If you follow pro cycling, running or triathlon, you've probably seen them: small bottles of green broccoli sprout extract, endorsed by world champions and taken three hours before hard sessions and races.
The pitch is simple: lower lactate, so you can push harder.
It's an intriguing idea from a serious research group. As always, the useful question is: what happens when researchers actually test it?
What is a sprout shot?
Broccoli and kale sprouts are rich in glucosinolates, including glucoraphanin. On their own, these compounds are inactive. When the plant is chewed or blended, an enzyme called myrosinase converts them into isothiocyanates, the best known of which is sulforaphane.
Sulforaphane activates Nrf2, a pathway that switches on your cells' own antioxidant defenses. Exercise also activates Nrf2, which is why researchers became interested in whether sulforaphane might support training adaptations. In muscle cells grown in a dish, sulforaphane mimics some exercise-like mitochondrial changes. That's plausible biology, not proof in people.
There's also a conversion catch. Myrosinase can be inactivated by heat. Without it, conversion depends on gut bacteria, which varies from person to person. The lactate trials added mustard seed powder, an extra source of myrosinase, to their drinks to help that conversion.
The 2023 trial that started it
In 2023, a group at the Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences gave 9 healthy people a broccoli sprout drink or a placebo (alfalfa sprouts) twice a day around 7 days of hard interval cycling. Everyone did both conditions, in random order, double-blind.
During submaximal cycling, average blood lactate fell about 0.4 mM (millimoles per liter) after the sprout week and rose about 0.5 mM after the placebo week. Time to exhaustion in a ramp test rose from 380 to 426 seconds on sprouts, versus 401 to 406 seconds on placebo. VO2max didn't change significantly.
Encouraging results, with a few details worth knowing.
Starting values weren't equal. Average lactate before the sprout week was higher than before the placebo week (3.06 vs 2.69 mM), and time to exhaustion started lower (380 vs 401 seconds). Some of the improvement may reflect values moving back toward average.
The performance test was small. It included 9 people on sprouts and 8 on placebo, after one person was excluded.
Timing complicates the picture. The last drink was taken about 78 minutes before testing, which makes it hard to separate a week of supplementation from the effect of the most recent dose.
The 2026 trial: one dose, three hours later
The same group then tested a single dose. Fifteen healthy adults (11 women and 4 men, average VO2max about 41 ml/kg/min) cycled for 5 minutes at each of three set workloads (roughly 100, 120 and 140 W), drank a red kale sprout drink or a placebo, rested fasted for three hours, then repeated the ride. Each person tested both sprout doses and the placebo on separate days.
At the hardest workload, lactate was about 0.4 mM lower after the lower dose (37.5 g of sprouts) and about 0.3 mM lower after the higher dose (75 g). The effect was smaller at the middle workload and not significant at the easiest one. Oxygen use and perceived effort didn't change.
Four things worth knowing:
Responses varied. The average drop (0.4 mM) was smaller than the spread between people (plus or minus 0.6 mM). At the hardest workload, 10 of 15 people had lower lactate on the lower dose.
It was single-blind. Participants didn't know which drink they got, but the researchers did.
Blood glucose also differed. Three hours after the placebo drink, 10 of 15 participants had blood glucose below 4 mM, compared with 4 of 15 after the lower sprout dose.
Performance wasn't measured. The authors note this as a limitation themselves.
From preprint to published paper
The 2026 study first appeared as a preprint, posted online before peer review, in April 2025. Its abstract suggested the findings "may have important implications" for improving endurance performance.
The peer-reviewed version, published in Physiological Reports in August 2026, doesn't include that line. Its conclusion is more measured: a sprout drink may influence lactate and glucose metabolism.
The published paper still includes a statistical model estimating an "optimal" dose of 44 g of sprouts. As of this writing, the company selling the shots says on its website that the optimal dose matches one shot, and links to the preprint rather than the peer-reviewed paper.
Who ran the trials
Both lactate trials come from the same research group. Two of the senior authors hold a patent related to using isothiocyanates to enhance training adaptations, and they are co-founders and shareholders in a company that aims to sell athletic performance products. Both papers disclose this, and the 2026 paper states the company had no role in the study's design, analysis or writing. The shot company's website features both researchers on its science page.
That transparency deserves credit, and a financial interest doesn't make a result wrong. It does mean the lactate finding would benefit from independent replication. We weren't able to find one yet.
What independent trials found
Other researchers have tested broccoli-derived supplements, with mixed results.
Two 2026 trials from Lithuania found no benefit. In one, 17 young men took broccoli powder or a placebo for two weeks before a maximal cycling test. Urine tests confirmed most of them absorbed sulforaphane, but lactate recovery, jump power, performance and an oxidative stress marker were unchanged. In the other, 15 young men took broccoli powder around a muscle-damaging arm workout, with no effect on any recovery measure.
These aren't a direct test of a sprout shot, though, mainly because of dose. Both papers report about 320 micrograms of glucoraphanin per serving. The 2026 Swedish drink delivered about 600 milligrams of total glucosinolates per dose. That isn't a perfect like-for-like comparison, but the gap is enormous. The arm trial also mixed the powder into boiling water, which the authors note may have reduced myrosinase activity. Both were partly funded by the powder's manufacturer. Fairly read, these trials suggest a low-dose broccoli powder doesn't do much. They don't settle the question for a high-dose sprout drink.
Other small trials point toward recovery rather than performance. A 2021 pilot study of 16 untrained men, split into supplement and control groups, found less muscle soreness two days after eccentric exercise with a sulforaphane supplement. A 2026 double-blind trial in 14 people found lower creatine kinase and myoglobin, two markers of muscle damage, after two weeks of capsules. Those values were already lower before exercise, endurance capacity didn't change, and the study was funded by the capsule supplier.
Why lower lactate isn't automatically a win
Lactate isn't the cause of fatigue it was long blamed for. It's a fuel and a signal, and the blood lactate you measure reflects both how fast it's being produced and how fast it's being cleared.
So lower lactate at a set workload could mean less is being made, more is being burned, it's being cleared faster, or you're using a different mix of fuels. Some of those could help performance. Others might not matter.
That's why performance outcomes, such as power, time to exhaustion and time trials, are what settle the question. So far, the only positive performance signal for sprout drinks comes from the small 2023 trial, while the independent trials that measured performance found no change.
What the marketing says
A few claims on the company's science page don't quite match the papers. It describes the 2023 study as a 4-week training program; the paper describes 7 days of training. It describes the 2026 participants as endurance athletes; the paper describes healthy adults recruited across all activity levels, with an average VO2max of about 41.
Its FAQ also says the effect seems stronger in elite athletes. We couldn't find published data comparing elite and recreational athletes.
To its credit, the company recommends using the shots only before hard sessions and races rather than every day.
How was it actually used in the research?
In the 2023 trial, participants drank 75 g of blended broccoli sprouts twice a day for 9 days around a hard training week. In the 2026 trial, a single drink (37.5 g or 75 g of red kale sprouts) was taken three hours before exercise, after fasting. Both drinks included mustard seed powder to boost conversion.
The company recommends a shot three hours before hard sessions or races. The longest of these trials lasted about two weeks, so long-term effects of regular use are unknown.
Is it worth it?
Maybe, but not as a performance boost you should count on yet.
The biology is genuinely interesting, and the lactate signal deserves independent testing. Right now, though, the evidence is a small lactate dip in small groups of healthy, mostly recreational adults, from a group with a disclosed financial interest, plus one small trial hinting at a performance benefit.
On the recovery pyramid, sprout shots sit at the top in the supplements tier, well above the foundations: carbohydrate, protein, fluids and, above all, sleep.
If those are handled and you're curious, it's a reasonable thing to experiment with. Keep expectations modest and judge it by your training and racing, not by a lactate meter.
And keep eating your broccoli. That part is well supported.
Science Wednesdays takeaway: Sprout shots have plausible biology and a small lactate dip seen in two trials from one lab, whose senior authors disclose a financial interest. Lower lactate isn't proof of better performance, the performance evidence is limited, and the independent trials so far used doses too low to settle the question. Treat it as experimental.
References:
Flockhart et al. Redox Biology, 2023.
Vinge et al. Physiological Reports, 2026.
Vinge et al. bioRxiv (preprint), 2025.
Cesanelli et al. Antioxidants, 2026.
Cesanelli et al. Nutrients, 2026.
Ruhee et al. Nutrients, 2026.
Komine et al. Physiological Reports, 2021.
Champsi & Hood. American Journal of Physiology: Cell Physiology, 2025.
