Milk, Not Soy, to Grow Muscles

You work hard to look like Vin Diesel and you keep on displaying an Adrien Brody look?

In this case, you should not miss your milk cups.

A new research addressed to bodybuilders signals that milk protein is much better than soy at growing muscles.

The study made by a team from McMaster University's Department of Kinesiology drew a comparison between muscle mass gained by young men after having a heavy weight workout followed by similar protein intakes of either skim milk or soy drink. "Our thinking going into the study was that milk would be better than soy. We suspected this would be the case because of work done by French researchers. However, we were really impressed by how much greater the gains in muscle protein with milk were," said lead researcher Sarah Wilkinson, a graduate student in the department of kinesiology.

The research points out that if men take just skim milk (two cups) after each exercising session, they can put on around twice as much muscle mass in a 10 weeks period than if they consume the same quantity of soy protein. "This is an interesting finding, since soy and milk proteins are considered to be complete proteins that are basically equivalent from a nutritional standpoint," explained co-researcher Stuart Phillips, associate professor of kinesiology. "Our findings clearly show that milk proteins are a superior source of protein in producing muscle mass gains in response to weightlifting."

The chemical analysis of milk and soy proteins did not show great differences, that's why the precise reason for this difference is still unknown. The puzzle could be solved by the two main types of milk proteins, whey and casein, which could display intrinsic properties favoring muscle growth. "The plan at this point is to follow this up with a long-term study to see if the findings from this short-term study can be replicated," said Phillips.