Sports brands 'don't boost performance'

Many sports drinks, protein shakes and expensive trainers that are claimed to boost performance do no such thing, an investigation has found. Scientists who examined the claims made for some of sport's leading brands found "a striking lack of evidence" to support them.

Sports products might help elite athletes, but there was a "worrying" lack of evidence supporting their advertised effects on average participants of sports.

For example, tailored training shoes said to reduce injury did not do so, the researchers from the Oxford Centre of Evidence-Based Medicine said.