You may have seen a few commercials with athletes drinking chocolate milk as their fuel drink. Studies are showing that it’s better to choose chocolate milk over sports drinks for several reasons. Here are a few chocolate milk benefits.
Choose Chocolate Milk Over Sports Drinks
Recovery
After a workout, your body needs to refuel to help your muscles recover and rebuild faster. Chocolate milk gives your muscles carbohydrates and protein to help with the process.
Both are necessary to repair small microtears in the muscles. Chocolate milk contains both in an easy, tasty drink.
Sports drinks may have some carbs, but few have protein in them. If they do, they’re a lot more expensive than chocolate milk per serving.
Rehydrate
Electrolytes are essential to your workout success and to increase your endurance. Drinks like Gatorade and Powerade also refuel and replenish your electrolytes post workout, but chocolate milk may be an even better option.
Milk also takes more time to empty from your stomach, so the nutrients are absorbed in a slower rate. That means it acts as a slow release instead of giving you all the nutrients at once.
In this aspect, it’s better to choose chocolate milk over sports drinks because the nutrients in sports drinks may not all be absorbed as well and be wasted.
Better Performance
In research done at the University of Texas by Dr. John Ivy and his team, they found that cyclists who drank chocolate milk before riding exerted more power and were able to ride faster than those who drank sports drinks.
He also found that athletes who drank milk had doubled the improvement in maximal oxygen uptake than people who had sports drinks. Your muscles rely on oxygen to fuel them, so the more your body can take in, the better and longer your muscles can perform.
Additionally, a different study found that collegiate soccer players could perm longer before becoming fatigued if they drank chocolate milk between morning and afternoon workouts compared to those who drank sports drinks.
Both chocolate milk and sports drinks can be high in sugar, so be careful about drinking them casually. However, more reasons are coming up to choose chocolate milk over sports drinks. This can be good news because it’s more cost effective and, to many, more delicious.
Build Muscle
Milk helps you re-hydrate, boosts your physical performance, and helps your muscles during recovery.
However, it also helps your muscles in one additional way: it builds muscles.
Dr. Ivy found that drinking chocolate milk right after a workout can help build more muscle and help you lose fat while training.
According to his research, those who drank low-fat chocolate milk after working out saw muscle benefits.
They ended up having more lean muscle than people who simply drank a regular sports drink after workouts.
The advantage was about three-pounds more lean muscle and it happened after around four weeks.
This doesn’t mean you will automatically get bulkier from just drinking chocolate milk.
Always choose the low-fat options and stay active – otherwise, you’ll just gain weight.