Chicago – More than 500 new energy drinks have launched worldwide this year, and coffee fans are probably too old to understand why.
Energy drinks aren’t merely popular with young people. They attract fan mail on their own MySpace pages. They spawn urban legends. They get reviewed by bloggers. And they taste like carbonated cough syrup.
Vying for the dollars of teenagers with promises of weight loss, increased endurance and legal highs, the new products join top sellers Red Bull, Monster and Rockstar to make up a $3.4 billion-a-year industry that grew by 80 percent last year.
Thirty-one percent of U.S. teenagers say they drink energy drinks, according to Simmons Research. That represents 7.6 million teens, a jump of almost 3 million in three years.
Nutritionists warn that the drinks, laden with caffeine and sugar, can hook kids on an unhealthy jolt-and-crash cycle. The caffeine comes from multiple sources, making it hard to tell how much the drinks contain.
Some have B vitamins, which when taken in megadoses can cause rapid heartbeat, and numbness and tingling in the hands and feet.
But the biggest worry is how some teens use the drinks. Some report downing several cans in a row to get a buzz, and a new study found a surprising number of poison-center calls from young people getting sick from too much caffeine.
Danger only adds to the appeal, said Bryan Greenberg, a marketing consultant and an assistant professor of marketing at Elizabethtown College.
“Young people need to break away from the bonds of adults and what society thinks is right,” he said.
They’ve grown up watching their parents drink Starbucks coffee and want their own version.
Heart palpitations aren’t likely to scare them off. Most brands target males in their teens and 20s.
Greenberg said the fierce competition among hundreds of new drinks, with Austria-based Red Bull guarding the biggest market share, leads to a “ratcheting up” of taboo names as companies try to break out from the crowd.
Cocaine Energy Drink, which launched in September and sells in convenience stores and nightclubs in six states, is the latest example. Following complaints from parents, convenience-store operator 7-Eleven Inc. recently told franchises to pull the drink from its shelves.
The Swedish government has studied energy drinks and recommended they not be used to quench thirst or replenish liquid when exercising.
And they should not be mixed with alcohol.
Too late. Anheuser-Busch and Miller Brewing produce several “energy beers” – beer containing caffeine. And Red Bull and vodka has been popular for a decade.
A Brazilian study found college students didn’t feel as drunk as they actually were after drinking vodka and Red Bull. Their perception of their coordination and reaction time didn’t match objective tests.
The potential for accidents and alcohol poisoning worries Dr. Sandra Braganza, a pediatrician and nutrition expert at the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore in New York. She was surprised how little published research she could find on energy drinks.
“The truth is, we don’t know what kind of effects these ingredients can have,” Braganza said of taurine, glucuronolactone and guarana. “We have to start doing more studies on this.”
Earlier this month, a study found a surprising number of caffeine-overdose reports to a Chicago poison-control center. These involved young people taking alertness pills such as NoDoz or energy drinks, sometimes mixed with alcohol or other drugs. During three years of reports to the center, the researchers found 265 cases of caffeine abuse. Twelve percent of those required a trip to the hospital. The average age of the caffeine user was 21.
“Young people are taking caffeine to stay awake, or perhaps to get high, and many of them are ending up in the emergency department,” said Dr. Danielle McCarthy of Northwestern University, who conducted the study. “Caffeine is a drug and should be treated with caution, as any drug is.”
New brands are appearing at the rate of almost one per day, making it difficult for Denver blogger Dan Mayer to keep up. As a hobby, Mayer reviews each new energy drink he can find. His is not the only energy-drink review site, but it’s one of the most popular.
“I’ve reviewed a little over 200 now. For most of these, the companies contact me,” he said.
A Los Angeles company has asked him to design a new drink, but Mayer hasn’t quit his day job yet. Pressed to explain the appeal of energy drinks, the 24-year-old spokesman for the buzzed generation said: “It’s Starbucks for kids. With the tons of caffeine they put into these things, it gives you a little legal form of speed, essentially.”
