Is Chocolate Milk Good For You?

After a hard workout, chocolate milk can provide you with the fluid and nutrients needed to support recovery.

What chocolate milk has going for it is that its composition is naturally in line with the fluid, macro and micronutrients needed to support exercise recovery. For a 2017 review published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers concluded that chocolate milk seems to be a good candidate to aid recovery because it contains nutrients needed for replenishment and healing.

Athletes who drank chocolate milk took longer to reach exhaustion, leading researchers to conclude that the beverage is an effective recovery aid between two fatiguing bouts of exercise. 

A more recent study looked at chocolate milk vs water as recovery aids following all-out bouts of high-intensity endurance climbing. When consumed chocolate milk, men could improve their performance in terms of distance climbed and duration of the workout. Muscle soreness scores were also lower three days after exercise for the chocolate milk drinkers. 

Chocolate milk is available in the forms of whole (3.5% fat by weight), 2%, 1%, and skim. While chocolate milk provides some key nutrients such as fat, carbohydrate, protein, calcium, the B vitamin riboflavin, potassium, vitamins A and D, it also delivers a third of the recommended maximum daily intake of added sugar for women, based on guidelines from the American Heart Association.

Although chocolate milk can support exercise recovery and it is relatively available and affordable, it is not the only choice—and it is also not an option at all for certain people, including those with a milk allergy or sensitivity, people with lactose intolerance and vegans. It is also not the only source of recovery nutrients.

If dairy-based chocolate milk is not a good option for you for whatever reason, or you simply choose not to drink it, there are plenty of other alternatives. One is chocolate plant milk made from split peas. Like dairy-based chocolate milk, chocolate pea milk provides 8 grams of protein per cup and is also a good source of leucine.

If you reach for chocolate milk occasionally as a treat, it may provide more nutrients than other sweet option it displaces, such as ice cream or a brownie.