Harmful Energy Drinks on the News – Are they bad for you?

Energy drinks claim to unleash the beast or let you live life at full throttle. With names like rockstar, redbull or go girl.. they are often marketed to teens. Energy drinks were a 5.4 billion dollar industry! during 2006. Many kids are now relying on the “pick me up” these drinks provide. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University say some of the turbo charged drinks have potential harmful levels of caffeine in them.  As much as 14 cans of coca cola. Many doctors are now saying that energy drinks should have warning labels about the excess of caffeine. These drinks can be dangerous for people with cardiac arrest. It could even lead to death. Doctors also warn of restlessness, anxiety and insomnia.

How do energy drinks get away with labels & such?

They are marked as supplements instead of “soft drinks,”  so they don’t have to report have much caffeine there’s in them or comply with the FDA limits on caffeine. The FDA says soft drinks can’t have more than 71mg of caffeine per 12 oz.

Just so you get an idea:

Can of Coke or Pepsi has 35-40 mg per 12 oz (1 can)

Red Bull has 80 mg in 8 0z can

Wired energy drink has 294 mg in 16 oz can!

Adequate labeling for energy drinks is critical, people have been dying from these caffeine-packed energy drinks.

For an energy drink that you don’t actually drink but listen with headphones, check out Binaural Beats.

Tags: bad energy drink, caffeine, energy drinks news, teens

This entry was posted on Friday, March 12th, 2010 at 12:46 am and is filed under bad energy drinks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.