Chocolate Milk: The Ultimate Sports Drink?

If very dark and in small amounts chocolate is often touted as a healthy snack packed with antioxidants.

But now a less typically 'healthy' version of, let's face it, everyone's favourite treat, is getting the attention of sportspeople for its powers of recovery - chocolate milk.

Mo Farah's a fan. The endurance athete swears by the stuff after his workouts and long runs to replenish his muscles. And if it's good enough for Mo, it' good enough for us.

But before we rushed to the shops to buy up their stock of Yazoo, we did a bit of investigating, and the research dampened our spirits somewhat. Well, it did sound too good to be true.

Whoever you listen to, it seems chocolate milk isn't a healthy option for those of use who class a jog around the park intense exercise. You need to really work to earn it.

But why is it getting so much positive press?

There is some science to the claims that it has its place in sports nutrition.

"We now know that chocolate milk has the ideal carbohydrate-to-protein ratio, which your muscles require to replenish glycogen levels," says Kelly Pritchett from the department of foods and nutrition at the University of Georgia.

Water only replaces the water sweated out during exercise, not the nutrients and electrolytes that go with it, and it doesn't put anything in that's been used up by the body during intense exercise.

Chocolate milk on the other hand, contains nutrients including vitamin D, potassium and calcium, as well as the sugars (glycogen) that the muscles need to rebuild. Plus (except for those allergic or intolerant to dairy) it's easy and quick to digest.

It contains whey protein that quickly enters the blood stream to replenish muscles fast, and casesin, which sticks around longer, feeding the muscles to prevent any breakdown.

But it becomes clear that it's not as simple as that. Though one small piece of research backs up Mo's penchant for the stuff, plenty of nutritionists have slammed the advice as rather questionable.

Physiologist Joel Stager, director of the Human Performance laboratory at Indiana University, experiemented by getting nine elite cyclists to cycle to exhaustion then recover for four hours before cycling to exhaustion again.

In the four hours break some were given chocolate milk, while others recovered with Gatorade (a high-sugar sports drink) and others with high-carbohydrate sports drink Endurox R4. And the results showed that those who had drank the chocolate milk performed as well or better as the others.

But that doesn't make it a 'healthy drink'. It's high in sugar and calories, plus naturally-occurring chemicals in the chocolate actually reduce the body's ability to absorb calcium, meaning it's not a great source.

It may be fine for Mo, after all he's not just intensively working out as some people do at the gym, his whole life is geared around rigorous exercise and very long bouts of continuous running.

But for those of us who aren't professional athletes, or incredibly dedicated amateurs, chocolate milk probably should be confined to the no pile (along with sports drinks, which are packed with sugar too). Instead, you're better off with coconut water to replace electrolytes, or a low sugar protein shake to boost muscles.

Drinking it after a hard gym sesh will probably just negate all your good work.

Yeah, we're pretty gutted too.

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