6 ms·

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 dr

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.

SequoiaHope 2mo ago
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.
- andai 2mo ago
  https://xkcd.com/1035/ https://xkcd.com/1035/
Retric 2mo ago
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.
- BugsJustFindMe 2mo ago
  My daily morning coffee is about that size though, so it's not huge to me. :)
  - Retric 2mo ago
    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.
    - BugsJustFindMe 2mo ago
      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.
      - Retric 2mo ago
        > 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.
        BugsJustFindMe 2mo ago
        > 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-in-mcdonald-s-coffee.html 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 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.)
- bpodgursky 2mo ago
  Not true, a 16oz monster has 140mg caffeine, a 12 oz starbucks has 235-270mg.
  - Retric 2mo ago
    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-Sugar-16-fl-oz/285540508?classType=REGULAR&adsRedirect=true 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 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-starbucks-caffeine https://www.caffeineinformer.com/the-complete-guide-to-starb...
    - throw2ih020 2mo ago
      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.
      - deleted 2mo ago
        [deleted]
      - Retric 2mo ago
        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.
delecti 2mo ago
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.
cogman10 2mo ago
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.
filoleg 2mo ago
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.
- john_strinlai 2mo ago
  >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)
  - filoleg 2mo ago
    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.
    - deleted 2mo ago
      [deleted]
    - andai 2mo ago
      I had 10 Jaeger bombs one time and I woke up in Belgium.
enraged_camel 2mo ago
>> 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.
- superdisk 2mo ago
  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.
input_sh 2mo ago
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.
worik 2mo ago
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
IncreasePosts 2mo ago
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.
ericmcer 2mo ago
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.
alexjplant 2mo ago
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.
- crysin 2mo ago
  The original AMP is still around! At least in the US midwest.
- opan 2mo ago
  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.
- throw2ih020 2mo ago
  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.
jayd16 2mo ago
I think if college kids got really into espresso martinis you'd see a lot of pearl clutching there too.
pseudohadamard 2mo ago
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.
munch117 2mo ago
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-ingredients/#original-green-monster-energy https://nutritionandingredients.com/monster-energy-drinks-in...

SequoiaHope 2mo ago

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.

andai 2mo ago
https://xkcd.com/1035/ https://xkcd.com/1035/

Retric 2mo ago

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.

BugsJustFindMe 2mo ago
My daily morning coffee is about that size though, so it's not huge to me. :)
- Retric 2mo ago
  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.
  - BugsJustFindMe 2mo ago
    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.
    - Retric 2mo ago
      > 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.
      - BugsJustFindMe 2mo ago
        > 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-in-mcdonald-s-coffee.html 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 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.)
bpodgursky 2mo ago
Not true, a 16oz monster has 140mg caffeine, a 12 oz starbucks has 235-270mg.
- Retric 2mo ago
  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-Sugar-16-fl-oz/285540508?classType=REGULAR&adsRedirect=true 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 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-starbucks-caffeine https://www.caffeineinformer.com/the-complete-guide-to-starb...
  - throw2ih020 2mo ago
    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.
    - deleted 2mo ago
      [deleted]
    - Retric 2mo ago
      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.

delecti 2mo ago

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.

cogman10 2mo ago

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.

filoleg 2mo ago

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.

john_strinlai 2mo ago
>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)
- filoleg 2mo ago
  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.
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
  - andai 2mo ago
    I had 10 Jaeger bombs one time and I woke up in Belgium.

enraged_camel 2mo ago

>> 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.

superdisk 2mo ago
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.

input_sh 2mo ago

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.

worik 2mo ago

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

IncreasePosts 2mo ago

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.

ericmcer 2mo ago

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.

alexjplant 2mo ago

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.

crysin 2mo ago
The original AMP is still around! At least in the US midwest.
opan 2mo ago
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.
throw2ih020 2mo ago
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.

jayd16 2mo ago

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

pseudohadamard 2mo ago

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.

munch117 2mo ago

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-ingredients/#original-green-monster-energy https://nutritionandingredients.com/monster-energy-drinks-in...