What are your thoughts on dairy-based sports aid recovery drinks?
Richard Arnold: In February on the UK TV channel BBC One, Cherry Healey put some of our favourite supermarket staples to the test, including milk. Cherry recruited a bunch of rugby players and fed half of them milk for their post-exercise workout, while the rest of the team downed the carbonated sports drink that the team had been using for a while.
The results were surprising, with the slightly reluctant milk drinkers coming out of the medical tests in much better shape than those on the sugary mixes. Milk, it seems, gave the players a training edge.
Rugby players are not alone. Athletes in the Olympics and Paralympics downed thousands of litres of milk during the course of the London 2012 Games, with many thanking milk for their ability to cope with some of the tight turnaround between heats and final appearances.
It seems that after years in the wilderness, milk is coming off the shelf to rehydrate a whole new generation of athletes who are more committed to training and recovery than their predecessors.
What are the drawbacks of milk over the fizzy alternatives?
Arnold: Well, chiefly, the need to keep it cold in the supply chain. While water and carbonated drinks taste better chilled, they don’t have to be chilled, and never are in transit. Milk, however, has a short shelf life of less than two weeks and needs to be kept at 8°C or below to guarantee freshness. In short, milk costs more to get to the consumer than its sugar-loaded opposition.
?Has your company considered adding natural ingredients to the dairy products you produce?
Arnold: We’re keen to explore all avenues within the milk sector. Calon Wen ran trials throughout 2011 producing milkshakes, using its non-homogenised organic milk to create natural shakes with fresh bananas, strawberries and chocolate.
Adding anything to milk, though, affects ‘keeping quality’, and it’s very much work in progress, as is sourcing the right ingredients year-round without simply adding generic flavouring from a UK bulk flavour producer (something most milkshake producers do).
?What trends can you see emerging in the dairy industry in terms of formulation and innovation?
Arnold: It’s clear that in the UK, the days of milk on Cornflakes and in coffee are gone, and that businesses need to be dynamic and produce a range of products to keep the dairy sector afloat.
While the UK is still pro-British milk, our butter brands have been swamped in recent years from those of New Zealand and the northern EU countries, and we need to ensure liquid milk doesn’t go down the same path.
Getting kids to reconnect with milk as a source of rehydration is key to this, so the challenge is to get milk into chilled vending, sitting alongside Coke machines, in sports halls and leisure centres, losing the fat tag.
Even whole milk is only 4% fat, so can call itself a low-fat food and appeal to a far wider age range.
Richard Arnold is commercial director, Calon Wen Organic Dairy.
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