Sometimes coffee won't cut it. Sometimes you need something stronger, something with kick: caffeine, taurine, L-carnitine, ginseng and -- horny goat weed?
Well, maybe more caffeine anyway. Slick packaging, clever marketing and promises of enhanced performance, alertness and reaction time have made energy drinks the Jolt of this generation. But are they safe?
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To test the effects, taste and
consequences of energy drinks, my editor suggested I take a random sampling of a few of these potent potions. So, in a rare occurrence, he suggested I take $20 from petty cash and see what I could get.
I was excited about free anything, plus the chance to test the limits of human caffeine consumption. However, it would not be the nonstop party I anticipated.
Since more than 500 energy drinks were released last year alone, I had quite a few options. It's a nearly $3.5 billion-a-year industry, according to Beverage Digest. The drinks are primarily marketed toward teens and men in their 20s. That's not surprising when you consider the edgy names -- Monster, Full Throttle, Adrenaline, Red Bull and Cocaine.
I bought 10 different types of drinks, ranging in price from 99 cents to $2.50, some even being hybrids of malt-liquor and caffeine -- but more on that later. Since most of the larger cans (energy drinks come in two basic sizes: 8.4 and 16 ounces) recommend not exceeding three cans in a day, I decided to stretch the experiment over three fun-filled, sugar-buzzed, extra-edgy days.
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