It’s a prevalent thing to see sports team coaches get showered in colorful energy drinks after they’ve won a big game. But, if you’re a high-performance athlete in search of that winning edge, there’s a new study that shows that pink-colored energy drinks might be what’ll help take you to that next level. London-based researchers have discovered that pink energy drinks can help you run both further and faster.

In fact, a pink energy drink can help boost an athlete’s performance by at least 4%, according to a University of Westminister research team. The pink coloring also ensures you get more of that “feel good” effect, which helps make working out seem more effortless.

Dr. Sanjoy Deb, the corresponding author, said that what they found combined performance nutrition with the art of gastronomy. The study showed that the addition of pink coloring to artificially sweetened drinks enhanced both the perception of sweetness as well as the feelings distance covered during runs, self-selected running speeds, and the feelings of pleasure. Dr. Sanjoy adds that these findings could help lead to the development of more effective energy drinks.

Why The Color Pink?

The researchers picked pink because of the connection the color has with sweetness, boosting the carbohydrate and sugar intake expectations in the athletes. Previous research studies have shown that perceived exercise intensity can be reduced when you rinse your mouth with carbs which, in turn, improves overall performance.

Pink energy drinks that didn’t have carb stimuli still had the same benefits. The research teams believe that a “placebo effect” is most likely the cause of this. When volunteers drank pink energy drinks, they ran an average of almost 700-feet further. They also had a 4.4% boost on their average speed.