Coca Cola Financed Study Finds Beneficial Effect of Carbohydrate Supplementation on Physical and Mental Performance

This certainly is one of the examples, where science is somewhat similar to politics: If the defense industry finances the campaign of a politic, will he to turn his back on them by reducing the expenditure on arms, will he?

No? So, you better take it with a grain of skepticism that Watson et al. (Watson. 2010) found that a 3% or 6% carbohydrate solution increased time to exhaustion and response time as measured by / after a series of standardized fitness tests in 10 helthy males (mean±SD age 25±3 years; height 1.75±0.06 m; mass 75.9±6.4 kg; VO_2max 54.2±5.0 ml/kg/min):

Time to exhaustion in the MSFT was 9.9±2.0 min, 10.2±2.0 min, 10.9±1.9 min and 11.2±1.8 min in the no fluid, water, 3% and 6% CHO trials, respectively (p=0.004). Core temperature reached 38.9±0.4°C during the no fluid trial, 38.5±0.4°C in the water trial and 38.6±0.3°C at the end of the CHO trials (p=0.011). There was no change in response times to a visual search task in the no fluid and water trials, but CHO ingestion improved response times after exercise (3% CHO, p=0.036; 6% CHO, p=0.041).

The results are far from earth shattering, but, interestingly, they are comparable to much higher doses of carbohydrate supplementation; an observation the scientists make, as well, without, however, discarding the usefulness of the product, Powerade, in relation to which the study was carried out - "Honi soit qui mal y pense".