Post Workout: Chocolate Vs Whole White Milk.

[Tavis G]

Which is better post workout. I am trying to gain a little bit of weight. Maybe 5 lbs. Carbs from the choc milk looks good, but i am concerned about the ingredients in the chocolate. Whole Milk has good protein and everything. But the added chocolate adds carbs and calories. Carbs post workout cause that insulin spike and take nutrients to your muscles. Wouldn't the bad ingredients in the chocolate make you a little fat? I have been drinking regular milk post workout for months but i am looking to up my cals and carbs for better muscle repair. Is chocolate milk actually good for this?

[Joshua Naterman]

32 oz (1 Liter-ish) of 1% chocolate milk.

[ADRIANO FLORES CANO]

Plain simply: to gain weight it's superb, not much for your health. 

 

If you use motor search on the forum you'll see some threads talking about this particular subject with excellents posts.

[Tavis G]

What do you mean exactly by "not much for health"? So you guys recommend choc for weight gain over white milk? And di you guys prefer already made when bought or add the choc yourself? How would you recommend to make the chocalate milk? By powder or syrup or others?

[Lucas Serur]

What do you mean by the ingredients on the chocolate?

 

I use skim milk, cocoa powder and honey to make my own.

[Jim Murphy]

My subconscious is telling me PWO milk - ANY kind - might give a little boost initially but then it will negatively affect digestion of following anabolic window meals. My subconscious isn't right all the time though.  

[Daniel Burnham]

Any extra calories will give weight gain.  Chocolate milk is an ok PWO drink.  It has been shown to create a big insulin response but it would get into the system slower than a glucose/protein mix.

 

The main ingredient that you should be worried about in chocolate milk is the fructose.  Though fructose isn't as big of a deal PWO, glucose is the real sugar you need.  

 

Looking at nesquick powder and syrup in my house I found that the powder uses table sugar (half glucose half fructose) while the syrup uses High fructose corn syrup.  This would make powder chocolate a better choice.  

[Tavis G]

That is what i was thinking of using is cocoa powder. What brand would you guys recommend and how much?

[Daniel Burnham]

Cocoa powder itself is just cocoa which wont really give much of a benefit except maybe some extra antioxidants.  Just want you to be aware.  I don't have an opinion on which chocolate milk powder mix to use though my family swears by the taste of nesqwik.  See if you can find one that mentions dextrose specifically in the nutrition facts.

[Tavis G]

I want something that will add some carbs to the milk. I'm assuming nesquick has a lot of carbs?

[Joshua Naterman]

Plain simply: to gain weight it's superb, not much for your health. 

 

If you use motor search on the forum you'll see some threads talking about this particular subject with excellents posts.

This is a some opinionated post, but not entirely wrong. It is not clear whether Letance is referring to the milk or the fructose.

 

Chocolate milk all day long is not going to be very good for you, but don't believe everything you read about milk.

 

I will certainly agree with the general sentiment that the cheapo store brand milk, which does tend to come from sick animals in mass production facilities, is not something I would consider a health food, or even real milk. Sure, it's milk, but it also has a huge amount of pus in it because the animals are literally sick.

 

Higher quality milk costs about twice as much, which puts it at about the same price point as quality protein powder, gram of protein for gram of protein, and you have a much better product. Every brand is different. In the South, if you're within ~270 miles of a Mayfield plant then you can get Mayfield milk. They get their milk from lots of local farmers, not from a large in-house production facility, so the cows are quite healthy and have better diets. I cannot say whether or not other brands are as good, but look for milk from pasture-raised cows.

 

The sugar in chocolate milk is typically 50% fructose, either HFCS or sucrose (better than HFCS, but also slower) and that is a high fructose load after the workout. You're looking at around 40g of fructose. It's not the end of the world, but it's not fantastic.

 

You would definitely be much better off buying milk, cocoa powder, and glucose powder (often called dextrose or corn sugar) and mixing your own.

 

You will also see your best results with 1%, 1/2%, or skim milk for PWO chocolate milk.

[Tavis G]

I never knew glucose powder existed. Is it expensive? I wasn't going to drink chocolate milk all day. Just after workouts. I dring regular milk with meals and water whenever I'm not eating.

[ADRIANO FLORES CANO]

I'm not a fan of any "chocolate" drink in the market because they are junk food. It's a better choice add cocoa powder and create your own "Chocolat" drink or milk. 

 

About the milk itself I'm a little bit sitting on the fence... I'm asthmatic and when I cut down dairy products I feel better, and when I start to consume dairy products by the nights I can't breathe normally, but I don't know if it's for the weather, season, humidity or what... I'm not going to blame to dairy about that, just it's strange. 

 

I'm from Andalucia, Spain, and thank god there are beautiful places here where cows live in freedom and the whole milk it's awesome both taste and smell. Of course there are other places where the milk it's a crap because the cows live in poor situations.

 

Will be another subject to talk about milk in particular and if it's bad or good for health, but... CHOCOLATE milk it's not a product that I choose for PWO, neither for my health. 

[Lucas Serur]

I'm not a fan of any "chocolate" drink in the market because they are junk food. It's a better choice add cocoa powder and create your own "Chocolat" drink or milk. 

 

About the milk itself I'm a little bit sitting on the fence... I'm asthmatic and when I cut down dairy products I feel better, and when I start to consume dairy products by the nights I can't breathe normally, but I don't know if it's for the weather, season, humidity or what... I'm not going to blame to dairy about that, just it's strange. 

 

I'm from Andalucia, Spain, and thank god there are beautiful places here where cows live in freedom and the whole milk it's awesome both taste and smell. Of course there are other places where the milk it's a crap because the cows live in poor situations.

 

Will be another subject to talk about milk in particular and if it's bad or good for health, but... CHOCOLATE milk it's not a product that I choose for PWO, neither for my health. 

Having asthma episodes after the ingestion of certain foods could be a sign of food intolerance.

[ADRIANO FLORES CANO]

Try to explain this things in my language will be easy, but in english it's a little bit complicated...

 

I don't know if dairy products will be the cause that define my asthma, because I'm not a asthmatic grade 10, but 1... I don't even have inhalers since many months ago when I started to eat paleo when I dropped at all. Sometimes I have and "episode" but it's nothing fancy.

 

I've been eating paleo without cutting dairy products, except of milk, for 5-6 months and episodes were nonexistent. Few weeks ago I started to drink whole milk again in my PWO shake, 250ml more or less, and yesterday by night I had to go to hospital because I can't breathe normally... nothing spectacular, just a dosis of Salbutamol and happy again.

 

BUT! It's for milk? I don't know for sure! Because it's winter and in winter asthmatic are more fucked... besides, I get cold in some ocassions, training HS outside the gym breathing cold air,  walking to home without proper clothes etc etc... so I don't know AT 100% that I intolerance to milk/or dairy. And it's a shame because it's a drink/food that I really like it. 

 

OFF TOPIC total, sorry about that. 

[Nigel Leeming]

Whole milk has too much fat to be an ideal pwo drink.

Yet, some people have gained from it - check out GOMAD, which is an acronym for gallon of milk a day.

I go for 1% milk, although recently, I have been adding only water to my pwo drink of protein, glucose, cinnamon and salt. Dextrose is quite cheap in the UK from Holland & Barrett. Cocoa is high fat. One tablespoon, or 6g contains about 1g of fat. You'd be better of with just milk, but then you'd be better off without the milk too - best read Josh's thread about Pwo drinks.

[Joshua Naterman]

Letance, I strongly believe that our diets can, and do, influence the severity of asthma, ADHD, and a very large variety of other conditions, and that each of us has to figure out which foods are problematic. For you, the milk (or something IN the milk) may be a problem that you are better off avoiding.

 

To really know if it's the milk, you'd have to do a lot of experimentation. If other dairy doesn't cause problems, or is clearly less of an issue for you than liquid milk, then I don't know what to say about that except for stay away from milk hahaha! It could be an issue of cultured vs. uncultured food, which definitely makes a difference.

 

At 80 years old, my dad has had his first real relief from "Irritable Bowel Syndrome," and it came from me teaching my mom how to make homemade Kefir. He's gone off it and back on it several times, and for him it makes a very big difference. Of course, he also drinks plenty of regular milk and has zero issues with it. For you, this may not be the case.

 

If you're not staying gluten-free, that may also be worth a shot, but it sounds like you have kept things pretty manageable, so keep doing whatever it is that is working!

 

And try to make sure you've got an emergency inhaler on you!

[Lucas Serur]

My mother had an incredible reduction in asthma attacks going gluten-free after she discovered she had gluten intolerance (dermatitis herpetiformis/celiac disease).

 

Joshua, do you think it is a good idea for people to avoid gluten entirely or just if they have an intolerance?

 

Disclaimer: for you that actually plan in getting tested for gluten intolerance, do not stop eating gluten before blood test/endoscopy/biopsy

[Joshua Naterman]

I don't know, but I know that both some of my professors and myself have found measurable positive benefits from avoiding gluten. For me, as well as Dr. Ingall's family, the benefits are psychological. Less stress, easier to concentrate, much less baseline anxiety. 

 

I have no celiac or Crohn's issues, and perform quite well physically on wheat-inclusive diets, but my psychological state is much better without them. So, I avoid them.

 

I think it would probably be a good thing to at least get tested for everything that you eat regularly. That's just good common sense, to me. Having said that, I haven't done it Shows you how far common sense gets you when you have other financial priorities, but I'll tell you this: My sister DOES have serious issues with something in her diet that have put her in the hospital once or twice, and she's saving up the $500 USD for that food sensitivity test.

 

If I had issues, it would be a high priority for me too. Once I actually have steady income, I will do this as well.

 

I know that a lot of people have a reduction in psoriasis and ecxzma symptoms as well, when they go gluten-free.

[Nic Branson]

My own example after experimenting has been that most forms of dairy and I do not mix. I can do Cabot cheese or full fat ice cream from time to time but milk, whey protein, casein, fat free yogurt or ice cream are out as are eggs, though 2-3 a week is typically ok. Wheat I cut down on but really I noticed no benefit from cutting it out completely.

[Joshua Naterman]

That's interesting! I actually do worse without milk, but better without wheat. I have ADHD though, and apparently quite a few people with ADHD find the gluten-free diet helpful.

 

I'd be pretty surprised if we all responded the same to this stuff

[ADRIANO FLORES CANO]

Josh thanks for the reply: it helps.

 

It's curious but few weeks ago I started with whey protein in my PWO shake, and...Bum, asthma again! Can whey protein be a problem aswell? The nuisance it's that may be several things:

 

1) Get cold

2) Milk

3) Shellfish

4) Whey protein

5) Winter/Humidity

 

...

 

Since the day I went to hospital I have an inhalator by my side and I use it every fu***** night since then. 

 

I eat paleo and of course gluten-free and some problems have disappear along months, but asthma was a victory because I've been using inhalatosr all life. Now... pssss.

 

I'll search some analysis-lab in my city and we'll see what's happening.

[Joshua Naterman]

It could be something in the protein. I suppose you could try Isopure, that's probably the best way to find out if you're allergic to anything besides the actual protein.

 

There are a lot of non-protein fractions in whey concentrate that are good for most of us but may be causing you problems, but if you find the whey to be an issue just use something else, doesn't really matter THAT much. If you use soy, you'll need to use a bit more OR add maybe 1-2g of leucine to each scoop.

 

I think your best bet is to cut all of that out right now, and just use non-shellfish food for a while. Lean meat that is either blended (weird, I know) or very well chewed is really not all that different from the whey protein. It's a little slower to release, sure, but not by much. Boiled chicken breast is the leanest meat I know of. It's at least as lean as pork tenderloin, but a higher quality protein. If you blend it, make sure to still let it sit in your mouth for a few seconds before swallowing. Saliva is an important part of digestion.

 

I have a friend who has exercise-induced asthma, and for him it's all about building up slowly and staying active. He hasn't had to use his inhaler in years. Everyone's different!

 

I hope that this is just a seasonal thing, but, even if it isn't, try not to lose it! You made a lot of progress before, and you'll make more again. You just have to give it time, and aerobic exercise is one of the best things you can do for your asthma. Might have to be indoors during the winter for you, I don't know.

[Nic Branson]

Ditching whey helped mine. Even whey isolate bothers me. Been using Carnivore here when I use powder.

[Cody Hahn]

Hey Joshua,

 

When you say that going gluten-free has done tremendously good things for you as well as for some of the professors that you mentioned, what is the type and source of gluten that you were consuming? Now, I realize that some people may have problems with gluten no matter what, and if so they probably shouldn't consume it unless it is all they have at the moment, but I want to present an idea here that you may or may not be familiar with.

 

The problem with much (well really almost all) of today's wheat and the gluten that goes with it is that it is so mutated and so far removed from the wheat and grains that our ancestors would have eaten. Take the modern dwarf wheat, that stuff was only developed in the 1960's and it has 2 types of gluten that do not sit well with a lot of people. On top of that since the plant does not have a good root system it does not collect nearly as many minerals from the soil (and the soil is largely depleted at that).

 

I think it would be very interesting to see how a number of people did on wheat and gluten that is from the more ancient sources and prepared in an ancient way. Instead of the modern dwarf wheat, what if we consumed the original spelt and kamut (old varieties of wheat)? The gluten in these sources of wheat might be markedly different. On top of that, why not prepare the wheat in the old way?; a fully fermented and developed sourdough. Sourdough has been shown to not destroy gluten, as some believed in the past, but develop it in such a way that it is believed to be more readily and healthily digested by humans. Besides this the enzymes and bacteria that come develop as a result of fermenting the grains might do wonders in a human's digestive system. So rather than all of the grains fermenting in one's gut, the fermenting is already done in the dough and the bread is completely ready for digestion and absorption.

 

Any thoughts? There's a lot on this subject and you are probably already aware of it but I thought I would throw it out there anyway. Regardless of people's conceptions and opinions, I am realizing more and more that we need to get back to eating the older foods, grown in a healthy, safe, rich environment and soil, and prepared in the most healthy manner for human consumption; which is usually  a much older method and much different than the way it is prepared now.