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.
The caffeinated lemonade was amazing, but I have a very high caffeine tolerance (1000mg+ a day) and it made me jittery. Can’t imagine what effect it had on people without a serious tolerance.
That lemonade was stupidly high, 390mg caffeine. Only serious addicts could drink that without noticing strong effects.
What’s most remarkable about that case, is that it was a Panera. Could have added 50mg and it would still be more caffeinated than I would expect of the establishment. There was no need to go to the extreme end.
Even the strongest energy drink I've ever seen sold retail in the US had "only" 300mg of caffeine. And it came with plenty of signage on the packaging, indicating very prominently how high the caffeine levels were. I usually drink 200mg a day total (sometimes, but rarely, crossing into the 300mg territory), and you were totally correct, there is absolutely no way to not notice when that 300mg comes from a single drink.
In no world would I expect a random caffeinated drink at Panera to go above that.
>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.
I expected to take the train back home at 9. Instead I regained consciousness at five in the morning. Except I was already fully awake, when I "woke up", walking back to town. My body was just on autopilot. For 9 hours straight.
I found that very peculiar, and subsequently moderated my alcohol intake.
A friendly stranger sent my wallet back a few days later.
And doing "only alcohol" vs "alcohol plus energy drink" research is quite misleading: college kids are using it to mask the taste of alcohol, so it is basically a certainty that they'll drink more alcohol and drink it faster. And because alcohol is bad that will obviously lead to worse outcomes.
If you want to do proper research on the impact of the caffeine part you'd have to do, say, "alcohol with Red Bull" vs "alcohol with Sprite".
There seem to be heart issues involved in most of the energy drink related deaths. More specifically, people finding out they had heart issues, by dying.
So "those people just shouldn't drink caffeine then" would be the standard advice, except that some people apparently die before they realize that they're in that category. (It seems to be mostly young people? My country recently banned energy drinks for people under 18, they now check your age at the supermarket if you try to buy them.)
The strange thing is, if it's caused by caffeine, we'd also be hearing about people dying from having too many coffees, but you never hear about that. Maybe it's some of the other ingredients (taurine, guarana) or the combination?
* 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.