by Christine Mattice

Created on: June 09, 2008   Last Updated: July 19, 2010

The ads are exciting. The names are enticing. Red Bull. Adrenaline Rush. Whoopass. They are part of an ever-growing list of popular energy drinks marketed to the under thirties crowd, a market that used to belong to soft drink companies like Coca-Cola and Pepsi. How did they do it?

By being anything but "soft," that's how.

Energy drinks give you, well, energy.

Duh.

In fact, the energy claims they make for their products are truly outstanding. Adrenaline Rush says that its drink will "elevate your game with high performance energy for your mind and body." Red Bull goes even further. It claims that its product:

Improves Performance

Increases Concentration and Reaction Speed

Increases Endurance

Stimulates Metabolism

WOW. It sounds like drinking Red Bull is like eating your veggies and popping speed at the same time!

Unfortunately, if you take away the veggies in this equation, that's exactly what you get when you drink most energy drinks, legal speed in a can.

Though most energy drinks imply that their stimulating properties come from such exotic-sounding ingredients as taurine, ginseng, and guarana, Dr. Roland Griffiths, Professor of behavioral biology at John Hopkins University disagrees with this hype. On Web MD, Griffiths says that, "the effects of these drinks are largely due to the presence of added caffeine, and the magnitude of the effect is completely caffeine-dose dependent."

Though most people don't consider it as such, caffeine is a drug. Yes, it can boost energy and alertness, as the energy drinks claim, but it can also cause "jitters," abnormal heart rhythms, irritability and anxiousness, among many other disturbing, and potentially dangerous, symptoms.

The FDA has long recognized caffeine as a drug, that's why they regulated the caffeine content of carbonated soft drinks. Unfortunately, energy drinks and commercial coffee beverages do not fall within this category, so there are no illegal limits to their caffeine content.

Apparently, energy drink manufacturers are taking full advantage of this fact. In 2006, Web MD reported that a group of Florida researchers tested the caffeine content of 10 best-selling energy drinks, 19 carbonated beverages, and seven best-selling commercial beverages. They found that, while most soft drinks they tested fell far below the FDA's caffeine regulations, most of the energy drinks they tested exceeded the maximum caffeine allowance for carbonated cola drinks.

This concerns experts who feel that these faddish, sweet, tasty beverages make it easy to consume dangerous amounts of caffeine and since, according to inteliheath.com, "young people already consume unhealthy amounts of caffeine, they don't need a product that raises that intake." Experts urge young people to drink these energy beverages with caution.

SOURCES

http://www.sobeadrenalinerush.com/

http://www.redbullusa.com/#page=ProductPage.Benefits

http://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20060316/caffeine-fue ls-most-energy-drinks

http://www.intelihealth.com/IH/ihtIH/WSIHW000/333/80 15/344084.html

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