Red Bull, according to the popular energy drink’s adverts, gives you wings. Recent events in Australia, however, suggest that energy drinks in excess may also give you the uncontrollable desire to rob a supermarket at knifepoint.
Last spring a troubled student hopped up on 11 cans of the stuff drove from Darwin to Katherine armed with a butterfly knife and a balaclava. There he relieved a supermarket of A$17,000.
Reports prepared for his trial suggested the student may have been suffering from ‘caffeinismâ€, a psychosis brought on by extremely high evels of caffeine, causing excitement, insomnia, ‘psychomotor agitation†and rambling thought and speech, all of which may have contributed to the robbery.
This defence didn’t cut much ice with the judge, who handed the student a four-year suspended sentence, but he accepted that energy drinks may have influenced the boy’s behaviour. Let’s face it: most of us instinctively know you shouldn’t drink 11 cans of anything in one day.
Energy drinks have come in for bad publicity before. In July the Swedish national food administration issued public warnings about mixing them with alcohol or drinking after exercise when three people died shortly after drinking Red Bull.
The company insists there is nothing dangerous in its product. More than a billion cans of Red Bull were drunk worldwide last year, and all the available research has pronounced it safe. But if it doesn’t cause any harm, what does it do?
A century ago Coca-Cola was marketed as an energy tonic, and with cocaine as one of its original components it certainly had a case to argue. Red Bull is the biggest-selling of the current crop of energy drinks, but it has spawned many imitators, including Solstis, Burn and Lipovitan, which purport to boost alertness, concentration and endurance. In terms of their contents they are all much of a muchness: the two active ingredients are caffeine and sugar. Almost anything calling itself an energy drink contains one or the other, and most have both. Some also contain guarana, a seed extract that contains caffeine.
Red Bull is fizzy, straw-coloured and sickly sweet. It tastes horrible, and it is meant to: it’s an energy tonic, not a soft drink. A 250ml can contains about as much caffeine as a cup of coffee. It also contains a few vitamins, as well as taurine, a non-essential amino acid that is naturally synthesised by the body. On its website Red Bull refers to taurine as a ‘conditionally essential†amino acid, presumably because non-essential makes it sound like your body can take it or leave it, which it can.
Amanda Bristow, the principal researcher for Which? magazine, says that bold claims of increased concentration, stamina and reaction speed made by energy drinks manufacturers don’t amount to much: ‘They’re high in sugar and may increase alertness, but there’s no evidence to show they do it better than a cup of coffee.†Last January, after a three-and-a-half year investigation, the British advertising standards authority concluded that Red Bull had failed to prove such claims.
In nightclubs where ‘vodka-Red Bull†has become the drink of choice, however, energy drinks have a reputation as a kind of legal speed.
Rumours about Red Bull’s ingredients and effects fuel its popularity as a mixer and run counter to the manufacturer’s reassurances about its harmlessness. Though the company clearly benefits from the aura of dangerous mystery surrounding the product, its website does dispel a few myths, including the rumour that Red Bull is made from bull’s testicles. In fact, the amino acid taurine, though first discovered in cattle, is found in most meats and dairy products. The taurine in Red Bull is synthetic, which, as its makers are keen to point out, make the drink suitable for vegetarians.
The huge rise in the consumption of energy drinks is certainly increasing the amount of caffeine ingested by younger people. And though caffeine is regarded as mildly addictive and safe in all but extremely high doses, there is evidence to suggest that in the long term it can be a contributing factor in high blood pressure and heart disease.
Red Bull urges customers to use its product sensibly, much in the way they would coffee, which inadvertently points up a cheap alternative. Vodka and coffee? Surely with the right promotion, it could catch on.