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Dubious research tied to Red Bull has shaped energy drink policy
- Lammy 3mo agoThat's okay, I'll still keep drinking that garbage.
- john_strinlai 3mo agothere 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.
- randysalami 3mo agoVodka 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.
- rpmisms 3mo agoCrown and Red Bull (tastes better) is my order if I want to drink and dance.
- jpalawaga 3mo agoif you're up til 6, your next day is already shot. who cares about caffeine at 2am at that point.
- xnx 3mo agoEspresso martini is the popular caffeine and alcohol combo now.
- randysalami 3mo agoGood callout! More popular with the ladies too
- tomjakubowski 3mo agoThere 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/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK223808/
- anonzzzies 3mo agoCoffee makes me sleepy, for instance.
- harimau777 3mo agoMy 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.
- doctorpangloss 3mo agoFour Lokos were indeed banned in Massachusetts.
- willy_k 3mo agoFour 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.
- kube-system 3mo agoThe original caffeinated Four Loko formula was discontinued everywhere 16 years ago.
- TylerE 3mo agoNo, the bodies defense against alcohol is vomiting. "Passing out" increases risk, namely that you vomit while asleep, and then choke on the vomit.
- ge96 3mo agolong live 4 loco
- seanicus 3mo agoNot 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.
- exabrial 3mo ago[flagged]
- fhdkweig 3mo agoPeople 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.
- ryu2k2 3mo agoIt sure is our business if companies are misappropriating science to sell harmful products or advertize harmful misuse of their products.
- exabrial 3mo agoBetter spend your time going after those flat-earthers then
- rileybunny 3mo agoSay it louder for the folks in the back! I drink monsters on ocasion, there was a time I was drinking one a day. And it was exclusivelly people who couldn't go without multiple cups of coffe a day telling me how it's so much worse and how bad its going to be. Yes I am aware energy drinks are not the healthiest choice of drink. But you could say the same for anything that isn't water or naturally blended juice. Besides everything is bad in excess. But it's my body, I get to choose what and how much of it I consume!
- inigyou 3mo agoDon't most people grow out of the "I'm going to hurt myself by doing the exact opposite of my parents' advice" phase as teenagers?
- PaulRobinson 3mo agoI 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.
- xnx 3mo agoDifferent than coffee?
- tombert 3mo agoThere 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".
- swores 3mo agoI 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.
- tombert 3mo agoSure, I guess I've just worked at enough startups that advertise "keeping the fridge full of Red Bull" as some kind of perk, when in reality it kind of ends up being a code for "you'd better enjoy working long, long hours".
- googaar 3mo agoFeels 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.
- nemomarx 3mo agoWhat 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?
- ls612 3mo agoNo 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.
- AbsurdCensor 3mo agoYeah, 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)
- ls612 3mo agoGlad to know you uncritically will sign up for the moral panic of the times.
- AbsurdCensor 3mo agoNah, no moral panic here. I don't see the reason to combine stimulants with depressants, you then just mask the underlying issues with both. Hence often the regulation of the combination.
- yrjrjjrjjtjjr 3mo agoOpposition to energy drinks seems like a moral panic to me. Like I don't see anyone calling for bans on coffee and Irish coffee.
- nemomarx 3mo agoI 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?
- ls612 3mo ago[flagged]
- swores 3mo agoI 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?
- vablings 3mo agoIt is incredibly annoying at the self-checkout being asked to present PHOTO ID to buy a monster energy. I was once denied my beverage, so I walked back over to the meal deal area and purchased a Starbucks canned coffee that had THE SAME LEVEL OF CAFFIENE
- inigyou 3mo agoYou're making the mistake of assuming it has something to do with the caffeine content or caffeine being illegal. There's one pattern that all these rules have in common: Someone noticed a problem, so they added friction to try and reduce the problem. People are getting fucked up on Red Bull? Add friction to buying a Red Bull. People aren't getting fucked up on coffee? Then don't add friction to coffee. I know us engineer personalities would like to define uniform rules for all caffeinated products or not define any rules, and that's what you should do if you are making a medical robot to maintain someone's caffeine level, but that isn't really how the social world works. It's a quite straightforward loop of observation->response.
- cyanregiment 3mo ago> 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
- somasomasoma 3mo agoEveryone 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!!!!!!!!!!!!
- jtbayly 3mo agocan you point me to any research?
- tombert 3mo agoI 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.
- layer8 3mo agoI mean, you could say the same thing about coffee.
- tomjakubowski 3mo agoDrip 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.
- neutronicus 3mo agoYeah, 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.
- quickthrowman 3mo agoA 12 oz can of Celsius has 200mg of caffeine.
- munk-a 3mo agoYou could but you'd be quite disingenuous if you did considering that coffee delivers caffeine without a bunch of added sugar.
- superdisk 3mo agoI 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.
- SequoiaHope 3mo agoTo 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.
- andai 3mo agohttps://xkcd.com/1035/ https://xkcd.com/1035/
- Retric 3mo agoMonster 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.
- BugsJustFindMe 3mo agoMy daily morning coffee is about that size though, so it's not huge to me. :)
- Retric 3mo agoAnd 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.
- BugsJustFindMe 3mo agoI 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.
- frankzander 3mo agoTo 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.
- john_strinlai 3mo ago>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.
- theshrike79 3mo agoCoffee 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.
- tom1337 3mo agoYou 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.
- TylerE 3mo agoBecause they taste better than bitter dirt water.
- BugsJustFindMe 3mo ago> 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?
- tgsovlerkhgsel 3mo agoBecause 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.
- holoduke 3mo agoI 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.
- ratelimitsteve 3mo agoanyone 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?
- VLM 3mo agoThe 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.
- inigyou 3mo agoOr, the Occam's razor explanation: maybe the lines that you think are rational are actually irrational? "I can't be out of touch. It's everyone else who is wrong!"
- VLM 3mo agoA 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.
- nekusar 3mo agoGEE 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.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- dlcarrier 3mo agoIt'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/ 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.
- _doctor_love 3mo agoWhen I see headlines and stories like this, a male voice with a Mid-Atlantic accent pipes up in my head: "9 out of 10 doctors recommend Pall Mall cigarettes - they help guard against throat scratch!"
- drcongo 3mo agoI visited Finland about 20 years ago and Red Bull was illegal there, though I believe they've since allowed it.
- Kon5ole 3mo agoSeems like a good a place as any to ask this - anyone else feel no effect from either coffee or energy drinks? I can go from 4-5 cups of coffee per day at work (coffee machine) to 0 cups in the weekend and feel no different. Had bouts of doing 4-6 red bulls (or similar energy drinks) per evening into the wee hours as a youngster and still fell asleep at the keyboard - felt no different than drinking water or lemonade. Maybe related, I ran for an hour a day for a year but never came close to feeling anything like a "runner's high". Anyone else have similar experiences?
- Lord-Jobo 3mo agoI have ADHD and noticed an INVERSE effect of caffeine for years, it would mostly just make me tired. That was before being properly medicated with a stimulant. After that, caffeine works the same as anyone else. It’s very weird. In the internet age, I’ve learned this is pretty common for people with adhd. I have 6 or so years experience with serious running, and experienced a runners high exactly 1 time.
- hirvi74 3mo ago> INVERSE effect of caffeine for years It's likely due to some other factor or individual difference. To my knowledge, there is no evidence that stimulants affect people with ADHD any differently than people without ADHD. By differently, I mean having a paradoxical reaction that can only be attributed to having ADHD. Correlation does not imply causation, but people still try it all the time.
- inigyou 3mo agoHow come normal people take methamphetamine and go crazy but people with ADHD can take it to feel normal? (One of the less common prescription meds for ADHD is literally just meth but with the government stamp of approval on it)
- AlphaAndOmega0 3mo agoI'm a psychiatry resident, and I have ADHD. The myth is, in fact, a myth. More importantly, the dose of desoxyn (methamphetamine) used therapeutically for ADHD is *much* lower than what's consumed recreationally. That's really it. Use low doses, as prescribed, and the risks are minimal/comparable to most alternative stimulants. It's like asking why a society where everyone has cups of tea twice a day has a different relationship to caffeine than a frat house where they're drinking 3 cans of Red Bull a night.
- cess11 3mo ago"The coroner wrote that Mitchell had drowned, likely due to an arrhythmia triggered by the combination of energy drinks and physical exercise. She noted that he had a blood-alcohol content of about 0.1%, slightly over the legal limit for driving." That's a lot of alcohol. Where I live they'll for sure tear your license and sentence you to up to two years if you're caught behind the wheel at that level of intoxication. As for so called energy drinks and alcohol, I'd bet taurine is much more important than caffeine.
- DoctorOetker 3mo agoDoes this also apply to the non-alcoholic sparkling apple/grape/pear/...-juices mixed with vodka? Vodka-Kidibul in Belgium is quite nice. I don't know the brands in other parts of the world, but I see references to Welch in US... When I look at the diving pictures, I don't think I ever dived from that height, for locations that were'nt regularly used for diving, this entails risk on its own. Sometimes you see a bridge over a steep mini canyon and people diving. If shortly before you dive, you see people diving (even if you never dived there before) it is much safer to dive there than if you don't see people diving, even if you have personally dived there before: conditions under the water can change, submerged objects may have been thrown in locally, or rolled over a river bed from a different location, and if conditions under the water didn't change, the water level can simply lower and present new danger that way. regardless of energy drinks, alcohol can obviously cloud your safety judgment.
- andai 3mo ago>A considerable body of research suggests that incidents like these aren’t just chance or circumstance. Mixing alcohol and energy drinks was linked to higher rates of binge drinking, sexual abuse and drunk driving, according to a study conducted among U.S. college students. This sounds like it could be correlation? People who are more prone to risk-taking are more likely to mix caffeine and alcohol? Although, in that case, they could be considered a vulnerable population, which a ban would serve to protect. So I guess it makes sense either way.
- PunchyHamster 3mo agofeels like it wouldn't change behavior all that much just choice of the drug
- cindyllm 3mo ago[dead]
- inigyou 3mo agoPeople don't say to themselves "today I want caffeine and alcohol" and then search for products matching their preferred mix ratio. They just see a product meant to get them fucked up, and consume it. The selection of easily available products absolutely matters.
- jambalaya8 3mo agoI do that sometimes. Is there something wrong with that? Granted, rarely in the form of an energy drink.
- paradoxyl 3mo agoUntil real legal consequences like manslaughter charges are applied to liars who prostitute themselves to power, people will die for elite profits.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- rozab 3mo agoIn Scotland in the early 2000s, there was a moral panic over a tonic wine called Buckfast, made in Buckfast Abbey by an order of Benedictine monks. It's the kind of thing meant for your granny to have when sick. It contains caffeine and alcohol, and neds started drinking it because caffeine and alcohol both feel good (humans have known this for thousands of years). It quickly became part of the local youth culture, and was quickly blamed for all the deep-seated anti-social behaviour issues prevalent in the region. It was known as 'wreck the hoose juice'. Breathless tabloid headlines were written, schlocky documentaries were made (I was made to watch one in school), and politicians started laying the blame at supermarkets for selling the stuff. The big supermarkets stopped selling it of their own accord, and still don't to this day. They were hurt by the bad PR and like to get ahead of regulation, which is not toothless in the UK. Buckie, with it's now notorious reputation, started to be drank by artsy pretentious students instead of violent neds. And would you believe it, when it was drank by this different demographic, the problems magically disappeared! My point being, observational studies are useless here because only a certain kind of person is consuming a drink called 'FCKED UP'. Caffeine is one of the most well-studied drugs in medicine, and we know it's safe. Evidence to the contrary would have to be strong, not be anecdotal or observational.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- graemep 3mo ago> made in Buckfast Abbey by an order of Benedictine monks. Historically, yes, but after they lost their license to sell wine (a century ago) they licensed the name to a drinks business that scaled production up and changed the recipe.
- flextheruler 3mo agoI'm personally a much bigger fan of Vin Mariani. It's a wine made with cocaine alkaloids and endorsed by the pope. Unfortunately not as popular as it was in 1863...
- secretsatan 3mo agoI had a night out once and drank far, far too many vodka redbulls, felt awful for days afterwards, since then, just a wiff of an energy drink makes me feel nauseous.
- bluescrn 3mo agoWhy are cold drinks with sugar and caffeine seen as problematic, while hot drinks with sugar and caffeine are seen as perfectly good?
- mft_ 3mo agoOn the one hand it’s nonsense, as you imply. On the other, ‘energy’ drinks can often have far more sugar and caffeine than e.g. tea or coffee, and are obviously marketed heavily at young people, who can then find themselves consuming unhealthy amounts and/or forming addictions. So it’s not really a particular drink in moderation that’s a problem per se, but everything else that comes with it.