Do sports drinks and energy bars make you a better athlete? (CBC Marketplace)

tonight on Marketplace on the eve of the Winter Olympics we're asking can Sports Products make us go farther run faster become fitter we're holding our own trials asking some of Canada's greatest Olympians what works for them I've always resorted back to real food and revealing who needs him who doesn't and who just might be getting more than they bargained for yeah that's gross when you're working hard to get into better shape it's awfully tempting to look for a boost a sports drink a protein bar or maybe a pair of high-tech running shoes but do any of these things really make us reach farther go faster become fitter frenchers we're going to run race and cyclist Rio through a series of challenges first out of the blocks sports drinks at this gym there's no question people have had a taste of them have you ever used sports drinks of course yeah absolutely and they're claims how much have you heard about the benefits of drinking these things it hydrates you I've heard like it does give you a good little energy boost something about electrolytes I don't know she may not be certain about the benefits but there's no doubt about the bottom line we goes on about four hundred and fifty million dollars worth of sports drinks a year you fuel you train you push sales driven in part by the drumbeat of brands such as Gatorade the top seller in Canada Gatorade prime energy to start strong and its most important pitchman Sidney Crosby sure he may need them but do we that's our first test all right so what I'd like you guys to do is ten minutes nice and easy typical warmup absolutely sports drinks have their place but ultimately we want to be performing better at the same time as we're trying to get healthier Greg Wells is a sports scientist and high performance training who's worked with Olympic athletes today though he's working with people more like you and me five recreational runners we've recruited to assess the impact of sports drinks so what we're going to do today is we're going to ask you to go do a little typical workout 45 minutes long we want to know if they can benefit from a sports drink the companies say their products replace the electrolytes lost in sweat and the sugars our muscles burn working out come on over here have a seat so to find out if these runners need to refuel Gregg is testing their blood before and after a 45-minute run we're going to look at how much sugars in your blood we're also going to look at all the electrolytes like sodium potassium chloride you'll measure exactly what they lose feeling right oh yeah all right everyone have a great run ready and go they've got 24 laps to go so we'll catch up with them later meanwhile we're lining up the test for the next sports product that promises to help make you fitter protein bars their ads promote protein for muscle recovery but are you biting off more than you can use you're stronger than you think Canadians are holding up their share of global sales spending nearly 100 million dollars a year fuelling on protein bars and the people of the gym say they're a real winner usually in conda's a really quick fix when I have not honest time to prepare meals during the day this athlete learned the benefits of protein years ago and reap the rewards Clara Hughes is one of the greatest Olympians of all time winning multiple medals in both the summer and winter games the only athlete male or female to do that today she and her husband are riding in Tucson Arizona though Clara is retired now don't think she's ridden her last race they're putting in six hours a day preparing for a 12,000 kilometer charity ride across Canada hey Tom yeah see you welcome to my temporary kitchen the motel kitchen ain't much but Clara isn't cutting corners when it comes to what she needs trying to make something edible for the bike rides I'm doing here your weddings what six hours a day right yeah what do you make that'll get you through six hours a day it's like a car needs gasoline my body needs energy and form of carbohydrates in the form of calories to keep going and you know some of the rides that I'm doing right now are burning up to 4,000 calories in a ride 4,000 calories a day twice as much as the average person but even then klaris is figuring out what to eat took a long time and a physical toll yeah as a young athlete I remember the first pro team I was on and we added nutrition sponsor and with all these drink mixes and recovery mixes and vitamins and I went from there to really believing that all these things would be like okay I can control what I'm eating and it's going to directly affect my performance and make me faster and then I started just eating that and developed a pretty major eating disorder in that sport and thinking that I'll just drink these powder mixes for the rest of my life and that will be what life is and a year and a half later I cracked completely that's the hard-earned wisdom of a longtime elite athlete but what do a verge people know about what they're getting when it comes to protein bars we talk to nutritionists and crunch the numbers on two popular brands have a little quiz for you want to play ok ok that's a power bar pretty well-known brand right it's got 12 grams of protein right so does that piece of chicken right there right but here's the game what makes them different the amount of fat in it sugar bingo time to start adding so how many grams of fat would you add to the chicken to make it the equivalent of the power bar there's 14 grams of fat in the power bar or just over 2 Pat's of butter and what about the sugar oh look at this delicious meal oh yeah keep going 5 teaspoons I have no idea now that you know that what do you think of eating a bar like that I'd probably prefer to eat the one piece of chicken since it's all protein we break out the other protein bar in our challenge the big colossal check that out 33 grams of protein same amount as this tuna which has only 140 calories now what else do you think is in there but then you add 3 Pat's of butter and 6 and a half teaspoons of sugar oh wow so you just undid your workout probably have to go with just the tunic what do you think of these products for the average Canadian working out this has 410 calories that's a lot that's that's a meal for a normal person you know if people have no idea how much they eat and if you ate this and then you're like well but then I'm going to go for lunch and I'm going to have this and that that's probably not a good idea the people who make these bars say the protein and sugar provides energy for athletes in a convenient way and people can make their own choice depending on their needs Clara Hughes made her choice a long time ago take me through this little recipe you got going well this is one of my many rice bar rice cake recipes and this one has dates these are fresh medjool dates I have almond meal for protein the dates for fast sugar and I have the rice for my car ride resources a bit of salt in the rice for the sodium I will have been losing by sweating on my bike ride it's no accident Clara never pitched protein products during her career and warns us to be wary of the marketing so much money is spent on advertising and you know athletes yeah it's part of their endorsement part of them making and living it that's doing what they do but I also think and what people don't know is that the reality is they're using all sorts of stuff and it might not be what they're endorsing so be careful what you're looking at and what you believe it might not be what it seems it's that here at the end of the day Clara Hughes stayed with one simple game plan I've always resorted back to real food and and I think maybe that's part of my longevity in sport I was at 23 years at the highest level in two different sports and I managed to always improve myself and change my nutrition and and in the end it was really real food that fueled me fuel for thought from someone who pushed farther went faster became fitter on the road to gold meantime our marketplace running team is still on track but will they need a sports drink and do high-performance shoes make you a better healthier runner Olympic champion Simon Whitfield steps up with his view to see if sports performance products pushes farther make us faster and fitter we're putting them through their paces our marketplace runners hit the track to see if the average Canadian really needs a sports drink after a workout 45 minutes and 24 laps later our group has reached the finish line for me I can already taste this the salt on my face right now so there's a chance that my electrolyte levels might be a bit lower time for sports scientist Greg wells to test them again what will their blood tests reveal what have they lost what do they need the electrolyte levels in the blood actually increased a tiny bit the glucose levels went up the sugar levels went up a little bit and they got a tiny bit dehydrated so our bodies are pretty good at fueling themselves in a typical workout maybe some water would have been great but the sports drinks just don't need them at this at that pace at that intensity and at that duration but wait in those slick commercials drinking water cells like the wrong move scoring the big goals easy if you make the right decisions water or fuel so how hard do you have to push yourself before you really need a sports drink to refuel for that answer we turn to an athlete just like the ones in the ads Liana Li has been a triathlete for seven years training twice a day every day aiming to be part of Team Canada at the next Olympic Games today though she's part of team marketplace Liana is going to show how hard you have to train till your body cries out for a sports drink for this test she'll simulate riding up a hill at 25 kilometres an hour at his lab at the University of Toronto Greg Wells will test the Anna's blood every 15 minutes how often have you given blood while riding tracking those electrolytes while this up-and-coming triathlete gets up to speed we tracked down the athlete she wants to emulate for me it was about frequency of running as I tried to run a little bit every day that kind of discipline made Simon Whitfield an Olympic champion he won the first ever Olympic triathlon in Sydney and added a silver in Beijing Simons come to appreciate the importance of a good pair of running shoes I ran frequently over distance and I and I really paid attention to building up to it that was the biggest thing for me running shoes have become a billion dollar industry in Canada the message and commercials like these cushioning is King now a specialty store such as the Running Room buying shoes involves more than just picking out a colour okay so the first thing I'm gonna get you do is take off your shoes for me here customers can get help figuring out the shoes that fit them best anyway I think those are the best fun really yeah the best ones we hear that shoes made for absorbing the impact during a run help protect our body we buy three popular brands each at least 150 bucks will they make us run better to find out we take our shoe collection to the Spalding national running Center at Harvard University in Boston one of only two facilities in North America dr. Davis hi dr. Irene Davis treats injured runners here but she's also an expert in the science of how we run the shoes of Ron Hill who won the Boston Marathon in 1970 where a pair of leather sir suede on the top and the leather sole perhaps people started to get some injuries and they thought well let's cushion them and let's control the foot and that's going to be good for the foot but I think that it's really I think we've got the thinking wrong quite a statement but dr. Davis says she can prove him we asked her to put the cushion shoes we bought to the test Keith an experienced recreational runner they sum up and tries them out for us I want you step up and you this is an instrumented treadmill it's got two force plates on it the center's specialized cameras and treadmill precisely measures the impact of every step and what keeps body is feeling when he runs you see how he's got those spikes in his ground reaction force her if Keith is like most runners who wear these kind of cushion shoes 89 percent of them land on their heel and they have that very distinct impact peak that spike is what we have found to be related she says that extra cushioning actually encourages us to land on our heels and that's not good for us what happens when you land with a lot of cushioning underneath your foot is that you tend to land harder so you can pound your heel and actually get these impacts that your body experiences without really feeling it in your feet we test all three pairs and all show that same pattern dr. Davis believes our feet are not designed to be wrapped in high-tech plastic and foam you take that foot you contain it in what I would call a coffin you go to go up the coffin because you're grabbing the heel so now that muscles don't have to work to control the heel in that direction you're putting some support under the arch so the arch muscles don't have to work quite as hard don't believe it just watch what happens when Keith performs the same test barefoot that's a pretty dramatic difference right now what school isn't it amazing it so see how nice and smooth there nope no impact case it's not counting on the shoes and he's not landing on his heel so for dr. Davis less is more the shoe companies say the features of their products are backed by research and that heel impact is only one factor in performance the Running Room adds they stand by the shoes they sell meantime dr. Davis isn't suggesting you toss your runners just yet my recommendation is that you go to a minimal shoe and you do the necessary preparation from foot strengthening and slowly adapting a way of thinking the industry seems to be coming around to this is the closest Nike has come to delivering a barefoot running experience going minimal - before you run out and buy a pair of those Simon Whitfield says slow and steady wins this race overtime and I'm talking three four five years I built up to being able to run as much as I wanted in whatever shoe I wanted but I'd certainly did not happen overnight up next we break the sports drink barrier and see how drink companies put their money where your kid's mouth is we're basically giving our kids a lot of sugar a lot of salt I actually think it's kind of scary and later why our story on retail return policies got some of you saying the customer isn't always right do sports performance products really make a difference so far the claims about protein bars and running shoes have failed to reach the podium as for sports drinks the recreational runners we tested showed no need for them at all but what about our intrepid triathlete how hard and how long does Leanna Li have to train before she needs one she's been going hard on the stationary bike for about 45 minutes and the Heat's on you're glowing look at you ok another test I'm actually really interested to see what your blood is doing at this point in time sports scientist Greg Wells has been testing her blood every 15 minutes what are you seeing in this one so her electrolytes you went down for a little while another there actually her salt levels are coming back up one thing that is dropping a lot is her sugar levels her blood glucose levels have now started to go down so this would be a point when she would benefit from starting to take some sports drinks so a hit from a sports drink could help restore the sugar she's burning but our elite athlete still doesn't need sodium or minerals how are you feeling right now we asked her to keep pushing but so far it seems you'd have to bust your butt a long time before needing to open a bottle what exactly are we going down in the most popular sports drinks any of you how much sugar is in one of these things you know what actually never really thought about it no you want to know how much there is yeah I definitely do there's a bowl of sugar and a teaspoon here's a bottle putting as many teaspoons as you think are in a bottle of this stuff and I think I'd go with 5 why'd you go to 6 should I go to 7 I think you should are you serious keep going and do more than this a teaspoons of sugar so I'm just gonna lean 8 teaspoon any idea the length of title would take to burn that off probably helping out our Nayla yeah yeah that's gross yeah like after you work out do you go eat a cookie well maybe you do but you shouldn't because you're defeating the purpose the drink makers say the calorie count is on the label and sugar is the preferred source of energy to help athletes recover so which athletes are they targeting in commercials like these and when you add fuel to that fire you burn a path to glory few will better perform better at this hockey arena just outside Toronto we get a clue kids love to imitate their hockey heroes in every way while these Gatorade bottles are filled with water watch what happens when the game ends and they get to the concession stand I'm drinking Gatorade cuz I like the color red the color of the winning drink is as bold as the message the company promotes it makes you more energy when you're playing hockey or just good before going faster every time we come to the rink he gets model that see he's addicted to it he loves it sure keeps me nah he hydrated every once a while for him not off not always game winning goal today so you deserved it we see a lot of young kids drinking these sports drinks now at different events sporting events not teenagers or young kids what do you make of that we're basically giving our kids a lot of sugar a lot of salt and so we need to be very very careful of that and I actually think it's kind of scary why because we have an obesity epidemic in our country we know that children don't actually sweat as much as adults do so I actually don't think that children should be using sports drinks during back to their typical kids activities Grigg says only about 2% of Canadians exercise hard enough to get any benefit from sports drinks this triathlete has been peddling full-tilt for more than an hour it's time for her to cool down and for us to get the final results okay so her electrolytes are basically identical there's been almost no change from the beginning so she's been going for an hour more and sweated a lot yeah how long before we'd see a real crash in her electrolytes by about two hours so a sports drink for electrolytes but only after two hours riding up a hill at 25 kilometres an hour now that's an elite athlete what about the average person out there watching this show the most important thing for us to take in while we're exercising is water stay hydrated if you're exercising for longer than 90 minutes if you're exercising in the heat if you're sweating a lot if you're going really really hard then absolutely look for something with electrolytes and sugars in it but otherwise stick to water it's big you itch that's for you a big thank you my pleasure our marketplace trials are over for most reaching farther going faster getting fitter takes endurance energy and effort not from a store shelf from within us you

Channel: CBC News

Views: 592,103

Rating: 4.8285213 out of 5

Keywords: Canadian Broadcasting Corportation (TV network) CBC News Network CBC News.ca Farther, Faster, Fitter? Sports Sports Drink (Beverage) running shoes

Id: uGgC5lvuPLY

Length: 20min 29sec (1229 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 11 2015