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Comment by superdisk | Hacker News Reader

I 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.

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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.

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/23/business/panera-lawsuit-charg...

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.

holy, that's quite a lot.

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)

Red Bulls are a pretty pedestrian caffeine content by today’s standards, 80mg/can. Other brands are usually 150-200 mg.

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 had 10 Jaeger bombs one time and I woke up in Belgium.

Did you have those jagerbombs in Belgium to begin with or while on the way to Belgium?

I had them at the Giraffe in Leuven.

So I was already in Belgium.

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".

I agree 100% but in the case of the 18year old the amount of caffeine involved is probably more likely to blame.

Still, wtf are you doing drinking that much caffeine. Following that logic we should also ban espresso martinis, Irish coffee, and coffee liquors.

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?

It's cultural.

Rave kids who listen to melodic dubstep drink Ghost because they like everything brightly-colored and artificial. Good ole' boys blowing stuff up in the woods drink Bucked Up or Rip It because they work hard and want something grab-and-go from Wal-Mart. Gamers love Bawls (or whatever the equivalent is now) because it tastes refreshing and keeps them up all night at LAN parties.

Coffee is for sophisticates who do yoga and listen to NPR and pay taxes and have jobs. It's unprocessed (drying, roasting, and fermenting be damned) whereas energy drinks are made in a factory. How would you rather imbibe your psychoactive insecticide: the natural way? Or the ARTIFICIAL way?!

Side note (as a guy with single origin beans in his freezer and an Aeropress): AMP Energy slapped and they should bring it back.

Cherry AMP was great until they started putting sucralose in it. It was close to how Mtn Dew Game Fuel used to taste before they... started putting sucralose in that.

This comment feels like reading a forum in the mid-2000s, haha.

The Rip It people are usually vets - Rip Its were the only ones you could get reliably while deployed in the ME.

I don't know anyone who actually drinks Bawls - most of my gamer and IT friends do Monster Zero and Monster Ultra. You can get them basically everywhere and the fruity ones actually taste pretty good.

LAN parties haven't really been a huge thing in a long time, sadly, outside of convention-style events.

The original AMP is still around! At least in the US midwest.

To 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.

https://xkcd.com/1035/

I drink black coffee, no sugar

I'm not "going nuts" over energy drinks, but the key ingredient is not caffeine, it is sugar

The evidence has been mounting for decades, sugary drinks are devastating public health

Monster 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.

My daily morning coffee is about that size though, so it's not huge to me. :)

And 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.

I 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.

> An ounce or two of heavy cream.

That’s 6-12% of a 16 ounce serving and even more of your “nearly” 16oz beverage.

McDonald’s is known for having strong coffee and a double espresso from them is under 150mg.

> That’s 6-12%

"Oh no!"

> McDonald’s is known for having strong coffee

Lol.

> a double espresso from them is under 150mg

McDonalds famously does not publish caffeine numbers because they aren't forced to by the government. https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/faq/how-much-caffeine-is-...

But this person did his own measurements and says you're wrong https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imc7Aime_cI

Anyway, here are published numbers we can find for reasonable comparison:

  Monster Energy 16oz cans
  Original Green Monster: 160 mg
  Monster Ultra / Zero Sugar: 150 mg
  Monster Lo-Carb: 140 mg

  Starbucks Brewed coffee
  Pike Place Roast: Short 155 mg, Tall 235 mg, Grande 310  mg, Venti 410 mg.
  Blonde Roast: Short 180 mg, Tall 270 mg, Grande 360 mg, Venti 475 mg.
  Dark Roast: Short 130 mg, Tall 195 mg, Grande 260 mg, Venti 340 mg.
  Decaf Pike Place: Short 15 mg, Tall 20 mg, Grande 25 mg, Venti 30 mg.

  Starbucks espresso is 150 mg per standard double shot, so e.g. a grande caramel macchiato is 150 mg for 16oz of liquid, just like the monster energy drink can.

  (In case you don't know, Grande, aka 16oz, is the most popular drink size at Starbucks, and short isn't even shown visibly on the menu.)

> "Oh no!"

No reason to flip out just because you demonstrated your assumption was incorrect. Don’t worry we won’t test if you actually drink strong coffee.

> this person

You can find random YouTube videos supporting anything. The YouTube algorithm specifically promotes wildly inaccurate results as they are more interesting.

Meanwhile offer sources disagree.

https://baristalife.co/blogs/blog/mcdonalds-caffeine-content > compiled them from McDonald's customer service

They don’t publish numbers for liability reasons as they can’t guarantee consistency across all stores, but finding the average isn’t difficult for them. Similarly people who are willing to sample across large geographic areas can find meaningful averages.

> most popular size

Most popular and representative are very different. You’re skipping a lot of their offerings. People can go from around 40mg of caffeine at Starbucks all well past 300, but 1-3 monster energy drinks per day starts high and skyrockets from there. Some days you want just a little more kick, and more granular options is a significant benefit.

https://www.caffeineinformer.com/the-complete-guide-to-starb...

> Don’t worry

Ok, I won't worry. But only because you said not to.

> compiled them from McDonald's customer service

It sounds like you didn't actually click through and read their source, because that's not where their source says the numbers actually come from. I'll leave finding the answer as a fun exercise. (Hint: the numbers have no relation to any McDonalds products except by USDA category)

> They don’t publish numbers for liability reasons

That's a funny thing you just made up for no reason. It's so strange that other major retailers publish numbers then, but I guess Starbucks is probably too small of a legal target to worry about such things.

Anyway, McDonald's statement on why they don't publish numbers, per my previous comment, is because they aren't required to, which is true.

> didn't actually click through

Actually, I think misunderstood what they said.

Effectively all nutrition labels are just using the FDA’s numbers on their ingredients list. They know how many coffee beans they buy and how many cups they serve. Brewing coffee isn’t going to summon arbitrary amounts of caffeine from the neatherworld.

> just made up

Actually it’s from an internal source though possibly outdated. McDonald’s is rather famous for losing a large lawsuit around coffee. They didn’t just change the temperature and call it a day but went full cya.

Not true, a 16oz monster has 140mg caffeine, a 12 oz starbucks has 235-270mg.

At the bottom of the label it’s listing caffeine from all sources 160mg here: https://www.walmart.com/ip/12-Pack-Monster-Energy-Drink-Zero...

So not the original is 160mg as are most of their options, only the low carb monster is 140mg meanwhile Java monster hits 300mg. https://www.caffeineinformer.com/caffeine-content/monster

Starbucks has a wide range of coffee at different sizes with different amounts of caffeine. A 16 or 20oz standard double expresso is 150mg as are many other options. https://www.caffeineinformer.com/the-complete-guide-to-starb...

I think at this point the zero cal/low cal ones are more popular. I don't know anyone who drinks Black Monster, while White Monster (zero cal) is so popular it's literally a meme. You go to a store and most of the shelf space is the low cal/zero cal options.

It’s not that significant but don’t assume low calorie means a specific amount of caffeine.

Monster Energy Ultra Sunrise, Sugar Free Energy Drink is 155mg which is an unusual number for them.

>> then you look at the ingredients list and it's like >> - Water - Sugar - Vitamin B - Caffeine

I'm drinking a sugar-free Monster at the moment. The list is way longer than that. It also contains citric acid, erythritol, taurine, sodium citrate, natural & artificial flavors, L-carnitine L-tartrate, sucralose, sorbic acid, benzoic acid, ester gum, acesulfame potassium, inositol.

I was exaggerating a bit, but afaik none of the ingredients in that list are any kind of mysterious harmful ingredient specific to energy drinks. That's all pretty normal soft drink stuff, plus the carnitine and tartrate which are not very exotic supplements.

Red Bull is a triumph of marketing over... well, everything else. It's not just, from TFA:

  For more than a decade, Red Bull paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for university professors to conduct research that has been favorable to the energy drink industry

it goes back well before that. It comes in a small can so it must be more potent than everyone else's sugary fizz, it costs more than everyone else's sugary fizz so it must be better, it tastes like ass so there must be some health or energy benefit to it, and taurine is about to be banned because it's so... so... well something, so get it now. Its success has been the subject of numerous studies by psychologists and behavioral economists.

The reason why drinks mixing caffeine and alcohol have often been banned is that, in studies not funded by Red Bull, there's a clear connection between that and higher car accident and sexual assault rates.

A can of Monster is actually closer to two typical cups of coffee (usually a bit under 100mg vs 160mg). Though that doesn't change the point being made; nobody would blink at "I drink two cups of coffee most mornings". The various B vitamins also help avoid the jitters that caffeine can cause.

ingredients aside, coffee tastes somewhat natural whereas most energy drinks taste like liquid sweet tarts. I have never had one and felt remotely like it might be healthy.

You are also cutting out preservatives, additives, sucralose, dyes and whatever else is in the long ingredient list.

I would say that's a very sugarcoated version of the Monster energy drink ingredients list[1]. The real list is ten time longer than the ingredients list of a cup of black filter coffee. And one of the items is "natural flavors", which could be hiding a long list of things all by itself.

[1] https://nutritionandingredients.com/monster-energy-drinks-in...

It depends on the drink, but there's often a lot more than those ingredients. The caffeine, while the same as what's in coffee per ml, you are looking at 600ml at a minimum for most of these drinks meaning you 2 cups of coffee for every serving.

Make a 12 oz cup of coffee and put 37g of sugar in it(12 of those little sugar packets at some restaurants). You will get weird looks too.

I think if college kids got really into espresso martinis you'd see a lot of pearl clutching there too.

Whenever I stumble upon articles such as this one, I always just mentally swap the words energy drink with "two coffees and a multivitamin" (or even "one coffee and a multivitamin" if we're talking about a Red Bull) and then the whole article just seems silly.

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