The sweet taste of improved performance.

We all know that sipping sports drinks is a major energy boost during that half marathon or monster mountain bike ride, but here's an interesting bit of news. Researchers at the University of Birmingham in the U.K. have discovered that athletic performance improves the moment those liquid carbs hit your mouth -- in other words, you don't even need to consume the beverages to get benefit. 

Using some fancy medical hocus pocus called magnetic resonance imaging, they found that the glucose and maltodextrin triggered specific parts of the brain. The trick doesn't work with artificially sweetened drinks or water.

Of course, you should still actually drink your sports drink because swishing it around in your mouth isn't going to hydrate you or replenish electrolytes. 

Here's an article from Reuters Health with a little more detail.

By the way, I made a point of telling you about this without making a single "spit or swallow" joke and for that I'm very proud of myself.