![]() The leading brands tend to have caffeine levels on par with many of the offerings at your local coffee shop. ![]() These super-caffeinated concoctions command a very small market share and typically lack national distribution. So just how much caffeine is in these drinks? There are energy shots on the market that boast 500mg of caffeine per serving (about five times the amount in a 5-oz home-brewed cup of coffee), but you’ll be hard pressed to find them at your local corner store. To the extent that caffeine boosts alertness, Jacobson concedes that this is a valid claim. As far as the FDA is concerned, “energy” means calories, and most energy drinks have those-but, as Michael Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest explains, “That’s not what they’re bragging about.” Energy drinks are marketed as “functional beverages,” which supposedly confer increased vigor and concentration. Regardless of what regulations are put in place and what the courts decide, should we worry? Most of these drinks are composed of little more than water, sugar, caffeine, and a proprietary blend of vitamins, amino acids, and herbs. Anais Fournier, a 14-year-old Maryland girl, died of cardiac arrest in December of 2011 after drinking two 24-oz cans of Monster Energy 24 hours. Even the courts may have something to say in the near future. The American Academy of Pediatrics weighed in against energy drinks for children earlier this year. These reports were grist for Senators Dick Durban and Richard Blumenthal, who have been pressuring the FDA to get tougher on energy drinks. Between 20, the FDA received five reports of deaths that might have been caused by Monster Energy and 13 that might have been caused by 5-Hour Energy. In the fall of 2012, the FDA revealed that it was investigating a series of deaths associated with energy drinks. Nowadays, we get our nostrums from the convenience store rather than the travelling medicine show.īut all this might soon change. Red Bull swore Baumgartner’s leap into the abyss was a serious mission to expand human knowledge, but like most aspects of the energy drink industry, the real focus was on showmanship. Red Bull, a privately held company, is rumored to spend 40 percent of its revenue on marketing, including sponsorships of extreme sports and spectacular stunts like Felix Baumgartner’s 128,100-foot parachute jump from the edge of outer space. With names like “Monster,” “Rockstar,” and “Cocaine,” these drinks are marketed to appeal to those with a taste for danger. Since their inception, the marketing of energy drinks had been tied up in the idea of excitement and rebellion. ![]() But while the market has experienced incredible growth over the past two decades, an accumulation of deaths ostensibly caused by energy drinks, an FDA investigation, and the general tenor of public alarm suggests that the honeymoon phase is over. If you wanted to sum up energy drinks, you could put it this way: A middling amount of caffeine combined with mega-doses of marketing and pseudoscience. We’ve always had a weakness for elixirs and potions that promise health and vitality, but nowadays, we get our nostrums from the convenience store rather than the travelling medicine show. The modern market for energy drinks is less than 20 years old, but the products are already firmly rooted in the dubious tradition of American patent medicine.
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