Cherry Juice Is the New Chocolate Milk

Now that energy drinks have fallen from grace, it’s a good time to look for salvation from muscle ache in something like, OK, cherry juice. And the L.A Times, naturally, is all over it. The paper directs our attention to a "small" study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, in which 16 men were given 12-ounces of a specially formulated beverage
containing the juice of 50 to 60 cherries — or a placebo to drink twice
a day.  On the fourth day, the men
performed 40 bicep curls on a special piece of equipment with as much
weight as they could lift. The Times reports that on each day after that, researchers evaluated pain,
muscle tenderness, relaxed elbow angle and strength. Two weeks later,
the same men repeated the process on the other arm, with the other
drink. Researchers found that the men had less reduction in
strength and felt less pain when they drank the cherry juice. At this point, however, the Times is not ready to rest its case.  The paper reports that the study was funded by Cherrypharm Inc., the company that developed a
sports beverage made from  cherries, and that a similar study,
partially funded by the dairy industry, recently touted the benefits of
chocolate milk.