Internal Mono(b)log

This constant marketing barrage about how chocolate milk is a “great recovery drink”™ is really starting to make me kinda crazy.

Screw Sports Drinks, Chocolate Milk Is the Best Post-Workout Drink | Greatist.

I dunno about you, but I don’t drink milk.. pretty much at all.  I’ll occasionally have dairy for a treat ice-cream or little bit of cheese but generally I avoid it.  I once made the mistake of succumbing to the marketing hype and tried chocolate milk post a big workout: I got so sick.  I thought I was going to vomit, then thought I was going to pass out.  It was horrible and an experience I wouldn’t ever want to repeat.

But lets go beyond that.  And lets go beyond the speculation/rumors/stories that chocolate milk is made from 2nd grade milk products that they can hide the impurities with the additives (oh yes the list is stupid: INGREDIENTS: LOWFAT MILK WITH VITAMIN A PALMITATE AND VITAMIN D3 ADDED, SUGAR, LESS THAN 2% OF COCOA PROCESSED WITH ALKALI, CALCIUM CARBONATE, CELLULOSE GEL, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVORS, SALT, CARRAGEENAN, CELLULOSE GUM. CONTAINS: MILK INGREDIENT. ) . We’ll even go beyond the crazy high insulin response that goes along with drinking milk which forces consumed calories into stored fat.

The studies themselves don’t PROVE chocolate milk is better.  They compare chocolate milk to pure carbohydrate and to placebo.  In some tests the pure carb actually is better (like muscle glycogen resynthesis – recall the insulin response comment from above, so this isn’t a surprise.. yes carbs go to where you want them: muscle glycogen).  In some tests the chocolate milk is better, but there aren’t tests comparing 4:1 carb/protein with a little fat tests that I can find.  I.e. refuelling with more than straight carbohydrate is well known to be beneficial. And low-fat chocolate milk can provide a source for that, but it isn’t better than other nutrition choices.

In fact, with all the mysterious crap, processing, handling, anti-biotics, growth hormones, filth and disease that go with today’s factory milk farming, I’d be hard pressed to recommend milk at the most desperate of times.

Sheesh!