Comment by Waterluvian | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Waterluvian | Hacker News Reader

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The LD50 of caffeine for my cat is approximately ten Monster Energy drinks?To an untrained mind, that simultaneously seems like a lot and not much at all. I guess given my cat is 1/10th my weight, that’s like me having 100, which feels like it should kill me.

Holy crap. A Dunkin Donuts Large Ice Coffee is 396mg of caffeine. That’s insane. That’s 4.5 Red Bulls.

I originally felt a wee bit dismissive of the article’s thesis. But wow, we are absolutely cranking up the caffeine content. I remember Jolt or Bawls or other drinks in high school being edgy because they had “twice the caffeine” (about 80mg for 355ml can).

But now we’ve got 400mg in a single beverage.

Is this a feedback loop? We keep increasing caffeine content because we need more for our beverages to have the desired effect for customers?

Holy crap. A Dunkin Donuts Large Ice Coffee is 396mg of caffeine. That’s insane. That’s 4.5 Red Bulls.

But to put that in perspective an 8oz cup of coffee has about 100mg of caffeine and up to 400mg per day is considered safe assuming someone isn't sensitive to caffeine. Scandinavian countries like Sweden and Norway consume 400mg+ of caffeine per day on average and that's just the average.

https://www.caffeineinformer.com/caffeine-what-the-world-dri...

> Is this a feedback loop? We keep increasing caffeine content because we need more for our beverages to have the desired effect for customers?

Jolt was marketed to kids, and had twice the caffeine of other sodas. Coffee is an entirely different beverage, marketed at an entirely different group (at least it was when I was in school). What was the caffeine content of coffee in 1950, and how much did people drink? That's what you really need to compare the Dunkin Donuts Large Ice Coffee against.

Well there’s also energy drinks that are double jolt.

> Is this a feedback loop? We keep increasing caffeine content because we need more for our beverages to have the desired effect for customers?

Tolerance, or physical addiction is exactly that. A given dose is less effective after a certain amount of repeated use and a larger dose is required for the same effect. Not using the drug at all may cause withdrawal symptoms.

And now we’re selling a litre of iced coffee in a single serving vessel, which has 396mg of caffeine (or 475mg if you get the extra charged version).

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