Unlike sports drinks such as Gatorade, energy drinks are marketed mainly as stimulants rather than thirst quenchers. They typically are carbonated, come in cans instead of bottles, and get much of their punch from caffeine rather than carbohydrates.
They are produced in flavors ranging from apple and citrus to berry and bubble gum, and in colors from pale yellow to green to hot pink. Some are quite palatable, but others tend to be overly sweet and cloying, or carry a metallic or medicinal aftertaste.
In an informal test of 10 commonly available brands, our volunteers rated market leader Red Bull the best tasting – a bit of a surprise, considering that the experienced imbibers at
BevNet.com in Massachusetts described it as “truly painful to drink.”
Among the others sampled in our test, Pepsi-
Cola’s SoBe and Coca-Cola’s Full Throttle tied for second, and Socko, marketed by Bliss Beverage of Tempe, Ariz., came in third. The also-rans, in order, included Nos, GoFast, Amp, Monster, BooKoo and Rockstar.
Another taster, Denver blogger Dan Mayer, who has posted reviews of more than 200 brands at bandddesigns.com/energy, favors the orange-flavored Monster Chaos. An up-and-comer, he says, is California-made Chronic.
Energy drinks used to be sold only in 8-ounce cans but have grown in size, as well as popularity, in the 10 years since Red Bull was introduced to the U.S. market. They’re now available in 12-ounce, 16-ounce and even 24-ounce versions, and at $1.50 to $3 a pop, compared with perhaps 75 cents for soda, they’re fairly pricey.
Moreover, while their caffeine content is sometimes hard to determine (beverage makers are only now starting to put such information on the containers), energy drinks appear to be packing an increasingly powerful wallop.
Red Bull and Monster, the two biggest sellers, contain under 10 milligrams of caffeine per ounce, or less than the 13 mg/oz in an average cup of brewed coffee, according to the British website
energyfiend.com. But some brands contain two to three times that dosage – or more than the 23 mg/oz in Starbucks coffee, which is meant to be sipped rather than gulped.
The most potent appears to be Spike Shooter, made by Colorado Springs-based Biotest and marketed mainly to adult body-builders. The drink, which has sickened some students at two Front Range high schools and now has been banned by Doherty High in the Springs, contains about 36 mg of caffeine per ounce, or 300 mg per 8.4-ounce can, plus an astounding 1,500 micrograms of vitamin B-12 – some 160 times the government’s recommended daily intake.
Like Redline, another highly concentrated offering, Spike Shooter carries a warning as strong as its impact. It admonishes consumers not to drink more than a half-can at first or more than two cans in a day, not to drink it on an empty stomach and not to use it if they are under 18, pregnant or elderly, or if they have high blood pressure, heart disease, asthma, migraines or other disorders.
