Is Drinking Milk Or Eating Beef Better For Recovery After Exercise?

Picture by Steve p2008 from Flickr

After your workout, is drinking milk better or eating beef better for recovery? Make a quick guess before you read on.

That was the basic question the authors wanted to find out. The impact of beef and milk as a protein source as a post workout meal.

Here's what made this study unique and interesting.The researchers injected a cow with amino acids specially labelled with a rare isotope of carbon. After that they milked the cow and had it slaughtered to produce meat. The researchers then used the specially labelled milk and meat to feed the subjects in their trial.

This allowed the researchers to track where the protein went through muscle biopsies after the subjects did a strength training session.

The subjects consume 30 grams of protein from either 350 ml of skim milk or 158 grams of ground beef. Rate of protein synthesis (how quickly your body is building new muscle) were as follows.

Picture from Am J of Clinical Nutrition

Milk clearly has the edge two hours after working out. However, after five hours, the rates of protein synthesis were similar.

Other than using the same cow for both milk and beef, this study differs from previous studies as soy protein or whey powder is commonly used in other studies.

The researchers suggested that there may be larger differences between milk and meat if the amount of protein consumed were smaller. 

Personally I would like to know if other kinds of protein such as eggs, chicken or other vegetable proteins will produce different results.

References

Burd NA, Hamer HM et al (2013). Substiatial Differences Between Organ And Muscle Specific Tracer Incorporation Rates In A Lactating Dairy Cow. Plos One. DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0068109.

Burd NA, Gorissen SH et al (2015). Differences In Postprandial Protein Handling After Beef Compared With Milk Ingestion During Postexercise Recovery: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Am J Clin Nutr. 102(4) 828-836. DOI: 10.3945/ajcn.114.103184.

Protein Before Bed Builds Muscle

Night time snack before zzzzz

You can't simply build muscle eating lots of protein. To build muscle you need a combination of resistance training and protein. Recent studies show that the most effective way to trigger muscle growth is to spread your protein intake in several doses of 20-25 grams throughout the day.

A group of researchers have previously demonstrated that if you consume protein right before sleeping it can increase the rate protein synthesis (the process of making protein) by 22 percent during overnight recovery from exercise.

This same group of researchers now wanted to know if consuming protein before bed would increase the muscle adaptive response to weight training.

They did a 12 week double blinded study on a bunch of volunteers who weight trained three times a week. The subjects drank either a protein drink or placebo before bed. The protein drink contained 27.5 grams of protein and 15 grams of carbs.

The results showed that the group that had the protein drink had significantly greater improvements in muscle strength, muscle size and even muscle fiber size (done by muscle biopsy).

The subjects were already consuming diets that were fairly high in protein (1.3 grams/kg) and they also had a protein snack (10 grams of protein) after each workout.

How should you snack up on your pre bedtime meal? A cup of milk has about eight grams of protein, and if you had some toast and peanut butter that will probably do the trick.

Don't forget to do strength train too.

Reference

Snijders T, Res PT et al (2015). Proten Ingestion Before Sleep Increases Muscle Mass And Strength Gains During Prolonged Exercise Training In Healthy Young Men. J Nutri. 145(6): 1178-1184. DOI: 10.3945/jn.114.208371.