“Fast Food or Vitamins After a Workout? It’s a Tossup, Study Says.”
“Need to Recover After a Workout? Eat a Cheeseburger.”
“Burgers and Fries Might Actually Be Healthy for Your Muscles.”
They’re all based on a small study in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism, which involved neither vitamins nor cheeseburgers.
Researchers at the University of Montana set out to study a real problem: how to replenish your body’s supply of glycogen, the storage form of carbohydrate, after a long run, ride, or hike.
Our bodies use a mix of fat and glycogen for energy, and most of us could go days without running out of fat. But glycogen is more precious. You have about 500 grams in your muscles and 100 grams in your liver, along with a tiny amount of glucose in your blood. That’s about 2,400 calories’ worth of energy, and it can be drained during long, exhausting exercise. (Speaking of exhausting exercise, check out 10 Exercises That Burn More Calories Than Running.)
Now, if you’ve ever seen a Gatorade commercial, or stepped inside a GNC, or seen the ads in a magazine like Men’s Health or Runner’s World, you know that a lot of companies create and market a lot of products designed to facilitate this process.
That’s where the study started: Their 11 subjects, all recreational athletes, fasted for 12 hours, then pedaled bikes for 90 minutes, with the goal of using up about 75 percent of their glycogen stores.
They were then given two meals in the next two hours. Some got a mix of commercial sports-nutrition products. Others got fast food from McDonald’s. They ended up with equal calories and the same mix of macronutrients—carbs (about 70 percent of total calories), fat, and protein. (See box.)
The study’s headline finding was that fast food facilitated glycogen recovery just as well as sports supplements. The subjects all performed equally well on a 20k (12.4 mile) cycling time trial four hours after they finished the first exercise bout, and two hours after eating the second meal.
The big lesson, says Brent Ruby, PhD, one of the study’s authors, is that “macronutrients are macronutrients.” Your body doesn’t know the difference between fast-acting carbs in soda, pancakes, or a hamburger bun vs. fast-acting carbs in Gatorade or a Clif Bar. Hungry muscles soak them right up.
“The same results would be likely if you provided food items from Whole Foods or any farmer’s market,” he told us in an email. “What we hope to get across is that recovery nutrition need not be overly complicated, and can include many diverse and unexpected macronutrient choices.”
Pretty straightforward, right? If you’re an endurance athlete, or an outdoorsman like Ruby, and you’re regularly depleting your glycogen stores, it’s useful to know you have a lot of ways to refuel. Sports drinks and bars work fine, but so does anything that’s relatively high in carbs and low in protein, fat, and fiber, which would slow down digestion.
But that’s not how the study has been covered in the media.
Consider this paragraph from the Washington Post:
“[The study] casts doubt on a multi-billion-dollar industry of sports supplements. Imagine Michael Jordan chugging Cheez Whiz instead of Gatorade in commercials. Or cyclists chowing down on cheeseburgers during the Tour de France.”
Except Cheez Whiz is two-thirds fat, and doesn’t resemble any of the high-carb foods in the study.
Then there’s this, from vice.com:
“So the next time you come home sweat-drenched and cursing the name of the person who invented the kettlebell, take solace in the fact that eating a burger might be no worse for you than a pea protein shake.”
As Ruby told us, “These results are specific to glycogen recovery.” Protein synthesis following a strength workout is a completely different issue, which this study didn’t address.
But the biggest head-scratcher was the first sentence of a Thrillist article (with the headline “Science Insists Fast Food Is the Perfect Post-Workout Meal”), illustrated with a photo of a McDouble cheeseburger: “The overly eager cashier at GNC will probably tell you that MuscleFreak Alpha capsules are the best thing for you after a visit to the gym, but a new study suggests a Big Mac might be just as good.”
In one sentence, the writer managed to mischaracterize every aspect of the study. It was specific to long-distance endurance training, not a gym workout. It didn’t compare amino-acid pills to fast food. And it didn’t include a Big Mac, which all by itself has as much protein as the two meals combined, along with about three-quarters of the fat. It’s a terrible choice for anyone, in any context, unless you happen to stumble across one while on the brink of starvation.
The other implication from media reports is that supplements are more expensive than fast food, and that supplement companies are bigger and thus greedier than other food companies.
The cost is a wash. I added up the price of the supplements in the first meal and compared them to the breakfast items at McDonald’s. (I used average McDonald’s prices in Pennsylvania, where I live.) The supplements were $5.24, vs. $5.46 for the fast food.
The biggest difference is that the supplements are less convenient. You’d have to buy them in bigger quantities, and if you got them online, you’d probably have to factor in shipping costs.
As for the size factor, it’s true that Gatorade is a billion-dollar brand. It’s owned by PepsiCo, which has a market cap north of $140 billion. Other massive companies, like Coca-Cola and GlaxoSmithKline, sell sports-nutrition products. But it’s hard to cast McDonald’s, with a market cap over $90 billion, as the little guy.
They’re all huge, and when it comes to nutrition, they’re all in the same business: convincing you to buy and consume their products.
The new study shows one simple fact: When you need to refuel in a hurry after a long, draining workout, it doesn’t matter if the carbs come in a sleek plastic bottle or a cheap paper bag. You have lots of ways to get what you need, when you need it. And even more ways to get more than you need.
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