Tag: nutrition

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More on magic beets for endurance

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My new Sweat Science columns are being published at www.outsideonline.com/sweatscience. Also check out my new book, THE EXPLORER'S GENE: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map, published in March 2025.

- Alex Hutchinson (@sweatscience)

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A few months ago, I wrote about a new study claiming that beet juice would allow you to exercise for up to 16 percent longer. I was somewhat skeptical: “Don’t look for Tour de France riders or Olympic runners to be downing beet juice anytime soon,” I wrote.

Well, I was wrong in one respect. From Amby Burfoot’s Peak Performance blog:

Two days before the ING New York City Marathon, I asked Paula Radcliffe if she actually drank beet juice. This moved her to stage one: silly giggles. And an embarrassing response. “I tried it once,” she said, “but most of it came out the other end.”

So Paula has tried beet juice. And Amby himself, it turns out, has just bought his first bottle of beet juice, hoping to reap the benefits of nitrates. Here’s his blog on the topic (with progress reports promised over the next few weeks).

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Brown is the new red? Chocolate milk clears arteries just like wine

THANK YOU FOR VISITING SWEATSCIENCE.COM!

My new Sweat Science columns are being published at www.outsideonline.com/sweatscience. Also check out my new book, THE EXPLORER'S GENE: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map, published in March 2025.

- Alex Hutchinson (@sweatscience)

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It was surprising enough when chocolate milk started being touted as a perfect post-exercise recovery drink, thanks to its 4-to-1 ratio of carbohydrates to protein. Now a study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition suggests that the flavonoids in cocoa may slow or even prevent the development of atherosclerosis, the hardening of the arteries:

Scientists in Barcelona, Spain, recruited 47 volunteers ages 55 and older who were at risk for heart disease. Half were given 20-gram sachets of soluble cocoa powder to drink with skim milk twice a day, while the rest drank plain skim milk. After one month, the groups were switched. Blood tests found that after participants drank chocolate milk twice a day for four weeks, they had significantly lower levels of several inflammatory biomarkers, though some markers of cellular inflammation remained unchanged. Participants also had significantly higher levels of good HDL cholesterol after completing the chocolate milk regimen… [New York Times]

Needless to say, chocolate milk — like wine — should be consumed in moderation.

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Antioxidant vitamins, exercise and muscle damage: another nail in the coffin?

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My new Sweat Science columns are being published at www.outsideonline.com/sweatscience. Also check out my new book, THE EXPLORER'S GENE: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map, published in March 2025.

- Alex Hutchinson (@sweatscience)

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Back in May, there was a flurry of excitement about a study suggesting that antioxidants might block some of the beneficial effects of exercise (heightened insulin sensitivity, to be specific). A new study in this month’s issue of Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise now offers additional evidence for another proposed downside of antioxidant supplementation. According to a University of Porto study of 20 kayakers on the Portugese national team, popping anti-oxidant pills may delay muscle recovery.

Here are the details of the study. Continue reading “Antioxidant vitamins, exercise and muscle damage: another nail in the coffin?”

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Will exercise make me gain weight?

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My new Sweat Science columns are being published at www.outsideonline.com/sweatscience. Also check out my new book, THE EXPLORER'S GENE: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map, published in March 2025.

- Alex Hutchinson (@sweatscience)

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Just when I thought I’d vanquished this beast (see the most recent Jockology column, “Statistics Canada says being overweight makes you live longer. Should I stop exercising?“), TIME magazine comes out with a cover story called “Why Exercise Won’t Make You Thin” that has been making waves. The author, John Cloud, sifts (somewhat selectively) through several decades of research, and reaches the following conclusion:

In short, it’s what you eat, not how hard you try to work it off, that matters more in losing weight. You should exercise to improve your health, but be warned: fiery spurts of vigorous exercise could lead to weight gain. I love how exercise makes me feel, but tomorrow I might skip the VersaClimber — and skip the blueberry bar that is my usual postexercise reward

The piece has already spawned numerous rebuttals (see this one from Obesity Panacea), along with complaints of misinterpretation from one of the scientists cited. My thoughts? The research he discusses isn’t actually that controversial. For instance, the idea that exercise will actually make you consume more calories than you burn off has been debated for years. (Here‘s a Jockology column I wrote on whether post-exercise eating negates the benefits of exercise.) There are lots of questions that scientists still haven’t nailed down about how diet and activity levels interact to influence health.

What’s way out of whack with Cloud’s article is the conclusion he draws. Somehow the fact that regular exercise doesn’t automatically cause people to lose large amounts of weight gets twisted into an attention-grabbing warning that exercise might actually cause you to gain weight. Where’s the evidence supporting this bold claim? Nowhere. Basically, it reads like the kind of story that has a “bold, counterintuitive” claim that was agreed on at an editorial meeting long before anyone actually did any research.

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Fatty foods hurt memory and exercise

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My new Sweat Science columns are being published at www.outsideonline.com/sweatscience. Also check out my new book, THE EXPLORER'S GENE: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map, published in March 2025.

- Alex Hutchinson (@sweatscience)

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It may be true that carrying a few extra pounds isn’t the end of the world. But that doesn’t mean fat is innocuous: Tara Parker-Pope has an article about some very interesting experiments in rats that show a clear and rapid effect of eating fatty foods.

[T]he new research shows how indulging in fatty foods over the course of a few days can affect the brain and body long before the extra pounds show up…

“We expected to see changes, but maybe not so dramatic and not in such a short space of time,’’ said Andrew Murray, the study’s lead author and a lecturer in physiology at Cambridge University in Britain. “It was really striking how quickly these effects happened.’’

The same group has done similar experiments on people, though the results have yet to be published. It’s an interesting article, definitely worth a read.