A bowl of whole-grain cereal is as good as a sports drink for recovery after exercise. Research has shown that the readily available and relatively inexpensive breakfast food is as effective as popular, carbohydrate-based “sports drinks.”

Exercise physiologist Lynne Kammer, from The University of Texas at Austin, led a group of researchers who investigated the post-exercise physiological effects of the foods. Kammer and her team studied 12 trained cyclists, 8 male and 4 female. In contrast to many sports nutrition studies, however, the exercise protocol was designed to reflect a typical exercise session. After a warm-up period, the subjects cycled for two hours at a comfortable work rate, rather than the more frequently seen test-to-exhaustion

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