Of course a drink with protein after exercise helps recovery better than a drink with no protein.
I agree but I don't know if there is a lot of scientific evidence to support that. A couple of years ago I went to a small presentation on sports nutrition given by a well known sports physiologist and I asked the specific question about additional protein and recovery and he said no research he knew of demonstrated any improvement in recovery time. I was a bit surprised as I had discovered in the late 80's that protein ( amino acid) supplement ( foul tasting liquid that had to be kept in fridge) helped me recover enough to train hard on consecutive days. Now I see a lot of the recovery drinks include protein but is that because of scientific evidence, customer demand or smart marketing.
This article
http://sportsmedicine.about.com/cs/nutrition/a/aa081403.htm
References studies into the effects of carb, carb+protein and other combinations. I think your expert might have been unaware of the research.
My experience is that pure carb stuff like 50g of maltodextrine in water is as good as chocolate milk, all sports amino load, soya protein powder+maltodextrine, whey protein+maltodextine
There might be some slight advantage with stuff like amino load or whey powder (at 1:6 or 1:4 or whatever the magic ratio is this week) but for a mr average like me, the key thing seems to be to take on a lot of carbs during the 15 minutes after exercise
