Tart cherry and friends ease soreness, but don't bring your performance back

Tart cherry juice, beetroot shots, pomegranate and berry blends have become staples of the recovery aisle, sold on the promise that their polyphenols, nitrates and other bioactives calm inflammation and speed the return to training. The claims rest on a scattered literature of small trials using wildly different products and protocols. This review set out to gather recent human intervention studies of plant-derived whole foods and food-based supplements and ask what they actually do for soreness, muscle function, performance and physiological responses after exercise, in the physically active people who buy them.

The authors searched PubMed, Scopus, Embase and Web of Science for English-language human intervention trials published between 2016 and 2026 in physically active people aged 14 or older. Thirty-six studies qualified, covering polyphenol-rich products such as tart cherry, pomegranate, berries, grape and anthocyanin-rich juices, nitrate or citrulline sources such as beetroot and watermelon, and other foods including banana, honey, mango, chicory and oat-based products. Because participants, exercise protocols, doses, timing, comparators and outcome measures varied so widely, findings were synthesised narratively rather than statistically pooled, and risk of bias was formally assessed for every study.

The most consistent signal was a reduction in perceived muscle soreness, particularly within 24 to 72 hours after exercise, reported in several studies, although even this was not uniform across interventions and designs. Benefits for muscle-function recovery, subsequent performance and biochemical outcomes did not hold up consistently. Of the 35 randomised trials, 11 were judged at low overall risk of bias and 24 raised some concerns, with none rated high risk; the single non-randomised study was judged at serious risk of bias. Wide variation in product form, bioactive composition, dose, duration, timing and dietary control blocked head-to-head verdicts.

This fits the broader story of recovery nutrition: subjective soreness is the outcome most likely to respond, while objective measures of strength, performance and blood chemistry are far harder to shift. The review extends earlier work on individual products by putting the whole plant-food category side by side, and its conclusion is deliberately restrained, stating that no specific intervention, dose or timing strategy can yet be recommended from the available evidence. Standardised protocols, tighter dietary control and better adverse-event reporting are the obvious next steps for the field.

If a post-session cherry or beetroot juice makes the days after a hard workout feel less brutal, this evidence gives that habit some backing, at least for the soreness itself. What it does not support is the idea that these products restore strength or performance faster, or that any particular product, dose or timing window is the right one. Worth knowing before paying a premium for a recovery formulation whose main documented effect is on how sore you feel rather than how well you perform.