to the side and all the kids heard was, chocolate milk equals good.

Anyway, that evening at dinner, walking around watching all the kids, pretty much every kid had at least one giant glass of chocolate milk.

Most of them actually had two giant glasses of chocolate milk. The camp director had to do another talk that night really quick and make sure that everybody knew that chocolate milk is really only effective after hard workouts and long runs.

Another significant point to note is that, you want to make sure that you can handle milk.

Some people are lactose intolerant, while for other people, milk upsets their stomach a little bit, even if they are not necessarily intolerant to it.

Again, this is something that you’re going to want to try out.

Biggest thing I recommend is, trying out several different options and seeing how it works for you. Use one drink for a few weeks, see how you recover, use another drink for another few weeks, and make sure you know what the difference is.

Remember, if you can’t handle either of these milk or other drinks, you could either try a protein bar with Gatorade or perhaps even a banana with peanut butter.

Admittedly, fats do slow down the rate of absorption, but yet again anything is better than nothing in that 90 minute window after a workout.

For what it’s worth, back in my sub four mile days, I actually bought the ingredients myself, separately and mixed them.

What I would do is I would buy Maltodextrin, whey protein powder and then an electrolyte mix, put them in a blender bottle, mix it up with water and drink it.

It didn’t taste great, but I will say it definitely did the job, and it was a lot cheaper.

Some of these mixes, Endurax, even some Gatorade style mixes can actually be very expensive. That is one of the nicer things about chocolate milk, especially if you make it at home; is that it’s not very expensive.

For a lot of people, it’s a very, very good alternative, but definitely don’t be too sucked in by the Endurax or those other mixes that cost a fortune, yet you can really put together at home pretty easily.

Final point, don’t treat this as more important than your overall nutrition.

It’s much better to have excellent nutrition overall, but perhaps a less than ideal recovery drink than the other way round.

As always, the big picture wins out.

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Thank you for tuning in, have a great week of training and we’ll see you next time.