This article looks at the effect of colour in sports drinks
What’s the deal?
Sports drinks are packed full of carbohydrates and come in a variety of flavours. Research has shown that as well as ingestion, a quick mouth rinse (followed by spitting out) with these drinks can be beneficial to running performance, but how much does the colour matter?
What did they do?
10 participants completed 3 trials of treadmill running at a self-selected pace, including a warm up and 30 minutes of hard running. Trial one was for familiarisation, whereas trials two and three included repeated 5 second mouth rinses with either a pink drink or a clear drink (control) during exercise.
What happened?
8 out of 10 participants ran further with the pink mouth rinse compared to the clear mouth rinse and on average there was a 4.4% improvement in performance. This is especially impressive because these drinks were identical except for colour!
What can you tell me about the people?
Participants were aged 30 years on average and regularly exercised at least three times per week. Six were male and 4 were female.
What else should I know?
The pink and clear drinks in this study both contained 0.12 grams of the artificial sweetener sucralose, made up in water. For the pink drink, two drops of food colouring were added. The researchers lied to participants and made them think they were mouth rinsing with different brands of carbohydrate sports drinks, but in reality neither drink had any caloric benefit!
What will I do differently?
I love a bit of deception in scientific studies! This is an impressive finding and really highlights the power of the brain. We believe that artificial food colours are sweeter and therefore better for sporting performance, so our bodies make it true. From now on, I’ll select only the brightest of energy drinks!
Acknowledgements
This research was published in May 2021 by DR Brown and colleagues from Loughborough College, UK, and the University of Westminster, UK.
This article highlights our personal take on their research, but there is so much more information available! Check it out here and see what you think!
Abstract Athlete 