I have always hated coffee so I've previously had some kind of energy drink in the morning for weeks at a time.
Those suckers are bizarrely addictive. It's one thing to have one shortly after you wake up, but I found myself craving them later and later in the day, and of course that makes it harder to sleep...which makes me more likely to have energy drinks the next day.
I stopped the daily consumption when I realized I was having around 800mg of caffeine a day, which couldn't possibly be good for me. I quit energy drinks cold turkey and just did Diet Coke, which I cut off at 2pm; even with that weening off I still got headaches and felt miserable for three days.
I will still occasionally consume an energy drink if I'm traveling and I need to wake up super early, but thankfully these are very outlier events.
Feeling miserable for three days seems ... unlikely after 800mg/day of caffeine. I say that to mean, it should be much longer (been there, done that, took many months) Caffeine use especially at that level massively grows the amount adenosine receptors your brain has, and they don't just disappear overnight.
A 500ml Diet Coke (assuming you don't mean the caffeine free version) also contains about 65 mg of caffeine, which is the same as an espresso. I'm not sure if you really quit. Caffeine is also in a surprisingly large amount of soft drinks you wouldn't expect.
Everybody's physiology is different, but I drank a full pot of coffee every day, for about 15 years.
After Getting Older™, I was noticing more and more effects that I didn't like, so I made the decision to (mostly) detox off caffeine using decaf beans. Cold turkey would have destroyed me. I went with the following schedule:
* Week 1: 75% caffeinated/25% decaf beans
* Week 2: 50% caf/50% decaf
* Week 3: 25% caf/75% decaf
* Week 4: 100% decaf
At week 4, I entered a full failure mode I hadn't yet experienced, namely migraines that were untouchable by OTC medications. Only caffeine helped. I tried to get through the week to "be done" with the weening but couldn't. So...
* Week 5: back up to 25% caf/75% decaf!
* Weeks 6-12: decreasing caffeine by half each week (to the point I was measuring beans using my home scale).
After week 12, I was able to go without caffeine, and now I drink 1 cup of coffee and, if I'm feeling wild, I'll occasionally get an espresso.
My physiological dependence on caffeine was no joke, but I feel a heck of a lot less anxious and jittery after cutting it down to where I'm now at.
My goal wasn't to completely quit. The goal was to keep my caffeine intake less than or equal to 400mg (the FDA's recommended max) and to cut it off at 2pm. I didn't cold-turkey cut off caffeine.
I stopped getting acute headaches after about three days; other prolonged side effects are harder to quantify.
I should also clarify, it wasn't 800mg every day (which I realize I didn't make clear), it was just one thing where I saw that at least a few days of the last week I had consumed 800mg.
Right now I think 800 mg/d of caffeine would send me to the ER lol. Discontinuing 800mg/d steady state, cold turkey... that would mean 3 weeks of migraine-like headaches
I couldn't even get away from 2 cups/day until i started hyperbolic tapering by slowly mixing decaf into my regular beans.
You're describing caffeine addiction. This also happens with coffee.
People at the office sometimes ask me how I manage to get up in the morning and be in a good mood without having a cup of coffee. I suspect that most of them are only in a bad mood after waking up because they have mild caffeine widthrawal.
I swore off energy drinks in high school after someone brought a case of them on the bus to a football game and I drank one and got horrible diarrhea and had to shit in the woods at halftime.
Probably. As I said, I've always hated coffee so I've never really had any desire to consume large quantities of it, so I can't speak to that.
I will say, though, energy drinks do become a relatively expensive addiction. A Monster energy drink can easily cost 3-4 dollars, so if I had three of those a day we are talking $10+ of cost. If you get off brands they're cheaper, but even still I think they're overpriced.
I know it's a meme that people pay like $6 for a coffee at Starbucks, but I think if you buy the coffee beans yourself or instant coffee it's relatively cheap.
Drip coffee has ~40-50% more caffeine per 8oz serving than Red Bull (about 90-100mg vs 65mg). The nice thing about coffee is that the mouth-puckering tannins make it harder to absolutely pound them, like one can do easily with cans of Red Bull.
Yeah, the real problem with Red Bull is that it's caffeine-spiked Gatorade. So you're drinking to satisfy cravings but also just because you're thirsty.
As a coffee drinker the "bizarrely addictive" comment does not resonate with me at all.
I don't really have trouble keeping myself to, like, 1.2 coffees a day. I can't imagine drinking 6-7 coffees in a day to get to 800 mg caffeine.
Unless you add ice or sweetener it's bitter and hot, so it's a lot harder to slide down the slippery slope of just drinking it whenever you're thirsty and simultaneously getting addicted to the caffeine and the sugar. To say nothing of whatever else is in the energy drinks.
Although I guess plenty of people who drive a lot do this with the sugary Starbucks drinks in the giant mugs.
I don't particularly like coffee, so it's not addictive for me as well. But neither are the energy drinks that I actually like. Conversely, there are people heavily addicted to coffee, whether you want to call that "bizzarely" or not.
So, we can haggle over details, but overall I don't see a dramatic qualitative difference.
Sugar free/low sugar energy drinks are really common, and most coffee drinkers I know are mixing in sugar or creamer or something in their coffee, so I don't think they're that different. Personally, as someone who is super sensitive to bitterness, coffee has never worked for me, so if I need a caffeine boost, I go for a sugar free Red Bull or a white Monster
I really don't know why people go so nuts over energy drinks. People casually chug coffee like crazy and then act like you're drinking nuclear waste when you drink a monster, and then you look at the ingredients list and it's like
- Water
- Sugar
- Vitamin B
- Caffeine
and the caffeine is basically equivalent to one cup of coffee.
I am with you here, especially given that the examples listed in the article were basically:
* Some young man downed 6 beers and "several" energy drinks, then dove into a lake, and subsequently died. His mother said that he grew up near a lake and a was a good swimmer, so their conclusion was to blame energy drinks.
* An 18 year old woman downed 10 jagerbombs (a mix of jagermeister liquor and an energy drink) and subsequently had multiple cardiac arrests. The conclusion, again, was that it happened due to some unique properties of energy drinks, and not the fact that she consumed an equivalent of 10 energy drinks+10 shots of hard liquor in a short timespan. Too much of almost anything is bad, and I have no idea what other outcome was expected here after consuming crazy amounts of liquor and caffeine like this.
* A 17 year old man died from alcohol poisoning after mixing alcohol and energy drinks (unspecified amounts of each), and that's somehow the fault of energy drinks instead of alcohol.
I am just baffled that they couldn't find more convincing examples, given how they claimed it was such a serious and prevalent issue.
I think the most convincing example isn't energy drinks but rather Panara bread's energy blaster drinks that they had to stop selling. [1] It seems like they used all the same ingredients common to a lot of energy drinks, but they used more of them.
>consumed an equivalent of 10 energy drinks+10 shots of hard liquor
a jagerbomb is not typically an entire energy drink. it's typically 3oz/90ml of energy drink. 10 jagerbombs would be ~3 redbulls. (which is still obviously a lot of energy drink and alcohol in a short time)
Fair point, but yeah, it is still quite a crazy amount, esp in terms of alcohol, even for someone like me. And I am saying this as someone with very strong alcohol tolerance, not as a (likely) smaller 18 year old woman with way less tolerance.
And how much of that is milk, honey, or just water from making weak coffee?
That’s the difference. What’s an extreme amount of caffeine compared to most people is presented as the normal servicing size. So the next step up is 2 of them.
I make it strong. No sweeteners. An ounce or two of heavy cream. The amount of caffeine is probably quite high.
Anyway, any concept of a "standard" coffee is substantially smaller and weaker than what any variant in the US actually is in practice, where espresso-based drinks nearly universally use 2-3 shots and drip coffees are poured in sizes ranging from voluminous to biblical flood. An 8 ounce cup of coffee is just unrealistically small here.
My point is just that 16 ounces of drip is not a "huge" amount of coffee in the US. It's pretty normal. Especially if you account for people going back for a second cup. I make no arguments about whether it's a good or bad thing.
A can of Monster is actually closer to two typical cups of coffee (usually a bit under 100mg vs 160mg). Though that doesn't change the point being made; nobody would blink at "I drink two cups of coffee most mornings". The various B vitamins also help avoid the jitters that caffeine can cause.
It depends on the drink, but there's often a lot more than those ingredients. The caffeine, while the same as what's in coffee per ml, you are looking at 600ml at a minimum for most of these drinks meaning you 2 cups of coffee for every serving.
Whenever I stumble upon articles such as this one, I always just mentally swap the words energy drink with "two coffees and a multivitamin" (or even "one coffee and a multivitamin" if we're talking about a Red Bull) and then the whole article just seems silly.
>> then you look at the ingredients list and it's like
>> - Water - Sugar - Vitamin B - Caffeine
I'm drinking a sugar-free Monster at the moment. The list is way longer than that. It also contains citric acid, erythritol, taurine, sodium citrate, natural & artificial flavors, L-carnitine L-tartrate, sucralose, sorbic acid, benzoic acid, ester gum, acesulfame potassium, inositol.
I was exaggerating a bit, but afaik none of the ingredients in that list are any kind of mysterious harmful ingredient specific to energy drinks. That's all pretty normal soft drink stuff, plus the carnitine and tartrate which are not very exotic supplements.
there seems to be 3 different issues in this article:
- mixing alcohol and energy drinks (health-wise, e.g. arrhythmia)
- mixing alcohol and energy drinks (psychologically, e.g. increased risky behavior)
- age restriction on energy drinks to prevent kids from drinking them
i am not positive how i feel on the first two. i could be convinced that the third is reasonable for some age group, though i think it would be silly to ban it for all under-21s.
My understanding is that part of the problem with mixing caffine with alcohol is that it can prevent someone from passing out; which is the body's defense mechanism against alcohol poisoning.
From that perspective I think that an argument could be made that restricting caffinated alcohol is regulating substances with known health risks.
Full disclosure: I like vodka Redbulls. So I'm not saying this like I'm someone who is moral panicking.
Four Loko had to take the caffeine out across the US years ago. Now it’s just 8 standard drinks in a tall boy for $4 - still very much a problem but no caffeine.
Vodka Red Bull always seemed crazy to me. Caffeine lasts like 6 hours so I drink one at 2 am, what the hell am I doing! Granted people do cocaine so maybe it’s inconsequential.
Drinking some coffee at 6 and 10 though before a night out, good move. Where I am, the nights can go to 4 or 6 easily.
There is actually quite a lot of variation from person to person in caffeine elimination half-life, from about 1.5-9 hours. Some of my extended family could drink a cup of coffee right before bed without issue.
I could believe the UK might try to ban selling coffee to under 21s too at the current rate, honestly. There's probably at least one study about stunting growth with coffee?
I mean, there's more than enough reasons to criticise or laugh at the UK that actually exist, without mocking a country for a hypothetical of someone online that hasn't actually been proposed by any politicians or, well, anybody at all?
Anything with any sort of flavor is argued as being sold to children these days. Except bubblegum flavored vodka I guess. Somehow that has always gotten the pass while people handwring over juul pods.
I'm not sure I follow what you're trying to say - at least here I don't see marketing campaigns for flavored vodka targeting children, and unlike energy drinks it's not on store shelves right next to soft drinks.
I never again want to work on a team full of people who drink a lot of energy drinks.
I'm not going to pretend I'm a saint and I only ever sip mineral water or kombucha (although I do like both), but that stuff sends people crazy in a long term way I've not seen before. I'd rather people were slightly tipsy after a lunch in the local pub than on that stuff.
There certainly is kind of a different culture around people who chug energy drinks compared to people who drink coffee.
Energy drinks in the fridge at a job sort of signals that this company is part of that "grindset hustle culture" startup, which itself likes to employ a certain..."type".
I think there's a certain type that you're talking about that does tend towards energy drinks like that, but it's not true in the other direction, as that type is a minority of energy drink drinkers. Just a particularly noticeable one.
I've not been a fan of them myself since I was a teenager years ago, but I've worked with quite a few people in all sorts of roles, whose drink of choice was whatever their favourite energy drink was, either having one occasionally or between one and a few a day, while being completely relaxed, mature, and just nothing to do with any sort of stereotypes you might think of in connection with energy drinks.
To all RB/Energy Drink consuments ... why do you drink RB instead of a good ol cup of coffee/tee?
Please ... don't just write "it tastes good" ... no it don't. A strawberry or a cherry from the tree tastes good but not RB.
I use on-the-go packets of energy drink powder that I drop into a small plastic bag when I travel. This allows me to have access to tasty caffeine anywhere I have water because I bring a bottle. Coffee does not offer the convenience or portability that energy drinks do.
I suppose I could bring instant coffee and drink it at room temperature or cold, but that seems sub-optimal.
I used to just carry caffeine pills with me, but people thought I was some kind of drug addict.
You can't ask someone why they like something more while just denying the most common, subjective reason. I don't like coffee because in my opinion it does not taste good. A peach red bull tastes just better in my opinion. Also, two things can taste good for a person at the same time. I like my energy drink which is easily accessible in my fridge but when I am out and a bout a fresh strawberry, banana or any other fresh fruit is of course better.
Speak for yourself, I love the taste of taurine. Plus there's something strangely satisfying about the taste of a standard diet Red Bull. There's no attempt at natural flavoring there: you can rightly tell God had no part in making it.
But besides that, energy drinks are an easy consistent way of getting exact amounts of caffeine. I drink pre-workout before gym days for that exact reason since it's a lot easy to get 200mg of caffine via one cold 10oz drink than trying to brew and chug two hot coffees at 8am.
Plus occasionally there's non caffeinated benefits; the Monster Rehab line really does seem to help in the morning after a night of hard drinking.
red bull doesn't taste great personally but most flavors of monster actually do to me. and they're less bitter than coffee and carbonated, which is nice.
They are consistent. They are cold. They are fast.
There is none of the variation that you have in a single cup of coffee.
The preparation process is pulling a tab. No French press, no aero press, no coffee maker, scale, grinder, bags.
They don’t warm me up, I don’t have to cool them down.
I can carry them with me and drink them when I feel like drinking them without needing to worry about them leaking.
They don’t stain clothes. Or teeth (but they do eat them)
They lack the biological enzyme that coffee has that causes you to rush to the toilet. Any bowel effect is purely from the caffeine and not the passengers that come along in coffee.
I like the colors and designs.
I don’t have to feel like I’m participating in massive Third World exploitation to enjoy caffeine.
Black coffee tastes bad, so it requires milk and sugar, but I like to avoid drinking my calories.
The powdered fast stuff taste like shit.
You never know what beans public places are using and if you’re even getting enough caffeine for your needs.
I asked a coworker who gave a few reasons. It's easier/cheaper to buy in bulk. He gets them by the case. He also like sweet flavors more than bitter flavors.
It's not like health food research is the bastion of good practice, or even okayish practice.
Humans are by default irrational, especially when it comes to health theater. We waste endless resources with organic farming and trying to figure out what we even mean when we call something ultra processed, because we want to eat what feels right, and we don't care a smidgen how often data supports our intuition, we just care that on the off chance it does, we amplify that research while ignoring everything else. (See also: https://xkcd.com/882/)
It doesn't take a big corporate overlord to wish addictive substances were healthy; we're always looking for an excuse to rationalize them. So what if fresh grapes have all the antioxidants we can use, we like to drink wine so we're only going to talk about wine having antioxidants. Plus, it turns out that people with bad health stop drinking wine, so surely that's why they have bad health. Is coffee and tea messing up our sleep and destroying our teeth? Well, lets try and find something good about it, or some variation of it, and ignore the probability that other foods could give us the same benefits without the side effects.
This doesn't mean a well designed experiment, instead of a biased study or meta analysis, can't find useful information, but it does mean you'll need to dig to find it. It also doesn't mean that we have to be teetotalers to be healthy, but being addicted to something can make it more difficult.
Everyone knows caffeine isn't that great for you, its already labeled and its not deceiving anyone and many abstain. What they should ban is Gatorade/Poweraid which is tricking everyone. Ask a nephrologist or cardiologist if they drink it! THE THIRST MUTILATOR!!!!!!!!!!!!
Im definitely in the minority but there’s just zero value to me in drinking an energy drink. If you need energy that bad, there’s several options that are less artificial with similar effects.
I’ve tasted a Celsius here and there, don’t get me wrong. I get the appeal, but it’s just silly to not consider the health effects. I’m also anti-syrup and sodas so I’m a bit odd I guess.
What health effects compared to other caffeine sources (pills, coffee)
I haven't really noticed any, or heard much studies that wouldn't apply to similar amounts of coffee at least. Do the other supplemented ingredients add a lot of harm?
No it is just a moral panic because college students like to drink vodka Red Bulls, as opposed to drinking Irish coffees or any similar combination of caffeine and alcohol.
No it’s not. The best case it gives you energy (it’s in the name!) to do whatever you want and it does no harm.
Assuming it actually does no harm, why wouldn’t you want more energy any time you want it, any time you drink some delicious fizzy neon green liquid?
I’m saying this as someone who doesn’t drink energy drink (because I assume and feel that it actually causes harm, not because I couldn’t use some extra boost in energy sometimes).
Energy drink company slyly changed energy drink policy! Hell, I figured the wall on the White House would be a ~~Brando~~ Red Bull logo, but even in Idiocracy, that president took advice from real experts.
I believe soda drinks are a big contributor to various cancers. Stop drinking it. It only gives advantages. There is zero absolutely zero positive thing about these extreme sugar drinks.
anyone in the thread old enough to remember when we trusted the tobacco industry to run its own studies on the safety of tobacco which found that tobacco was definitely safe, then later found that no one knows whether tobacco is safe or not so we can't regulate it until we're sure, then eventually found that the whole time everyone knew it was dangerous?
The problem with rational decisionmaking is there are vast areas where only irrational opinions are acceptable. Try the same line of logical reasoning for vaccines, low fat high carb diets, statins, uncontrolled immigration, various economic policies, and let us know how long until you get wrongthink attacks. There are vast irrational areas of discussion where even the faintest hint of rationality is double plus ungood.
A strong indication of addiction is mental backflips to avoid discussing the problem.
The story seems to be grain alcohol is as healthy for the human body as rainwater or mother's milk, its only the evil mixer that is causing ALL the problems. The problem isn't getting drunk and going driving, or getting drunk and going swimming, its... the mixer. Uh huh.
The story and the moral panic over it is big alcoholic energy. Now go out and have the standard several daily servings of ethanol, as long as you stay away from those evil energy drinks I'm sure you'll be OK because they're the only problem WRT excessive alcohol consumption.
People can make up their own minds as to whether they are willing to take the risks, but first they must be given accurate information. It is important to know if the studies that say something is safe has been funded by the industries that profit from it.
I have always hated coffee so I've previously had some kind of energy drink in the morning for weeks at a time.
Those suckers are bizarrely addictive. It's one thing to have one shortly after you wake up, but I found myself craving them later and later in the day, and of course that makes it harder to sleep...which makes me more likely to have energy drinks the next day.
I stopped the daily consumption when I realized I was having around 800mg of caffeine a day, which couldn't possibly be good for me. I quit energy drinks cold turkey and just did Diet Coke, which I cut off at 2pm; even with that weening off I still got headaches and felt miserable for three days.
I will still occasionally consume an energy drink if I'm traveling and I need to wake up super early, but thankfully these are very outlier events.
Feeling miserable for three days seems ... unlikely after 800mg/day of caffeine. I say that to mean, it should be much longer (been there, done that, took many months) Caffeine use especially at that level massively grows the amount adenosine receptors your brain has, and they don't just disappear overnight.
A 500ml Diet Coke (assuming you don't mean the caffeine free version) also contains about 65 mg of caffeine, which is the same as an espresso. I'm not sure if you really quit. Caffeine is also in a surprisingly large amount of soft drinks you wouldn't expect.
Everybody's physiology is different, but I drank a full pot of coffee every day, for about 15 years.
After Getting Older™, I was noticing more and more effects that I didn't like, so I made the decision to (mostly) detox off caffeine using decaf beans. Cold turkey would have destroyed me. I went with the following schedule:
* Week 1: 75% caffeinated/25% decaf beans
* Week 2: 50% caf/50% decaf
* Week 3: 25% caf/75% decaf
* Week 4: 100% decaf
At week 4, I entered a full failure mode I hadn't yet experienced, namely migraines that were untouchable by OTC medications. Only caffeine helped. I tried to get through the week to "be done" with the weening but couldn't. So...
* Week 5: back up to 25% caf/75% decaf!
* Weeks 6-12: decreasing caffeine by half each week (to the point I was measuring beans using my home scale).
After week 12, I was able to go without caffeine, and now I drink 1 cup of coffee and, if I'm feeling wild, I'll occasionally get an espresso.
My physiological dependence on caffeine was no joke, but I feel a heck of a lot less anxious and jittery after cutting it down to where I'm now at.
My goal wasn't to completely quit. The goal was to keep my caffeine intake less than or equal to 400mg (the FDA's recommended max) and to cut it off at 2pm. I didn't cold-turkey cut off caffeine.
I stopped getting acute headaches after about three days; other prolonged side effects are harder to quantify.
I should also clarify, it wasn't 800mg every day (which I realize I didn't make clear), it was just one thing where I saw that at least a few days of the last week I had consumed 800mg.
Right now I think 800 mg/d of caffeine would send me to the ER lol. Discontinuing 800mg/d steady state, cold turkey... that would mean 3 weeks of migraine-like headaches
I couldn't even get away from 2 cups/day until i started hyperbolic tapering by slowly mixing decaf into my regular beans.
You're describing caffeine addiction. This also happens with coffee.
People at the office sometimes ask me how I manage to get up in the morning and be in a good mood without having a cup of coffee. I suspect that most of them are only in a bad mood after waking up because they have mild caffeine widthrawal.
coke etc will destroy your teeth, if not cleaned off regularly.
( don't "ask me how i know" ! )
> if not cleaned off regularly.
Just rinse it off with water?
It's an acid, which softens your enamel. You should ideally rinse with something that remineralizes the enamel, i.e. flouride.
I swore off energy drinks in high school after someone brought a case of them on the bus to a football game and I drank one and got horrible diarrhea and had to shit in the woods at halftime.
I mean, you could say the same thing about coffee.
Probably. As I said, I've always hated coffee so I've never really had any desire to consume large quantities of it, so I can't speak to that.
I will say, though, energy drinks do become a relatively expensive addiction. A Monster energy drink can easily cost 3-4 dollars, so if I had three of those a day we are talking $10+ of cost. If you get off brands they're cheaper, but even still I think they're overpriced.
I know it's a meme that people pay like $6 for a coffee at Starbucks, but I think if you buy the coffee beans yourself or instant coffee it's relatively cheap.
$3-4 is a lot. They are 0.99 € here (tax included).
It very much depends on the brand. I was initially buying the Monster drinks at a local gas station where I believe they were $3.25.
Eventually I transitioned to the Aldi brand which was I think around $1.
I meant specifically the Monster drinks. Red Bull for example is closer to 2 € here. The cheapest Aldi energy drinks are 0.29 €.
You pay a significant markup getting it at gas stations, but looking at a Monster on Walmart.com, it's still like $2.68. https://www.walmart.com/ip/Monster-Energy-Zero-Ultra-Energy-...
I guess it's cheaper in Europe.
Drip coffee has ~40-50% more caffeine per 8oz serving than Red Bull (about 90-100mg vs 65mg). The nice thing about coffee is that the mouth-puckering tannins make it harder to absolutely pound them, like one can do easily with cans of Red Bull.
Yeah, the real problem with Red Bull is that it's caffeine-spiked Gatorade. So you're drinking to satisfy cravings but also just because you're thirsty.
As a coffee drinker the "bizarrely addictive" comment does not resonate with me at all.
I don't really have trouble keeping myself to, like, 1.2 coffees a day. I can't imagine drinking 6-7 coffees in a day to get to 800 mg caffeine.
Unless you add ice or sweetener it's bitter and hot, so it's a lot harder to slide down the slippery slope of just drinking it whenever you're thirsty and simultaneously getting addicted to the caffeine and the sugar. To say nothing of whatever else is in the energy drinks.
Although I guess plenty of people who drive a lot do this with the sugary Starbucks drinks in the giant mugs.
I don't particularly like coffee, so it's not addictive for me as well. But neither are the energy drinks that I actually like. Conversely, there are people heavily addicted to coffee, whether you want to call that "bizzarely" or not.
So, we can haggle over details, but overall I don't see a dramatic qualitative difference.
You could but you'd be quite disingenuous if you did considering that coffee delivers caffeine without a bunch of added sugar.
Sugar free/low sugar energy drinks are really common, and most coffee drinkers I know are mixing in sugar or creamer or something in their coffee, so I don't think they're that different. Personally, as someone who is super sensitive to bitterness, coffee has never worked for me, so if I need a caffeine boost, I go for a sugar free Red Bull or a white Monster
I was drinking the sugar free energy drinks, so I wasn't getting a ton of sugar.
Still not saying it's healthy but it wasn't because of too much sugar.
Sugar-free energy drinks aren’t rare (at least here in Europe), and people are putting fat and sugar in their coffee as well.
I really don't know why people go so nuts over energy drinks. People casually chug coffee like crazy and then act like you're drinking nuclear waste when you drink a monster, and then you look at the ingredients list and it's like
- Water - Sugar - Vitamin B - Caffeine
and the caffeine is basically equivalent to one cup of coffee.
To me the surprising thing is how much sugar people are willing to drink, but I think the same thing when my friend drinks Coca Cola.
I am with you here, especially given that the examples listed in the article were basically:
* Some young man downed 6 beers and "several" energy drinks, then dove into a lake, and subsequently died. His mother said that he grew up near a lake and a was a good swimmer, so their conclusion was to blame energy drinks.
* An 18 year old woman downed 10 jagerbombs (a mix of jagermeister liquor and an energy drink) and subsequently had multiple cardiac arrests. The conclusion, again, was that it happened due to some unique properties of energy drinks, and not the fact that she consumed an equivalent of 10 energy drinks+10 shots of hard liquor in a short timespan. Too much of almost anything is bad, and I have no idea what other outcome was expected here after consuming crazy amounts of liquor and caffeine like this.
* A 17 year old man died from alcohol poisoning after mixing alcohol and energy drinks (unspecified amounts of each), and that's somehow the fault of energy drinks instead of alcohol.
I am just baffled that they couldn't find more convincing examples, given how they claimed it was such a serious and prevalent issue.
I think the most convincing example isn't energy drinks but rather Panara bread's energy blaster drinks that they had to stop selling. [1] It seems like they used all the same ingredients common to a lot of energy drinks, but they used more of them.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/23/business/panera-lawsuit-charg...
>consumed an equivalent of 10 energy drinks+10 shots of hard liquor
a jagerbomb is not typically an entire energy drink. it's typically 3oz/90ml of energy drink. 10 jagerbombs would be ~3 redbulls. (which is still obviously a lot of energy drink and alcohol in a short time)
Fair point, but yeah, it is still quite a crazy amount, esp in terms of alcohol, even for someone like me. And I am saying this as someone with very strong alcohol tolerance, not as a (likely) smaller 18 year old woman with way less tolerance.
Monster has roughly the same amount of caffeine per volume as black coffee but their standard size is 16oz which is a huge cup of undiluted coffee.
My daily morning coffee is about that size though, so it's not huge to me. :)
And how much of that is milk, honey, or just water from making weak coffee?
That’s the difference. What’s an extreme amount of caffeine compared to most people is presented as the normal servicing size. So the next step up is 2 of them.
I make it strong. No sweeteners. An ounce or two of heavy cream. The amount of caffeine is probably quite high.
Anyway, any concept of a "standard" coffee is substantially smaller and weaker than what any variant in the US actually is in practice, where espresso-based drinks nearly universally use 2-3 shots and drip coffees are poured in sizes ranging from voluminous to biblical flood. An 8 ounce cup of coffee is just unrealistically small here.
My point is just that 16 ounces of drip is not a "huge" amount of coffee in the US. It's pretty normal. Especially if you account for people going back for a second cup. I make no arguments about whether it's a good or bad thing.
A can of Monster is actually closer to two typical cups of coffee (usually a bit under 100mg vs 160mg). Though that doesn't change the point being made; nobody would blink at "I drink two cups of coffee most mornings". The various B vitamins also help avoid the jitters that caffeine can cause.
It depends on the drink, but there's often a lot more than those ingredients. The caffeine, while the same as what's in coffee per ml, you are looking at 600ml at a minimum for most of these drinks meaning you 2 cups of coffee for every serving.
Whenever I stumble upon articles such as this one, I always just mentally swap the words energy drink with "two coffees and a multivitamin" (or even "one coffee and a multivitamin" if we're talking about a Red Bull) and then the whole article just seems silly.
>> then you look at the ingredients list and it's like >> - Water - Sugar - Vitamin B - Caffeine
I'm drinking a sugar-free Monster at the moment. The list is way longer than that. It also contains citric acid, erythritol, taurine, sodium citrate, natural & artificial flavors, L-carnitine L-tartrate, sucralose, sorbic acid, benzoic acid, ester gum, acesulfame potassium, inositol.
I was exaggerating a bit, but afaik none of the ingredients in that list are any kind of mysterious harmful ingredient specific to energy drinks. That's all pretty normal soft drink stuff, plus the carnitine and tartrate which are not very exotic supplements.
there seems to be 3 different issues in this article:
- mixing alcohol and energy drinks (health-wise, e.g. arrhythmia)
- mixing alcohol and energy drinks (psychologically, e.g. increased risky behavior)
- age restriction on energy drinks to prevent kids from drinking them
i am not positive how i feel on the first two. i could be convinced that the third is reasonable for some age group, though i think it would be silly to ban it for all under-21s.
My understanding is that part of the problem with mixing caffine with alcohol is that it can prevent someone from passing out; which is the body's defense mechanism against alcohol poisoning.
From that perspective I think that an argument could be made that restricting caffinated alcohol is regulating substances with known health risks.
Full disclosure: I like vodka Redbulls. So I'm not saying this like I'm someone who is moral panicking.
Four Lokos were indeed banned in Massachusetts.
Four Loko had to take the caffeine out across the US years ago. Now it’s just 8 standard drinks in a tall boy for $4 - still very much a problem but no caffeine.
The original caffeinated Four Loko formula was discontinued everywhere 16 years ago.
No, the bodies defense against alcohol is vomiting. "Passing out" increases risk, namely that you vomit while asleep, and then choke on the vomit.
Vodka Red Bull always seemed crazy to me. Caffeine lasts like 6 hours so I drink one at 2 am, what the hell am I doing! Granted people do cocaine so maybe it’s inconsequential.
Drinking some coffee at 6 and 10 though before a night out, good move. Where I am, the nights can go to 4 or 6 easily.
There is actually quite a lot of variation from person to person in caffeine elimination half-life, from about 1.5-9 hours. Some of my extended family could drink a cup of coffee right before bed without issue.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK223808/
Espresso martini is the popular caffeine and alcohol combo now.
Good callout! More popular with the ladies too
Crown and Red Bull (tastes better) is my order if I want to drink and dance.
if you're up til 6, your next day is already shot. who cares about caffeine at 2am at that point.
long live 4 loco
Opposition to energy drinks seems like a moral panic to me. Like I don't see anyone calling for bans on coffee and Irish coffee.
I could believe the UK might try to ban selling coffee to under 21s too at the current rate, honestly. There's probably at least one study about stunting growth with coffee?
Show ID at Starbucks in the yookay, what a country lol.
I mean, there's more than enough reasons to criticise or laugh at the UK that actually exist, without mocking a country for a hypothetical of someone online that hasn't actually been proposed by any politicians or, well, anybody at all?
Well, are either of those sold in cans and marketed to children?
Coffee is sold in cans yes. Very popular in Japan. Elsewhere... I think I saw Starbucks cans? Or was it bottles?
Anything with any sort of flavor is argued as being sold to children these days. Except bubblegum flavored vodka I guess. Somehow that has always gotten the pass while people handwring over juul pods.
I'm not sure I follow what you're trying to say - at least here I don't see marketing campaigns for flavored vodka targeting children, and unlike energy drinks it's not on store shelves right next to soft drinks.
I never again want to work on a team full of people who drink a lot of energy drinks.
I'm not going to pretend I'm a saint and I only ever sip mineral water or kombucha (although I do like both), but that stuff sends people crazy in a long term way I've not seen before. I'd rather people were slightly tipsy after a lunch in the local pub than on that stuff.
Different than coffee?
There certainly is kind of a different culture around people who chug energy drinks compared to people who drink coffee.
Energy drinks in the fridge at a job sort of signals that this company is part of that "grindset hustle culture" startup, which itself likes to employ a certain..."type".
I think there's a certain type that you're talking about that does tend towards energy drinks like that, but it's not true in the other direction, as that type is a minority of energy drink drinkers. Just a particularly noticeable one.
I've not been a fan of them myself since I was a teenager years ago, but I've worked with quite a few people in all sorts of roles, whose drink of choice was whatever their favourite energy drink was, either having one occasionally or between one and a few a day, while being completely relaxed, mature, and just nothing to do with any sort of stereotypes you might think of in connection with energy drinks.
Not sure how things work on the backend but we're missing "alcohol" or "vodka" in the headline on HN, as it is on the page.
That's okay, I'll still keep drinking that garbage.
> In England, an 18-year-old woman suffered three cardiac arrests after downing 10 Jägerbombs
I wonder if there was a pre-existing condition. And... three ???
She's fine now. Dancin on TikTok like everyone else
To all RB/Energy Drink consuments ... why do you drink RB instead of a good ol cup of coffee/tee? Please ... don't just write "it tastes good" ... no it don't. A strawberry or a cherry from the tree tastes good but not RB.
I use on-the-go packets of energy drink powder that I drop into a small plastic bag when I travel. This allows me to have access to tasty caffeine anywhere I have water because I bring a bottle. Coffee does not offer the convenience or portability that energy drinks do.
I suppose I could bring instant coffee and drink it at room temperature or cold, but that seems sub-optimal.
I used to just carry caffeine pills with me, but people thought I was some kind of drug addict.
>Please ... don't just write "it tastes good" ... no it don't.
taste is subjective. i dont drink them often, but i enjoy a can of original green monster occasionally because i find it tastes good.
You can't ask someone why they like something more while just denying the most common, subjective reason. I don't like coffee because in my opinion it does not taste good. A peach red bull tastes just better in my opinion. Also, two things can taste good for a person at the same time. I like my energy drink which is easily accessible in my fridge but when I am out and a bout a fresh strawberry, banana or any other fresh fruit is of course better.
Speak for yourself, I love the taste of taurine. Plus there's something strangely satisfying about the taste of a standard diet Red Bull. There's no attempt at natural flavoring there: you can rightly tell God had no part in making it.
But besides that, energy drinks are an easy consistent way of getting exact amounts of caffeine. I drink pre-workout before gym days for that exact reason since it's a lot easy to get 200mg of caffine via one cold 10oz drink than trying to brew and chug two hot coffees at 8am.
Plus occasionally there's non caffeinated benefits; the Monster Rehab line really does seem to help in the morning after a night of hard drinking.
I drink Celsius. Not every day, but here and there. Also coffee.
So, a real answer instead of "it doesn't"
- It doesn't taste like coffee. Relatively flavorful, but obviously a bit on the artificial side
- I drink a Celsius when I am targeting minimal stomach disruption (e.g. before a run or before intensive cardio)
- I drink a Celsius when I don't want to wait for the coffee-maker during early morning hours.
- I drink Celsius if I run out of creamer (for coffee), something I don't need anyways but I like.
- Cold brew is acceptable substitute if I don't have a Celsius.
- Normal brewed coffee otherwise.
Coffee gives me heartburn and acid reflux.
Energy drinks don’t.
Tea does fuck all for me caffeine wise unless I drink a full ass thermos of it. Mate kinda works but drinking it is a performance and a process.
> Please ... don't just write "it tastes good" ... no it don't.
How do you not know that different things taste good to different people?
Because I dislike the taste of coffee and people look at you weirdly when you pull out a 1 kg bag of caffeine and a portable precision scale.
red bull doesn't taste great personally but most flavors of monster actually do to me. and they're less bitter than coffee and carbonated, which is nice.
I drink both coffee (no sweetener) and Monster Ultra, because I like both. Although I prefer coffee.
I drink, sugar-free Red Bull and monster ultra.
They are consistent. They are cold. They are fast.
There is none of the variation that you have in a single cup of coffee.
The preparation process is pulling a tab. No French press, no aero press, no coffee maker, scale, grinder, bags.
They don’t warm me up, I don’t have to cool them down.
I can carry them with me and drink them when I feel like drinking them without needing to worry about them leaking.
They don’t stain clothes. Or teeth (but they do eat them)
They lack the biological enzyme that coffee has that causes you to rush to the toilet. Any bowel effect is purely from the caffeine and not the passengers that come along in coffee.
I like the colors and designs.
I don’t have to feel like I’m participating in massive Third World exploitation to enjoy caffeine.
Black coffee tastes bad, so it requires milk and sugar, but I like to avoid drinking my calories.
The powdered fast stuff taste like shit.
You never know what beans public places are using and if you’re even getting enough caffeine for your needs.
<jk> Coffee doesn’t give you wings. </jk>
I asked a coworker who gave a few reasons. It's easier/cheaper to buy in bulk. He gets them by the case. He also like sweet flavors more than bitter flavors.
Because they taste better than bitter dirt water.
It's not like health food research is the bastion of good practice, or even okayish practice.
Humans are by default irrational, especially when it comes to health theater. We waste endless resources with organic farming and trying to figure out what we even mean when we call something ultra processed, because we want to eat what feels right, and we don't care a smidgen how often data supports our intuition, we just care that on the off chance it does, we amplify that research while ignoring everything else. (See also: https://xkcd.com/882/)
It doesn't take a big corporate overlord to wish addictive substances were healthy; we're always looking for an excuse to rationalize them. So what if fresh grapes have all the antioxidants we can use, we like to drink wine so we're only going to talk about wine having antioxidants. Plus, it turns out that people with bad health stop drinking wine, so surely that's why they have bad health. Is coffee and tea messing up our sleep and destroying our teeth? Well, lets try and find something good about it, or some variation of it, and ignore the probability that other foods could give us the same benefits without the side effects.
This doesn't mean a well designed experiment, instead of a biased study or meta analysis, can't find useful information, but it does mean you'll need to dig to find it. It also doesn't mean that we have to be teetotalers to be healthy, but being addicted to something can make it more difficult.
Everyone knows caffeine isn't that great for you, its already labeled and its not deceiving anyone and many abstain. What they should ban is Gatorade/Poweraid which is tricking everyone. Ask a nephrologist or cardiologist if they drink it! THE THIRST MUTILATOR!!!!!!!!!!!!
can you point me to any research?
Feels like common sense to avoid energy drinks.
The best case is it does no harm.
Im definitely in the minority but there’s just zero value to me in drinking an energy drink. If you need energy that bad, there’s several options that are less artificial with similar effects.
I’ve tasted a Celsius here and there, don’t get me wrong. I get the appeal, but it’s just silly to not consider the health effects. I’m also anti-syrup and sodas so I’m a bit odd I guess.
What health effects compared to other caffeine sources (pills, coffee)
I haven't really noticed any, or heard much studies that wouldn't apply to similar amounts of coffee at least. Do the other supplemented ingredients add a lot of harm?
No it is just a moral panic because college students like to drink vodka Red Bulls, as opposed to drinking Irish coffees or any similar combination of caffeine and alcohol.
Yeah, seems like the problem is alcohol + caffeine, and at least in the US, those combinations in a single drink have been banned (ie Four Loko)
Glad to know you uncritically will sign up for the moral panic of the times.
> The best case is it does no harm.
No it’s not. The best case it gives you energy (it’s in the name!) to do whatever you want and it does no harm.
Assuming it actually does no harm, why wouldn’t you want more energy any time you want it, any time you drink some delicious fizzy neon green liquid?
I’m saying this as someone who doesn’t drink energy drink (because I assume and feel that it actually causes harm, not because I couldn’t use some extra boost in energy sometimes).
what harm are you thinking of? any pointers?
>The best case is it does no harm.
Isn't it pretty obvious that people drink them for... energy?
GEE GOLLY.
Energy drink company slyly changed energy drink policy! Hell, I figured the wall on the White House would be a ~~Brando~~ Red Bull logo, but even in Idiocracy, that president took advice from real experts.
I believe soda drinks are a big contributor to various cancers. Stop drinking it. It only gives advantages. There is zero absolutely zero positive thing about these extreme sugar drinks.
anyone in the thread old enough to remember when we trusted the tobacco industry to run its own studies on the safety of tobacco which found that tobacco was definitely safe, then later found that no one knows whether tobacco is safe or not so we can't regulate it until we're sure, then eventually found that the whole time everyone knew it was dangerous?
The problem with rational decisionmaking is there are vast areas where only irrational opinions are acceptable. Try the same line of logical reasoning for vaccines, low fat high carb diets, statins, uncontrolled immigration, various economic policies, and let us know how long until you get wrongthink attacks. There are vast irrational areas of discussion where even the faintest hint of rationality is double plus ungood.
A strong indication of addiction is mental backflips to avoid discussing the problem.
The story seems to be grain alcohol is as healthy for the human body as rainwater or mother's milk, its only the evil mixer that is causing ALL the problems. The problem isn't getting drunk and going driving, or getting drunk and going swimming, its... the mixer. Uh huh.
The story and the moral panic over it is big alcoholic energy. Now go out and have the standard several daily servings of ethanol, as long as you stay away from those evil energy drinks I'm sure you'll be OK because they're the only problem WRT excessive alcohol consumption.
The better question should be: Is it any of our business?
The answer is No. It is none of your business. Go live your life and quit trying to control others, which is all this nonsense is about.
People can make up their own minds as to whether they are willing to take the risks, but first they must be given accurate information. It is important to know if the studies that say something is safe has been funded by the industries that profit from it.
It sure is our business if companies are misappropriating science to sell harmful products or advertize harmful misuse of their products.