Sports beverages

I've always had an intuitive sense that chocolate milk was good for you--certainly it is good for morale, and that has to have an impact on your physical state, right? People were looking at it years ago to see if it was better than recovery drinks like Gatorade.

A newer study bears that out. Alas, there are caveats.

Even though this analysis pooled data from several smaller studies to get more robust results, it still included less than 150 people. Results from running or cycling exercise tests also might not reflect how chocolate milk would impact recovery from other sports.

"Any food that provides carbohydrate, protein, fluid and electrolytes and is well-tolerated will help promote recovery," Spaccarotella said by email. "In addition to chocolate milk, other popular choices are cereal with milk, smoothies, sandwiches or soup. A small meal will even work, if the athlete is feeling hungry."

I'll chance it. Although they probably weren't studying people with my level of inactivity.

And given a choice between coffee and cocoa on a cold day, I'll go with cocoa.

You can probably see a pattern here.