Fast Food as good as Supplements? Not at all.
A recently published Masters Thesis has been making the rounds and picking up a bit of steam lately, and for good reason; It provides a contrarian view of post workout supplementation, and tells us that dietary supplements are no better than fast food for post-workout recovery. But not really. You knew that pounding some Krusty Burgers wouldn’t give you the same results as pounding a 3Fu3l, didn’t you? So why is this study getting so much attention?
The study is somewhat rebelious, in that it’s an academic endorsement of eating a double cheesburger after a workout instead of a protein shake. But again, not really. Because the researchers definition of “proper supplementation” and even “fast food” are severely lacking.
Out of the four meals given, two of sports supplements (ha ha) and two of McGarbage, neither delivered adequate levels of protein. When we think about a valid study that would compare the recovery and performance aspects of supplements versus fast food, we’d probably be thinking about a whey protein shake (aka the most popular form of post-training beverage), and we’d probably compare it to a large burger or two (the amount of meat a normal human being would eat after a workout, plus fries and a coke).
But that’s not what this study looked at. Here’s the “sports supplement” arm of the trial:
We’re not trying to say anything bad about other sports supplement companies, but we would like to note that the supplements used in this study are a bit random, to the point of being nonsensical. At no single point do we achieve a bolus dose of protein or amino acids (20g of whey or 3g of Leucine). Now let’s take a look at the fast food arm of the trial:
Ok, so the comparison here is obviously absurd, as are the parameters. They used muscle glycogen as the recovery parameter, even though much, much, more goes into proper recovery ( such as activation of mTOR, pAMPK, FOX01, and a lot of other cool acronyms that we know). They also used a time point where literally (*as meant by the old definition “actually, or in reality”) any matched macronutrient combination would produce the same result.
As always, the proof of the pudding is in the tasting. Try hitting 3-4 hard workouts in a single day, and eat fast food between them. Then try the same schedule, but have a 3Fu3l instead of the fast food. Let us know which one works better – because yes, we’re biased, but we’re also right. This study was a joke.
