Brillian, lets all load up on bovine growth hormones.

Sounds like an advertising pitch to me .........

Always returns to nature! what about banana, not keen on choc milk :-(

allways enjoyed a cold glass of milk after exercise

milk err. ian rush drinks it and he says if you dont drink milk when you grow up you'll only be good enough to play for acrington stanley! "acrington stanley who are they"

exactly!!!!!!!! lol

errr, organic millk then?

CustomReign, I don't know what country you live in but in the UK bovine growth promoters are banned!

Milk is BABY FOOD, adult humans have only been able to drink it at all for a few thousand years, and most people on the planet still can't digest it. It's a relatively unnatural food for humans, associated with the switch to agriculture 5-10,000 years ago. Perhaps not surprisingly then, a diet high in dairy products is linked to increased risks of a number of common cancers - no mention of that in the article! STUART PHILLIPS' RESEARCH IS PARTIALLY FUNDED BY THE US NATIONAL DAIRY COUNCIL AND THE DAIRY FARMER’S OF CANADA - see http://neurorestorativegroup.com/profiles-phillips.html Shame on Cycling Plus for publishing such a blatantly biased article on such an important dietary topic. I wonder what the long term health effects will be for people who are consuming vast quantities of powdered milk-based recovery drinks on a daily basis.. Personally the taste of the stuff makes me gag. Despite the dig at soya milk in the article (to keep Dr. Phillip's funders happy no doubt..) chocolate soya milk is an excellent recovery drink with an ideal balance of carbs and protein (the only missing essential amino acid in soya is contained in nuts and grains in large quantities, so if you are easting healthily you should have plenty of that anyway). I very much hope Cycling Plus aren't being paid by anyone to write this stuff. If they aren't, there is no excuse for such a piece of unintentional propaganda for major industrial vested interests...

Pretty much whenever we get an article on nutrition here it reads like unfiltered advertising for the manufacturer of said products.

This hardly fgives a good impression when reading supposedly neutral reviews of cycling kit.

Uzbek, can you point us to all the ads on BikeRadar for the dairy industry? Any dairy industry will do.

One thing the article overlooked, which is weird, is calcium and bone-density loss. Cycling, especially road cycling, is strongly linked to bone density loss, ie osteoperosis or brittle bones. We sweat the stuff out of us, we don't take it back on in our fluids or energy bars, and we do a low-impact endurance exercise which is almost designed to weaken bones in itself. And as the article idenfities and any fule no, dairy is generally high in calcium. Not the only source of course, plenty of supplements are available.

Calcium loss generally gets overlooked in this sort of diet/fitness article, mainly because it's not likely to bother you for 30 years. But if it does, well you'll wish you'd done something about it now.

Milk doesn't cause cancer..!

It's quite obvious that research the world over proves that no one knows exactly what causes cancer - they clutching at straws saying you can't eat this, you can do that etc. If the scientists knew for sure what caused it then cancer would disappear over night.

Some nomadic tribes have been drinking milk, and eating high saturated fat foods (such as meat and not much else) for thousands of years with very little dietry problems. Don't believe all this new-wave caveman diet crap - how do we know that what they were eating was the right thing - we don't, and they almost certainly didn't, they just ate was easiest to get their hands on and weren't clever enough to do anything else. If people enjoy drinking it and stay slim (through a balanced diet and exercise) and happy then that's all that matters.

You might slate this article for being pro-milk, but you've just been convinced by the other side of the argument - who's to say which diet is right and which one is wrong, both sides have different opinons based on the same level of scientific research. People in france and italy eat loads of cheese and drink loads of milk and they live longer than people in the uk and the usa - why - because they are slimmer and happier/less stressed.

At least milk is real and not a powder or a pill as some people live by. If you have a intolerance to dairy then that's a personal problem, just like some people get hayfever. Above all of this remember that we are part of and from this planet and can and will eventually evolve to our environment.

I like my milk as fat as possible. I drink 3.25% because it's the highest available at the store but I used to drink 4.5% directly from the cow. That was tasty!

Full fat milk = misnomer. Just 4% fat. Any new food product with such a percentage would be classed as low fat.

(Peanut putter is 50% fat, get hysterical about that instead, if you need to.)

Next week, the truth behind pointless and misleading 'research' articles. They raise your blood pressure, cause you to make skewed choices in your diet, and ultimately lower your life expectancy as a result...

bull.

Oh, fart, milk comes from cows.

Choccy milk, the new power drink! I'm going to make one now!

tomj113 - what got me going was the very blatant bias of this article, I know there are two sides to the argument but the other side needed some airing. The worst thing about it is that it presents research that is funded by dairy producers as fact, without mentioning the vested interests involved. And while milk might be "real and not a powder or a pill", the milk that many cyclists are taking in very large quantities in the form of recovery drink mixtures is exactly that. There's no doubt that diet is one of the most important factors in the risk of various cancers, and while the jury may still be out on dairy products, there is quite a lot of evidence to suggest a link, e.g. with prostate cancer. As far as calcium and low bone density in cyclists is concerned, yes, you need to make sure you are getting sufficient calcium, but the main reason cyclists sometimes have bone density loss is because it's a non-load bearing activity, same reason astronauts get it. Just doing some walking, running, skating or hiking now and again is the most important factor in avoiding this problem as a cyclist.

MOOOOO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

milk anyone ??

"What he really said was that we should switch to low-fat products – margarine and low-fat milk."

Hmm, spread has to have between 80 and 90% fat to be classified as margerine. Hardly low fat is it?

neeb: No i agree on the bias nature of it too, we are constantly subjected to extreme views of both sides of the argument in most things such as diet and exercise instead of the more sensible middle ground. All information published in articles such as these should really cite where and whom the info is from (that's the main problem with the web in general) I agree with the vast amount of powdered food being used, also the problem with this is that people usually end up substituting real food altogether. With regard to low bone density problems mixing in walking/running etc will probably help just as much as diet if not more.

Fat..Fat..Fat...Fat...it is rather upsetting that people (and it seams researchers too) portray fat to us as a whole. There are different varieties of fat, and only some of them are seriously harmfull. Saturated fat is: clogs up your arteries, makes you uber fat and is very hard to burn, while unsaturated fat are welcome in a controled manner in our diet. They are digested much easier and used to make your body healthy and productive. They simplify the ideas to make them more 'understandable' to the general population. Personally, i think is a person gives a flying cow about this, he/she will be bothered to read the extra-scientific article, that will fully explain the reason behind such decisions. There is to much 'what to do' and not enough 'why to do it'.

ashipunku thank you for speaking some sense. My god what a load of tripe people believe about milk. "Bovine growth hormones"? (This ain't the USA) ... "Adult humans have only been able to drink it at all for a few thousand years"? (As in the same few thousand years during which average human life expectancy has gone up by as much as 500% in some places?)

The stuff is brilliant. The only trouble I have with it is that skimmed milk tastes awful. It was bad enough getting off full fat and on to semi skimmed and now I'm supposed to be guzzling skimmed? Eugh no thanks, I'd sooner drink emulsion paint and water.

Also, how is low fat milk "more portable" than other forms of milk, or in fact any liquid for that matter? It's not as if anyone's likely to be cycling around cursing the full fat milk they put in their feeding bottle for turning into butter - surely milk of any form is the last thing anybody wants to be drinking in the middle of a ride?

"Low fat milk is the perfect recovery drink – aren't cows clever... "

Shurely shome nonsense here? Yes, cows are "clever"--that's why milk naturally comes in a NON-'low fat' version, because they feed their calves with it. Check out what animals feed their young on--outside a few Islington ethnic skirt-wearers, it'll have quite a lot of fat in it.

"...the fat content of whole milk is more likely to lead to uncomfortable feelings of fullness (even for those who aren’t lactose intolerant)"

Since lactose isn't fat, this is completely irrelevant. You might as well say that downing a bottle of vodka is a bad idea EVEN for people without nut allergies.

"Soy drinks that try to mimic milk do nowhere near as well as milk because the protein is entirely different and the nutrients are simply thrown together to create a drink"

OK, looking at a carton of soya milk the ingredients are water, soya beans, stabiliser. What are the nutrients that have been "thrown together" exactly?

Jeez, I'm not vegan, and happen to think humans' creative approach to omnivory is a lot of what made us the super-adaptable beings we are today; but a bit more science and a bit less gushing (pardon the pun) wouldn't go amiss.

@neeb - Make sure you're wearing your tinfoil hat, so the aliens don't steal your thoughts! Conspiracy lies all around...

GUINESS gives you strength! Also looks as if it has a milk top!

The only true and healthy milk choice is raw milk – unless it is unpasteurised,

unhomogenised and free from growth hormones and chemicals beware! Organic milk

is still not the ideal, as it is pasteurised.

As an alternative try Goats milk, or Almond Milk.

As for Margarine, have a look at how they make that stuff, I'll stick with butter thank you very much!

"Don't believe the anti-dairy hype"

Oh dear me :-( The hype has come from the huge dairy industry (National Dairy Council FKA the Milk Marketing Board) while conveniently ignoring some awkward truths about cow's milk. Jeff, I think you're being unnecessarily defensive. To the non-believers this article reads like a Dairy Council press release, and it is disappointing that Bikeradar fails to discuss the counter arguments. Unfortunately this reflects poorly on Bikeradar and will undermine the accuracy and impartiality of every single nutrition article you publish.

Based on the information I've read I only have cow's milk in my coffee now (a philistine, yes I know). My wife and son are sensitive (not allergic) to the proteins in cow's milk so this subject has been investigated thoroughly. There has been a huge increase in consumption of goat, soya, rice and oat milks partly because people are learning about the downsides of dairy. It's not merely about animal welfare, although the dairy industry also won't want you to know that nearly 50% of all calves are shot after birth because there is no real market for the male calves.

The old chestnut about calcium in milk being good for bone health is incorrect. The opposite is the case. The proteins in milk acidify the digestive system which leads to leaching of calcium. Also the proteins are not easily digested in the human gut so it is *not* necessarily a good recovery drink.

Cows are milked when they have given birth and/or are pregnant so are swimming with female hormones, making a mockery of the noise over phytoestrogens in soya milk. Are you listening, Rob Hayles?

Antibiotics are used routinely. Mastitis is a *big* problem because the cows are bred for maximum output (£££). The pus weeping from sore, cracked and painful udders goes into the milk. Just google for “somatic cell count”. With organic cows the use of a/bs must justified (other methods to be tried first), recorded and an increased withdrawal period on organic animals - milk buyers test for a/b residue, any that fails will not be used in organic milk. So if you're going to drink the stuff you can at least reduce your intake of pus and anitibiotics (as well as pesticides etc) by buying organic milk.

www.vegansociety.com/References/Animals/Dairy-Production.aspx

www.milksucks.com

www.milkmyths.org.uk

Milk is not a cycling super-drink and, based on my impression this article, Bikeradar is not a nutrition super-site. I'll go elsewhere for intelligent information on this subject.

I'm lactose intolerant and I drink heaps of milk... it's called "lactose free" milk! The plain low-fat stuff on cereal, and chocolate-milk after exercise.

Lactose is simply a long branch-chain sugar; after the age of 4, many of us stop producing the lactase enzyme needed to breakdown lactose, so we begin to belch or fart or feel uncomfortable on regular milk. Adding lactase to milk allows adults to enjoy the benefits of milk without the adult side-effects...

I tried soy at first, but it makes me lethargic - it's a cheap waste product promoted to us as healthy, but do some pro-soy and anti-soy research yourself, and be very scientific about verifying what it does to your own body...

... oh, i use a few other milks too...

best is oat milk - lowers cholesterol, and provides energy and a feeling of fullness for longer, but also

almond - often too sweet

rice - comes in many varieties

and of course u can mix them to circumstances. these non-milk milks are more easily digested, and therefore better prior to training.

Milk Marketing Board on the one hand, Extremist Foodies on the other.

What's a bloke to do???