I am sure you have all heard of the benefits of chocolate milk for recovery…in case you have been living under a rock here are a few articles to go and read:
Mind Body and Spirit Fitness - Got Milk? Try Chocolate After Your Workout
CBS News Chocolate Milk: The New Sports Drink?
Medscape Extract Chocolate Milk May Improve Recovery After Exercise
The list goes on seriously just Google Chocolate milk recovery or Chocolate Milk sports nutrition and you’ll see. I have used it intermittently although my preferences is for Soy milk, but hey that’s just me, so when the good folks from Shamrock Farms contacted me asking if I would be interested in trying their new product Rockin’ Refuel I of course said yes (at this stage I would like to point out that sometimes I do say no…but not this time). A few days later a chilled box arrived and inside where one of each flavor, Chocolate, Strawberry and Vanilla I threw them in the fridge and waited for some long runs. I usually don’t use any fuel be it during or after until my runs get into the 75 minutes plus range.
First here’s some info from their website:
- 20 grams of protein, more than the leading sports and recovery drinks
- 100% real milk
- Nine essential nutrients
- Naturally occurring electrolytes
- No artificial sweeteners
- Formulated without high-fructose corn syrup
- Low glycemic index
So cometh the long run cometh the recovery, I tried the Vanilla one weekend and the chocolate the next; I nearly missed out on the strawberry as my kids nabbed it first and I had to wrest it from them! So from a taste perspective they are, in my opinion, very palatable. I did solicit feedback from the fridge bandits who described it a “yummy”. All three flavors are drinkable although I was rather partial to the vanilla flavor, but I’ll take vanilla over chocolate any day…hey that’s how I roll!
As for effectiveness, well they’re filling and after my longs runs I had no DOMS, so I would say they worked for me.
So let’s talk about the contents, well there are some variables that are driven by the flavors as you can see they are pretty calorific for 12oz of milk which is usually; Whole: 150, 2%: 120, 1%: 100 and Skimmed: 80, not a bad thing when you’re looking for calorie replacement.
 Chocolate |  Strawberry |  Vanilla |
So as you can see there are a few other things thrown in in addition to your standard “milk”.
- Fructose; is a simple sugar
- Sucrose; is table sugar
- Whey Protein Isolate; derived from milk products and somewhere between 29-89% protein Carragenan; is a thickener used in anything from ice cream to shoe polish to personal lube!
- Palmitate is used as an antioxidant and a source of vitamin A added to low fat milk and other dairy products to replace the vitamin content lost through the removal of milk fat
- Guar Gum; used in dairy products as a thickener
- Dipotassium phosphate; used in non dairy creamer as a coagulant
- Red #40; food dye, banned or being phased out in the EU, approved by the FDC in the US. On June 30, 2010, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) called for the FDA to ban Red 40. Executive Director Michael Jacobson said, "These synthetic chemicals do absolutely nothing to improve the nutritional quality or safety of foods, but trigger behavior problems in children and, possibly, cancer in anybody."
Well what can I say, it was going pretty will until we got the the food dye! As a parent and as someone who has seen the devastating effects of cancer anything that is a possible carcinogenic is simply a no no, period!
As you can see from my cursory research there’s a lot of stuff in these drinks. I am clearly no chemist and here’s the rub, do you need to be one to drink these drinks well maybe or maybe not! That being said do you need to be a chemist to drink a glass of Endurox or Recoverite, in truth I don’t know but there is never any harm in reading the labels.
So what to say in summary well in my opinion check out the chocolate and vanilla flavors and leave the strawberry on the shelves at the store. Ultimately we do place some inherent trust in the manufacturers and the government bodies that monitor their products and when they add something that’s iffy, well that trust is broken.
Available through multiple outlets, the drink retails for $1.39, there is a store locator on their website where you will also find a few promotions for a free t-shirt and a coupon.
This drink was provided free of charge by the good folks at Shamrock Farm. See previous gear reviews in the sidebar on the right. If you have a product you’d like reviewed, contact me at quadrathon@gmail.com.
