How To Get The Best Out Of Milk's High Protein Content

Milk’s high protein content can be a great boon, if you’re one of the people who tolerates casein well.  And its mixture of fats, sugars and proteins can make milk the ideal post-workout drink. 

In fact, post-workout is the ideal time to use milk.  If you’ve had an intense training session, the extra calories and the high glycaemic load are exactly what you need to replace used glycogen stores.  Meanwhile high protein intake post-workout can help prevent catabolysis, a process whereby the body scavenges protein cells from muscle tissue for fuel after its easy-to-reach reserves have been exhausted.  Milk stacks up against these requirements pretty well.

Remember, milk’s supposed to be a complete diet for fast-growing calves.  So it needs to contain everything they need for the first few months of life – not just fats, sugars and protein, but micronutrients as well.  Milk has great vitamin A and D content, and research strongly indicates that it helps with bone health; despite warnings about excess protein leeching calcium from the bones, children who avoided milk suffer more fractures than children who use milk products regularly. 

The big ace for milk over synthetic sports drinks and supplements is that it has a high concentration of trace mineral salts.  These are usually used as salts in the cell metabolism and they’re lost when you sweat as well as being destroyed or excreted through the natural course of life.  While we’re used to warnings about eating too much salt, if you take on fluids without salt after hard training, your body won’t be salty enough to hang on to the fluids.  Instead of going where it should, into the cells, the water you drink will bloat you but, paradoxically, it will be ‘too watery’ to hydrate you!  

Most of us aren’t getting enough of these types of nutrients, but milk can be an excellent source of them.

Whether you’re trying to lose weight or gain it, milk can be a great aid to your progress.  Try drinking milk immediately after your workout or with breakfast or lunch, but don’t drink large amounts of milk continuously throughout the day: it’s bad for your blood glucose levels, and bad for you!