The Truth About Sports Products Panorama

With the biggest sporting event in the world just a week away,

millions of us are striving for our own personal best. Powerade,

hydrating the 2012 Olympic athletes. There is a booming market in drinks,

trainers and supplements promising to help us on our way. Faster,

But what's the truth behind the marketing hype for those pricy

trainers? Did you find any good evidence on

trainers about some of the claims that they made? None whatsoever.

Would we be better off running barefoot instead? See how nice and

smooth that curve becomes? At the liments of your ability...

Are sugary sports drinks better for exercise than water? If they

avoided the sports drink, they'd get thinner and run fast Marissa

Mayemmairmair. One world record break Marissa Mayemmairmair gives

us his secret recipe for success. One, bread, two, jam. The world's

toughest soldiers tell us how much they drink to maximise enshurns.

How far would you have to walk with this?

50 kilometres. 50 kilometres! We ask if we can boost sporting

performance and recovery with dietary supplements. This has

become yet another fashion accessory for exercise and a rather

expensive way of getting a bit of milk. Or are we all really being

taken for a ride? We have to ask, do we want science or show

business? Tonight on Panorama, we put the advertising claims to the

test to find out the truth about As a nation, we may be getting

fatter, but record numbers are also trying to get fitter. Nearly one in

five of us go to the gym, and around 12 million people in the UK

take part in some kind of sport. So there's an eager market for

performance-enhancing sports products, but are the marketing

claims made in the name of science all they're cracked up to be?

Muscle performance and ruts. When I wear Merrell bare foot, I am

strengthening my leg and foot muscles. Now an independent team of

researchers from Oxford University's Centre for Evidence

Based Medicine and the British Medical Journal is testing the

research behind the hype. And Panorama has gained exclusive

access to this, the first-ever study of its kind. Look at all the

data and the research. Some of these advertisers are cherry-

picking particular studies The team is painstakingly sifting through a

range of health and fitness magazines, scrutinising every claim

made about performance or recovery. Over a thousand ads in all. Here is

an example of Lucozade Luke telling you it's faster, stronger, longer -

so that's a general claim, if you like.

The team is testing whether claims like this one are backed up by

sound scientific evidence. If that's not clear from the ads

themselves, they're chasing the companies for more information.

They say it's supposed to make you fast Marissa Mayemmairmair or

strong Marissa Mayemmairmair... It's months of meticulous research.

35,000 runners are descending on leafy Greenwich for the start of

the London Marathon, from serious athletes to first-time charity

runners. There is one question that bonds them - what should they drink

to get them around the course? runners are just about to start.

It's going to be a long journey for a lot of them who haven't run

marathons before. They're all clutching their water, their sports

drinks. I don't know whether the fact today is sunny is going to

make a difference to how much they're going to drink. You're

clutching at their water, their sports drinks. Is that what you're

going to drink? A few of those, but mainly water. Water, plenty of it,

sticking with water. The makers of the UK's top-selling sports drink

are doing their best to persuade runners they need more than water.

Lucozade has a huge presence here with drinks stations along the

whole route. The runners are off on their

endurance test. I am now going to go along to the finishing line to

see what sort of condition they're in. Luckily for me, I am getting a

At the end of the gruelling 26-mile course, many of the exhausted

runners are grateful for the break in the weather to cool them down,

and it turns out, plenty are also glad of the carbs boost from

Lucozade Sport along the way. time there is water, every time

there is a Lucozade station, I drink about a quarter of the

bottles that went around. I've picked up water most stops and had

some Lucozade Sport as well because I've heard that it replenishes your

glycogeneral, which is muscle fuel. Mo Farrah is one of the faces of

Lucozade Sport, the UK's best ever distance runner is going for more

gold this summer. Faster, stronger It works for top athletes like him,

but do Lucozade Sport's claims hold true for the rest of us? The team

from Oxford and the BMU looked for evidence in the ads for Lucozade

Sport, but couldn't find any, so they wrote to the manufacturer,

pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline for more

information. What they got back is what scientists call a data dump.

This is actually 40 years worth of Lucozade sports research from 1971

right up until today - 176 stud Idies, of which within there were

101 trials that we specifically obtained and looked at. It's an

overwhelming task for the ordinary consumer, but the team methodically

sifted through each of the studies with three key questions in mind:

What's the quality of the evidence? What's the size of the effect? And

who does it apply to? And in this case, the quality of the evidence

is poor. The size of the effect is often miniscule, and it certainly

doesn't apply to the population at large who are buying these products.

Basically, when you look at the evidence in the general population,

it doesn't say that, actually, exercise has improved. Performance

is improved by carbohydrate drinks. For the ordinary person taking

exercise, the Oxford team simply couldn't find evidence to support

Lucozade Sport's claims. In reply, GlaxoSmithKline said:

"As a company dedicated to healthcare, we approach all claims

with the highest scientific rigour. Over 40 years of research

experience and 85 peer-reviewed studies have supported the

development of Lucozade Sport and all our claims are based on

scientific evidence that has been reviewed and substantiated by the

And more of that authority's findings later. Another of the

Oxford researchers looked beyond Lucozade at the general body of

research on sports drinks. Again, he says good studies were race, but

the best one he found on marathon runners had a surprising conclusion.

There was a well-conducted study where they gave 50 runners sports

drinks and the other 50 runners had water, and they looked at their

performance through the marathon, and that showed no significant

benefit of the sports drink on speed of finish the marathon, which

is an outcome that the marathon runner would probably be interested

What do the experts who study nothing but sports performance make

of the Oxford findings? I'm going to the place where sports drinks

began - way back in the 1930s. MUSIC

The first ever sports drink was created here in South Africa by an

ultra-marathon runner, and it turns out, 90 years on, that the biggest

critic of these drinks is also based here, so I'm going to meet

him. For more than 30 years, Professor Tim Noakes has been

researching what sports people should drink. He's carried out

dozens of studies at Letts of all ability levels to try to establish

the perfect fluid balance. What we find is there is a direct

relationship to how much you drink and your performance. If you don't

drink at all, your performance is definitely impaired, but

interestingly Gyou drink too much, your per -- did you drink too much,

your performance school impaired. So it's important to get the fluid

balance right. Drink, but not too much, if you want to be your best.

But what should we drink? Water? Or do we need a specially formulated

sports drink? It's enough that you have to just push through pain all

the time... British Olympic hopeful Jessica Ennis is a Heptathlon gold

medallist. She drinks Powerade. Four minutes, 20.894, the world

record -- Powerade Ion 4 resplenishes. They contain

electrolytes and carbohydrates - salt and sugar to you and me. So

does this really give them the edge on water, like the adverts claim?

We've shown that the amount of electrolytes present makes no

impact on performance. However, carbohydrates do definitely make an

effect, but the effect takes a long time to show, so one has to cycle

for two or three hours to show an effect. One lap to go, 250 metres

separating Graeme Obree from his finest moment... Graeme Obree is a

man who has pushed his own performance to the limit. The

Flying Scotsman came from no-where in 1993 with his handmade bike and

distinctive riding style to smash first the world record then the 400

metres pursuit. The world record, and he beats the

Frenchman comfortably. He has since broken two more world records

fuelled by his own special combination of fluid and carbs.

Tonight, exclusively on Panorama, he's agreed to share his recipe.

One, bread, 2, jam. So what you do - you get an application device,

and what you do is this - you actually scoop the jam onto the

sandwich, spread it in an even manner. He doesn't use sports

drinks. His energy booster - nothing more sophisticated than a

jam sandwich and plain, old- fashioned water. The jam provides

basically sugar - a very short chain carbohydrate. Now, a long-

chain carbohydrate, the long part has the quick rush of the sugar,

but the long bit breaks downzymes automatically. You actually broke

the records just using that? That's what I did, that and water. Graeme

Obree rejects sports drink, but they have been shown to give

enshurns athletes a boost after hours of exercise, when the sugar,

stored as glycogen in muscles runs out. But what about the rest of us?

Tim Noakes says that's where it fades away.

They do - laboratory studies of highly adapted athletes who are

good athletes who can sustain high exercise for long periods - in that

group, it does work. They never go and study a person who trains two

hours a week and walks most of the marathon, which is the major users

of sports drinks. But Cocozza -- Coca-Cola Great Britain deny this.

The European Food Safety Authority takes a different view of who

sports drinks should be aimed at. They recently examined more than a

hundred claims by the makers of sports drinks and supplements. They

approved just six. They were persuaded that sports drinks can

help maintain high-intensity exercise that lasts for more than

an hour. If sports drinks are only really

beneficial for hard-core endurance exercise, you might expect to find

them in specialist shops, but no, they're here in supermarkets

alongside fruit juices and other soft drinks.

Clever marketing means we spent more than a quarter of a billion

pounds on sports drinks last year, so it can't only be endurance

athletes who are buying them despite the recent decision by EFSA.

It's the endurance sports people - the people involved in endurance

events who would be the target for these claims. But how are they the

target if these drinks are sold in supermarkets? Well, that's a matter

for the manufacturers to deal with. But it is quite important because...

Yes. They are sold alongside soft drinks. Yes, but the information

that will be on these products when these claims that are now permitted

- when they carry these claims - will make it quite explicit, for

So will tightening the claim on the label narrow the market for sports

drinks? Or might it actually encourage more of us to buy them?

There is a tiny niche market for these products. And they certainly

do not need to be used by the mass market of people who are currently

using them. Powerade inner gear. Sports kit for

your insides. The sadness is that because people

think now I am an athlete, I must now take a sports drink. In fact if

they avoided the sports drink, they would get thinner and run faster.

An after school kick-about in south London and even these eight-year-

olds have got sports drinks. I like to drink Lucozade's cherry.

Why? I don't really see the difference, but it must work

because all the professionals use All the good ones drink it,

Powerade and others like that. is this something that if you want

to be a good footballer you should drink? Yeah, because it gives you a

boost. Powerade contains essential

nutrients to provide fast and effective hydration.

These drinks may boost top footballers. But how healthy are

they for children? The labels do list the high level

of carbohydrates contained within these drinks. What some of them are

less forthright about is that that means sugar. And lots of it. So

this single bottle of Lucozade Sport contains the equivalent, in

calories, of eight teaspoons of sugar. One of those bottles of

Lucozade Sport, how much would you think was in it, how many teaspoons

of sugar are in a bottle of Lucozade Sport? Five? Eight. Eight!

That's an awful lot of sugar, isn't it? I would say six teaspoons at

least, probably. It's eight. That's even worse then. They are bound to

drink the whole thing within a session, so that's an awful lot of

sugar. Do children who're exercising

benefit from a sugar boost like this?

Most parents are wise to the sugar rush which you can get from fizzy

drinks and sweets, but they might imagine that a sports drink is

healthier than that. Well if they do think that, they would be wrong.

These drinks contain an awful lot of sugar, about one third, if not

slightly more, than one third of a child's daily required amount of

sugar. The speed that the sugar is taken up means that is it not good

for child energy requirement. If you want to give your child energy,

give them something like a banana. If you want to keep them hydrated,

give them water. The makers of Lucozade Sport, GSK, told us they

label contents clearly and that the One of the GPs on the Oxford team

is worried about the public healthy impact of making sports drink more

appealing. I've seen myself in surgery,

children, young people, getting more obese and more obese. And this

particular claim of drinks being good for you is very, very worrying

because it could completely counteract young people exercising

more, playing football more, going to the gym more. Hang on, though,

the industry has an answer for the sugar question. Buy an artificially

sweetened drink instead. Coca-Cola Great Britain told Panorama that

Powerade Zero is designed for light workouts like a 45-minute run, and

But what's the point of a sugar- free sports drink? How does a low

calorie sports drinks give us more What in diet drinks is supposed to

give us more energy? The very presence of low calories

sports drinks kind of disproves the value of sports drinks. You either

get the energy from the carbohydrates, or you don't.

Coca Cola Great Britain says Powerade Zero hydrates, but then so

does water, and you can get that free from the tap.

So, for all but the most hard core athlete, the science suggests you

could be wasting your money on sports drinks. But there is one

sporting product that most of us regard as essential. A decent pair

of trainers. Last year in the UK, we spent more

than one and a quarter billion pounds on sports shoes.

I usually buy a pair of trainers probably every six months,

something like that. Usually between �60 and �100

probably. About �80 for a pair of trainers. How much did these ones

cost you? Three pounds. Three pounds? That's a bargain.

The adverts emphasise stability and cushioning. The very things these

gym-goers say they're looking for. What do you think is important in a

trainer to prevent injury? Just to make sure that they have the air

bubble in and just more shock absorbent style trainer. Cushioning

is important because if you are doing a lot of high impact running

on concrete surfaces, on roads, that puts a lot of stress of your

knees. So you think the shock absorbers do much? I am not sure, I

am not sure whether they help with running, but they look quite good.

Usain Bolt is the fastest man in the world. He set his world record

wearing Puma. This is "no coincidence" says Puma's marketing

blurb. The website says their shoe is: "Designed to minimise injury,

optimise comfort and maximise speed." Strong claims. So can the

team from Oxford and the BMJ find data to back them up?

That should be really underpinned by good quality evidence. Did we

find any? No. Did they supply any? No. I can't quite understand how

you get from the evidence to that claim. If you can't find research

for it, how can you then make that claim? So they just didn't supply

any evidence to you at all when you asked? Not only did they not supply

it, when we looked for it, we couldn't find any evidence at all.

The Oxford researchers found no evidence to support Puma's claims.

Puma were contacted but declined the opportunity to reply.

But how does this negative result stack up with experts in the

science of running? Harvard Professor Irene Davis runs a sports

injury clinic in Boston. For years, the buzzword in her field has been

"pronation". A medical term that describes how your foot rolls when

it hits the ground. Control that rolling and injuries will be

reduced, so the theory goes. If you go into a shoe store, they will

take a look at your feet and say, OK, if you have a high arch, a

rigid foot that tends to roll out then we need to give you a

cushioned shoe that helps to facilitate you rolling in. If you

have a very flat flexible foot like this one here, then they give you a

motion control shoe. And then if you have neutral foot, a natural

neutral arch, they will give you a stability shoe. Of course, a

specially tailored shoe is also a good marketing opportunity.

I'm off to have my own feet assessed.

Looking at your right ankle here, when you stand up it does flex

inward slightly. We don't want you over-pronating where the foot

flexes in too far and causes pain and injury.

That's great. There is just a little bit more

collapse inwards than we would ideally want. You can see that the

ankle is slightly flexed further inwards than it ideally should be.

Ok. So a slightly more rigid shoe inside is going to control things a

bit better. You will probably be more comfortable in the long run in

a support shoe. This way of fitting trainers is

recommended by specialist running shops and even the NHS. But do

structured shoes actually reduce the risk of injury?

The US Military carried out the biggest ever study to try to answer

that very question. Dividing soldiers into two large groups, one

was prescribed a shoe according to their foot type. The other was

simply given a neutral shoe. Now if shoes prescribed based on

the foot type are really preventing injuries, then you would expect to

see a lower injury rate in the group that got the shoes prescribed.

And they found absolutely no difference between the groups in

terms of injury patterns. So that tells us that there is no evidence

for prescribing footwear in that way.

That surprising result was confirmed in two further studies.

With no evidence on my journey so far to support the claim that

structured trainers can help prevent injury, my next stop is

Alberta Canada in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains. Why? Because I'm

going to meet one of the leading experts in the science behind

sports shoes. And he's had to completely rethink everything he

thought knew to be true in the last few years. He's the granddaddy of

training shoes and has been studying the biomechanics of

running for more than four decades. Benno Nigg has worked with big

brands like Nike, Reebok and Adidas. In the late '70s, the idea was that

shoes, and running shoes especially, should cushion impact forces. That

impact force is dangerous and because it's dangerous, what you

want, you want to cushion or dampen that impact force. Second, it

should control pronation. Because if you have high pronation, it was

thought that this is related to more injuries.

The idea that cushioning and control will reduce running

injuries has dominated shoe design to this day. But much of that

research was done using machines to recreate the effect on shoes of

rolling or impact. Benno Nigg and his research team

are now using real people wired up to multi-camera computer technology.

The cameras will give us information on a third computer

which is over on the desktop. are actually going to be able, when

you crunch all this data, to see what kind of runner Stefan is?

Exactly, exactly. And see if he is putting a lot more pressure in his

forefoot than someone else. Or while wearing one shoe compared to

another, he puts the pressure somewhere else. What they're

discovering from this research is news that will make the marketing

men weep. Turns out it's not all about the trainers.

The most important predictors for injuries are distance, recovery

time, intensity and those type of things. So these are all things

that the runner controls himself or herself. You don't need an

expensive pair of shoes to work that one out? Right. The shoes come

way, way later as minor contributors.

On my journey I've spoken to some of the world's top experts. I

haven't been able find convincing evidence to support the claim that

trainers reduce injury. Or that sports drinks improve performance

in people who take moderate exercise.

So why are we so easily persuaded to spend lots of money on these

products? You have a little bit of evidence,

you have athletes and sports people everywhere who are very suggestible.

They're looking for that little extra touch, that magic ingredient

to make them the winner, to make them better. And then you have the

manufacturers and they're marketing the product, marketing the product.

They have this opportunity, they have the market that's there.

Not only is industry telling us we need expensive trainers and

specially formulated sports drinks to exercise... Now, would you

believe, they're actually telling us how to drink. If you look at the

adverts, it's all about hydration. Coca Cola's big brand Powerade is

the Games' official drink. And the advertising doesn't just

promote the brand. It gives hydration the big sell. Powerade's

So do we really need to be drinking before our thirst tells us?

I'm off to meet one of the UK's top nutritionists and marathon runner,

Professor Mike Lean. Dehydration only becomes a problem

after about an hour of activity. And the reason for that is when you

are exercising, your body is using up stored energy and glycogen and

releasing water into the body. So you are actually keeping yourself

hydrated from your own stores. So it's only really unless you are

exercising in very hot, humid conditions, it's probably only

after about that time that it becomes an issue at all.

For peak performance during intense exercise, should we be drinking

even when we're not thirsty? These guys should know.

The elite soldiers of the South African Special Forces are used to

working out hard in extreme heat, day after day.

They are busy with some physical exercises for their morning routine

before breakfast. They will do it every day. And a session can last

anything between an hour and an hour and a half. And they have a

nickname for this place. Yes, a direct translation from Afrikaans

would be "the garden of pain". And the garden of pain is just for

starters. A typical day sees them out for hours at a time, with up to

60 kilos on their back. Here we go.

Oh, my goodness! How far would you have to walk with this?

kilometres. 50 kilometres! Goodness me, I couldn't even walk 50 metres.

Backbreaking stuff, yet the soldiers just do what comes

naturally. They drink when they're thirsty.

What astonishes me is that we never tell our cats and dogs when they

must drink and there is not one other animal in the whole of god's

earth who has to be told how much to drink. You lose water, you get

thirsty, you drink. End of story. The industry had to develop a

disease. Like any pharmaceutical company, you have to develop a

disease that you have the treatment for. Industry developed this

disease of dehydration. Dehydration is not a disease. It is a normal

biological response to exercise. Keeping hydrated now comes with a

complicated set of instructions. Powerade's website recommends

staying ahead of your thirst and warns against losing weight through

For the last four years, the South African Army has done its own

research to establish safe drinking guidelines for its soldiers, and

the results fly in the face of industry advice. Drinking according

to your thirst, listening to your body is a key recommendation we

recommend not only for our soldiers but the person going to the gym,

the person running a marathon or even the elite athlete out there.

It's not just Powerade who say you should lose no more than 2% body

weight through sweat. The International Olympics Committee

gives that same advice to athletes, and who sponsors their hydration

advice? Powerade. Hydrating the 2012 Olympic athletes. But back in

Oxford, the team found that the research behind that claim is

limited and could encourage drinking too much. To do a story to

say 2% of the figure, you'd have to look at thousands of people and

actually come to a conclusion that beyond this measure, you have

proven it's harmful and performance deteriorates. That's not been shown

by the evidence. And do you worry about them giving out such specific

advice? Yeah, because you can't action that advice. How am I going

to do that? Walk around with a calculator in my pocket? So what I

tend to do is do the opposite, make sure I drink so I don't hit that 2%

mark. Coca-Cola Great Britain who make Powerade say:

Scientific evidence shows that the onset of thirst is a delayed

response." And at a weight loss of The organisers of the London

Marathon don't mention weight loss to their runners. Instead, like the

South African Army, they say follow your thirst, but the relentless

industry advice to keep on drinking is still being swallowed. Did you

drink quite a lot? I didn't try and drink too much, but yeah, I drank

when I - when - before I felt thirsty. Before you felt thirsty?

What a lot of runners don't realise is drinking too much can be

dangerous - in rare cases, fatal. One experienced long-distance

runner, Dr Jonathan Williams found this out the hard way at the London

Marathon. The information I'd absorbed from running magazines and

adverts and so on that to keep drinking was important and to stay

ahead of your thirst. It was a hot day. I think I started

drinking at mile three from every mile station. By about mile 14, I

started to feel bloated, heavy, nauseated, lightheaded. It was

really the worst I'd ever felt in my seven marathons. As a doctor, he

eventually realised his symptoms were caused by drinking too much.

He didn't have anymore fluids and managed to finish the race. One

other runner that year wasn't so lucky. Fortunately, it didn't cause

me any serious health issues, unlike the more unfortunate chap, a

22-year-old fitness instructor who in the same race collapsed and died.

Dr Williams did his own survey at last year's marathon. He found that

one in eight runners plan to drink potentially risky amounts. 16

marathon runners across the world have actually died, and 1,600 have

been left critically ill from overdrinking. Dr Arthur Seigel is

investigating why. The dehydration has gotten all the

press and attention, but in fact, dehydration is not life lettening,

and there isn't a case of any athlete in any sporting event who

has died of dehydration, but overhydration is much more

dangerous, and therefore runners need to be aware of it, and in

general are not. Now we're dealing with tens of thousands of novices

and people that are running for charities who are really out there

for twice or three times as long as at the front of the pack, and if

they are programmed to fear dehydration and are thinking, drink,

drink, drink, they will get water intoxication. And while the

drinking industry stands accused of creating the problem, yet again,

they're also selling the solution. The makers of Powerade suggest its

salt content can protect against the effects of overdrinking. The

website advice: "Drink more sports drinks or drinks

The Oxford team says there's no convincing evidence that the small

amount of salt in sports drinks makes any difference, but the

evidence does show that drinking too much of any liquid can be risky.

What runners need to understand is you can overdrink sports drinks,

and overdrinking sports drinks is just as dangerous as overdrinking

water. Coca-Cola Great Britain told However, to provide clarity to

customers the company has now updated its website to say athletes

should not over-consume any liquids. GlaxoSmithKline pushes the science

of hydration to marathon runners, but also to children. GSK offers a

school science programme for 11 to 14-year-olds to coincide with the

Olympics. The teaching source doesn't name Lucozade Sport, but it

includes a class experiment benefiting the highlights of sports

drink. The work sheet warns of the dangers of overdrinking, but only

in relation to the consumption of water. Water will enter by osmosis

and stop the muscles, nerves and brain from working properly. In

extreme cases, water intoxication can occur and may lead to death.

The British Medical Journal wrote to GSK asking why it doesn't

explain there is a similar danger from over-drinking sports drinks.

GSK has now removed the page from So far, we have failed to find

convincing evidence to back advertising claims that to exercise

properly, we need shugry drinks, special trainers and complicated

advice on how to drink. Hydrates better than water.

Now there's an even more surprising claim about what to wear on our

feet when we run - nothing. Harvard professor Daniel Lieberman is an

evolutionary biologist who thinks we were born to run barefoot.

Everybody likes to take their shoes off when they go for a walk on the

beach or the lawn. It just feels good. We have come out of touch

with our bodies, and many people are surprised that if you take your

shoes off and go for a run, it feels good. It really does because,

again, there is no impact if you do it properly. It's a light and

gentle way of running. It's a interswaisive theory, but there is

even less scientific evidence to underpin barefoot running, maybe

because much of the research into barefoot running is funded by

companies that make trainers. haven't done much work comparing

training shoes to not wearing training shoes. We're not thinking

about whether or not it's normal to be barefoot in the first place.

that's changing. Irene Davis and her team don't take money from

industry, but with US Government grants, they're using the latest

technology to study barefoot running.

So Shelley, why don't you step right up? If you want to bin your

trainers, though, you'll have to learn to run in a different way,

and it's not easy. OK. All right. Let's have a go.

What you're seeing here, Shelley, is, this is the ground reaction

force, and this is the force that your body experiences with each

foot strike. You can see that you've got that initial spike in

your force, and that is associated with your heel striking the ground

- 70 to 80% of people who run in standard running shoes land on

their heels and have that very distinct impact. So what happens

when I take my shoes off? Will I change the way I run? So most

people when they become barefoot and they run - they don't land on

their heel because if you landed on your heel, it goes all the way up

through your knees and your hips, OK? See how nice and smooth that

curve becomes? Yep. It's very different. So how did that feel?

Well, it was strange. So now without the support of the arch in

your shoes, your muscles have to work much harder. You've kind of

deconditioned your feet by putting the - supporting them all the time.

It's like wearing a neck brace for life,ed a then you take that off,

and all of a sudden you're floppy. So what's her verdict on running

barefoot? I think we're better off letting the foot move the way it's

designed to move. I think we really do it a disservice when we start to

contain it and support it and to control it. But where's the money

to be made in running without shoes? Well, just like the sugar-

free sports drink, now we have the barefoot shoe. Barefoot shoes set

me free. I now move as nature intended. Inevitably, the same

companies that sold us structured trainers are now developing a new

market for shoes designed to mimic barefoot running. I move faster

during my workouts. Companies like Merrell are taking us back to the

future. I am more efficient and a better athlete, and I'm kicking

butt. I think you're going to see maybe a return closer to the

footwear we had back in the '60s and '70s so really just coming full

circle. If you look at the footwear of people like Roger Banister,

those shoes were very much like the minimal footwear today. The tape is

broken. Merrell claims its barefoot shoes... Help you find the natural

way you were born to run, provide traction and protection for a

smoother ride." The team from Oxford and the BMU asked for

research to support these claims. Did they send you evidence that

appeared to back it up? No, we didn't. We have managed to find the

link in their website to two studies, actually, for the barefoot

trainers, and actually, the studies didn't even test the trainers.

they weren't even studies of their shoes? No. The studies were in

people running barefoot, not in Merrell's shoes. Merrell told

Dr Lieberman told Panorama he's never worked with Merrell, and he

doesn't endorse any particular footwear for running. Nobody knows

really what's the right thing to do. Everybody's got opinions. There's a

lot of anecdotal evidence. There is some scientific research on how

shoes work and how barefoot running works, but I think what really

matters a, frankly, is not what's on your feet, but how you run.

if you're not tempted to run in bare feet, with such a wide array

of shoes on sale, how should we decide which pair to buy? Try them

on. See whether they are comfortable. See whether you enjoy

your running. If you can find a shoe where you just enjoy that

activity and you are comfortable in them, that's all you need. So there

you have it - it's not rocket science. Ignore the advertising

There's one range of sports products that uses scientific-

sounding advertising claims more than any other. Nutritional

supplements. Today, it's big business.

Once regarded as niche products, these pills, foods and powdered

shakes are now sold on every high street. Last year their promises to

boost sporting performance and recovery made us part with more

than �100 million. They claim to increase the muscle mass, they

claim to allow you to lose weight or lose body fat. They get you

ripped and lean in time for summer. There are also all sorts of claims

about time scales as well. You know, you can get this body in x amounts

of weeks by using x product. Quite seductive, I should imagine? Very.

A chocolate protein shake, please. It's not just bodybuilders who use

nutritional supplements. These protein shakes and workout boosters

with scientific-sounding ingredients are now sold in gyms

everywhere. I use a protein shake which is good because I have a very

busy schedule in work. And I don't have much time for a proper meal.

So the protein shakes are something which help me a lot to get enough

protein and calories that I need for my day.

The market-leader in sports supplements is GlaxoSmithKline.

Some of Britain's top athletes endorse its Maxinutrition range,

from the Olympic triathlon team to the English Rugby Union. But do any

of us really need them? Some of GSK's products contain branch chain

amino acids, which are found in muscle protein. The company says

Once again, the team from Oxford and the BMJ looked for the science

behind those claims. Branch end amino acids is an

interesting one. The evidence doesn't stack up and the quality of

the evidence doesn't allow us to say these do improve performance or

recovery and should be used as a product widely. So you don't think

the evidence is there to make those claims? Yeah, we certainly don't

think that that's there. They couldn't find good evidence that

branch chain amino acids boost recovery or performance. Yet a tub

of them can set you back 34 quid. Another triumph of marketing over

science, says Professor Lean. There is limited evidence, again in

high level high performing athletes, that certain amino acids which form

part of proteins, may improve muscle strength. This is absolutely

fringe evidence. And I think that that is, almost totally irrelevant,

even at the top level of athletics. The advertising and the marketing

is all out there, and this has become yet another fashion

accessory for exercise. And a rather expensive way of getting a

You can get all the nutrients you need from food. So what research

underpins products like these? When you look at it, it's such low

quality that actually, there's no evidence to suggest that that's any

better than eating a diet that's rich in protein and carbohydrates.

That's the best way to receive these nutrients. Canadian company

Vega Sport sells a range of plant- based shakes and supplements over

the internet. Another of the Oxford researchers took a closer look for

the science behind them. This company has made claims like, "Get

in the zone with energy to burn", "push harder and last longer",

"recharge and repair so you can do it all again sooner." Quite bold

claims. Certainly. Then what we did is we went through the websites and

looked to see if it referred to any research that backed up these

claims. Generally what we found was that the references referred to

research evidence that was of fairly low quality. What like?

me give you an example of one, which is a study from 1930. 1930?

Yeah, that's right. It's a study in rats from 1930.

What's really important to us, looking at the quality of evidence,

is not actually that it's from 1930, it's that it was in rats. Because

if the company is making the claim that this product enhances human

sports performance, doing a study in rats doesn't really back that up.

Nutritional supplements offer a shortcut to best performance. And

according to football's top governing body, that promise has

influenced those even at the top of the game.

It's quite widespread. I would say that at the professional level,

somewhere between 20 to 40 % of the players would take regularly

dietary supplements. That's a lot, are you surprised by that?

course I am surprised. Because we would assume that the well balanced

diet would supply you with all the necessary ingredients you need for

a healthy life. FIFA's main concern is making sure

the supplements players take aren't tainted with banned substances,

like steroids. But they also want to know if they work. FIFA asked

top scientists from around the world for evidence. One of the

issues was does dietary supplement add anything positive, to the

wellbeing number one, and two, to improve the performance. And there

was a unanimous consensus that the dietary supplements do not make you

a better footballer. Even though there's such a lack of

evidence that these supplements improve performance, it doesn't

stop manufacturers approaching FIFA for endorsement. Our answer is

always the same, prove it. Provide the scientific evidence, publish it

in a peer reviewed journal, well respected journals. And then we can

discuss. And when you issue that sort of challenge, what response do

you get from the companies? Usually I don't hear much, not something

which we would be a science, we are talking about.

Record-breaking cyclist Graeme Obree shares FIFA's concern that

these performance enhancing products are a waste of money. You

can achieve the same results, for less cash, with a balanced diet.

Before I went out training, if I was going to go out on a two hour

ride today, I would actually prepare sardines, bread ready in

the toaster and a pile of broccoli and carrots. I'd come straight in

and go right, toast, sardines on it, and my veggies in the microwave.

That's my recovery drink, an actual proper meal. I think he's talking

complete common sense and he's talking from personal experience at

the very top end. And as a man who has held world records. And in

principal says none of these supplements are going to make any

difference at all. The idea you've got to drink something to recover

is a relatively new concept and it's a good money spinner.

recent European Food Safety approval means that misleading

labelling for sports drinks and nutritional supplements will have

to be removed by the start of next year.

The EFSA review only found evidence to stand up performance-enhancing

claims for two ingredients - caffeine and the nutrient, creatine.

We had many claims for supplements that would increase muscle strength

or help recovery from exercise. None of these we found to be

supported by good science. Supplements seem to be a bit of a

Wild West in terms of sports products. Did you find lots of

claims that just really could not be substantiated at all? Yes, we

had quite a number for which there was very little evidence to support

them. But Oxford's Centre for Evidence

Based Medicine is critical of the research that underpins EFSA's

recent decision to approve the labelling of sports drinks

specifically for endurance events. The scientific basis for approving

these claims seems to be very meagre. We can see that the studies

that EFSA have looked at are mostly very small studies. And they're low

quality. And to think that the claims are being approved based on

just these studies is very concerning. Because we know the

claims are going to be used in labelling, marketing, advertising,

not just in one country, but for a population of 500 million in Europe.

So it's worth doing it properly at least the first time.

Well, I can't comment on what the Oxford group did. I've heard

they've done an assessment, but I haven't heard their report.

they've looked at the same studies and they're not impressed, and

they're quite worried that claims have been approved on this basis.

Well I don't know whether they've looked at the same studies that

we've looked at or not. I couldn't be sure of that because I haven't

seen their report, but I would like to see it. To see how they have

judged the evidence compared to how we have judged it.

The team from Oxford and the British Medical Journal set out to

measure the gap between the science and the sell. And it was huge. They

could find no supporting evidence for half of the 431 advertising

claims they looked at. In fact the number of high quality studies they

did find was just three. public's not getting a true picture,

the regulators are not getting a true picture. And there's only one

way to do this, to take a product, obtain all the evidence, whether

it's published or unpublished and then combine it to come up with the

answer. What does this mean and who does it apply to?

The Oxford team are independent, but most of the studies they have

looked at have been paid for by the sports industry. If we want better

science, who is going to pay for it? Maybe we need to think in a

different way. Maybe we need to think, just as we support sport and

we fund sport through a different funding mechanism than we fund

through health, maybe we should fund sports science and medicine

through a different funding stream also. We have to ask, do we want

science or show business? For now, the evidence we do have seems to be

leading those of us who aren't top athletes to a rather common sense