Nutrition Groups, Part Three: Recovery Things

On this, the third leg of our sport food journey, we come to the Recovery section.  In whatever form you find it, recovery food has one primary purpose: to prepare you, after you have exercised, to exercise again.  You may be training for an event; you might have just finished a race.  In any case, you have burned calories, damaged muscle fibers, drawn forth and consumed resources from the reserves of your body.  By eating or drinking recovery food (the research and, certainly, the marketing sector will tell us), you make yourself ready to do it all over again later in the day or later in the week.

The Recovery Bar
Recovery food will come in two main forms.  First is the Recovery Bar.  Recovery bars look like any other energy bar from a distance, but the ingredients are a little different.  There will be a lot more protein in a recovery bar, and the amount is usually printed prominently on the front of the package.  Protein might be added as whey or soy protein, or as protein derived from nuts or vegetables (like peas).  Usually, there will also be a lot of carbohydrates in the bar.  Sometimes the carbs are added with the protein ingredients (nut butters contain a fair amount of both carbs and protein), and sometimes the carbs are added separately.  Quite often, some of the carbohydrate will be sugar added to make the bar more palatable.

The Recovery Drink
Recovery Drinks and Mixes share a lot of similarities with recovery bars.  They, too, include protein and carbohydrate.  In the drinks, there is often some emphasis on electrolyte replacement, as well.  The nutrition label may show not just sodium, but potassium, magnesium, calcium, etc.  In my experience, the drinks are very likely to include an amino acid profile (which is all the glutamine, carnosine, leucine, tyrosine, etc. that shows up at the bottom of the nutrition label).

Protein included
If you read the last blog post, you'll note that protein shows up in recovery food for the same reason that it sometimes appears in endurance sports drinks.  By providing your body with a source of protein (or, in some cases, with ready amino acids), you are supposed to prevent your muscles from being cannibalized for energy replacement, and you are supposed to speed up the repair of damaged muscle fibers.  For devoted endurance athletes or casual fitness folks, the reasoning goes, you'll have more energy and feel less sore each time you exercise if you have used one of these recovery products soon after the last time you exercised.

The Time Limit
When you read the directions for the drink mix or recovery bar of your choice, there is almost always some mention of The Time Limit.  The limit might be half an hour, or forty-five minutes, or the directions may simply specify, "consume immediately".  Most companies and quoted research will agree that, after exercising, the sooner you drink or eat something, the better.  After the time limit, your body won't do the whole digest-and-repair thing as efficiently.


Some recognizable names in the Recovery Food section:

• Chocolate milk, in all its glory
• Endurox R4 drink mix and Accel Recover Bar by Pacific Health Labs
• First Endurance Ultragen drink mix
• Gu Recovery Brew
• Hammer Recoverite drink mix and recovery bars (including vegan bars)
• Osmo Nutrition Recovery drink mixes
• PowerBar Recover drink mix and protein bars

 Thank you for reading. As always, if you have questions or comments, feel free to email them to info@speedyreedy.com, or leave them in the comments section below!