Dubious Red Bull Research Shaped Global Energy Drink Policy
Dubious research tied to Red Bull has shaped energy drink policy
An investigation reveals how Red Bull funded university researchers to produce studies claiming mixing energy drinks with alcohol is safe. These biased findings directly influenced government officials to drop proposed age restrictions and warning labels. While independent research suggests significant risks, the company's campaign successfully undermined the evidence base to protect profits and avoid legislative intervention.
This is a campaign to protect their profits and to avoid legislative intervention.
- tombert
I 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.
- Kon5ole
Seems 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?
- superdisk
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.
- andai
>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.
- yrjrjjrjjtjjr
Opposition to energy drinks seems like a moral panic to me. Like I don't see anyone calling for bans on coffee and Irish coffee.
- DoctorOetker
Does 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.
- john_strinlai
there 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.
- PaulRobinson
I 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.