Milk helps in weighty matters

Drinking milk after heavy weightlifting could help burn more fat, a new Canadian study shows. Milk may be best known for its calcium content in supporting bone health but the latest research shows how it promotes body fat loss and has the ability to aid in muscle growth. Researchers at McMaster University in Ontario took 56 men aged between 18 to 30 years and divided them into three groups. They were put through a rigorous, five-day-per-week weightlifting programme over a 12-week period. Following their workouts, study participants drank either two cups of skim milk, a soy beverage with equivalent amounts of protein and energy or a carbohydrate beverage with an equivalent amount of energy, which was roughly the same as drinking 600 to 700 ml of a typical sports drink. When the study concluded, researchers found that the milk-drinking group had lost nearly twice the amount of fat that the carbohydrate beverage group lost. The study published in the latest issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that those drinking soy lost no fat. At the same time, the gain in muscle was much greater among the milk drinkers than either the soy or carbohydrate beverage study participants. "The loss of fat mass, while expected, was much larger than we thought it would be," said Stuart Phillips, an associate professor at McMaster University. "I think the practical implications of these results are obvious: if you want to gain muscle and lose fat as a result of working out, drink milk."