Recovery Drinks - Nesquick (Nestlé) & REGO (SIS)

After yesterday's investigations I thought I would do a very cheap and cheerful comparison of the costs of these products, both of which can be used as a post exercise recovery drink. I've made a few assumptions which are valid for the way I use these products as when I use REGO (produced by Science in Sport) I mix it with milk in the same way as I do with Nesquick (produced by Nestlé). It is interesting to note that the recommendation for REGO is actually that more powder is used per unit volume of milk than is the case for Nesquick, therefore for the same weight of the two powders one would get more servings taking the Nesquick option.

Anyway, this is based on normal domestic purchasing at currently listed prices, using milk with both products and mixing using the same weight of powder for a given volume of liquid.

A 500g pack of chocolate Nesquick at my local Sainsbury's currently costs £2.72p. The list price of a 500g container of SIS REGO on the online store Wiggle is currently £10.80. This means that 1g of Nesquick is 0.544p and 1g of REGO is 2.16p.  I was shocked to find that the REGO is four times more expensive.

There was a well researched Panorama documentary on the TV recently called "The Truth About Sports Products" which is now available on YouTube, this section is well worth watching in the context of this Nesquick/REGO "comparison". It certainly seems to me that there is just nothing to be gained by buying these expensive products that can't be achieved much more simply and cheaply. At the very least there appears to be scant good scientific evidence for them.

My personal conclusion is that spending a lot of cash on specialist products is, for me at any rate, just not worth it, though I have used them in the past. I'm going to drink Nesquick after training (when I do some!) and the main reason for that will be that I like the taste of it and milk based drinks appear to have previously served me well :-)

I might check out the costs of the ready flavoured milk drinks in the supermarket but they are less convenient where travel is involved and I don't think they have the additional vitamins and minerals which may be of value. A tub of Nesquick and a couple of cartons of UHT milk would seem to me to be a very convenient approach.