wonder how much of this “energy” comes from cafeine and such compared to how much actually comes from plain’ol deadly addictive sugar…
Does it even matter? It’s clear they are shitty especially for kids.
Well it does to some extent, because maybe they’re just the tip of a wider problem, an easy target that lets conveniently 90+% of the hyper-sugar products, super-highly addictive and harmful, available to children…?
Idk what y’all think but honestly I’d say these little cans of poison need a warning lable like cigarettes as well
Cue the black market for buying energy drinks for minors.
¿Que?
Whoops lol, fixed.
Fa, fa, fa, fa, fa, fa, fa
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Imagine all the new super strong energy drinks created by a black market demand. This is awesome!
It’s unlikely to cause any kind of large black market. In the UK, energy drinks have been restricted to 16+ for a few years now. People don’t mind off brand vapes or cigarettes (for some reason), but people absolutely care about the brand of energy drink they are buying. Kids especially, I imagine most only buy them to look cool, and if no one knows you are drinking a “cool” energy drink then why bother?
Underage kids will still drink them, they will just pay inflated prices for them from 3rd parties.
People that are old enough to buy them legally will buy up packs of them and then sell them to kids who cannot legally buy them.
Same thing happens here in the US with alcohol and cigs.
That’s a good thing, that’s less total caffeine they ingest. Which is the entire point. To reduce easy access to high dose caffeine. The kids could just huff coffee if they really wanted, no solution needs to be perfect to have an effect.
I’m not saying it’s bad or good, I’m just saying that Poland will need to do more than just restrict sales to minors if they want to have long term success with this.
No energy drink is as cool as the one with the skulls on the can that glows in the dark and is laced with Chinese research chemicals you can only get one the dark web or from your older brothers friend that believes there’s a Nazi base on the moon.
Yeah… no. Energy drinks are already horrendously overpriced.
Only the wealthiest children will be able to buy them at black market prices.
Nice hearing about something Poland is doing right!
Is that unusual for Poland? I have no idea, myself.
Poland is doing a lot of things wrong on the judicial side.
Poland does many things right
…as long as it doesn’t offend the church.
Under 18s?
That’s not a very long wait from birth to Monster. Just 18 seconds?
The OP meant “under 18-year-olds”.
Good reddit joke.
You’re so funny.
It costs $0 to not be an asshole
18s is all this monster needs.
Nanny state shit.
It’s like you want to push people away from the center towards extremism .
I totally agree.
If not being able to buy energy drinks as a kid pushes you to extremism, you were already destined for that to begin with.
It’s a spectrum. They might not blow up buildings but might start hanging out in those forums. Shit like this is very unpopular with folks in the center of either side.
I hope this would also include products like “5 hour energy”, which are energy drinks, but in a smaller and even easier to shot down package.
Those kind of things aren’t really popular outside of America. I only ever see them in America
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Seen them in Thailand. Red Bull was originally in small shot format.cam from there, and it was adapted for other markets.
The Thai family of the pharmacist who came up with the formula still owns 50% of Red Bull.
The article notes what the law applies to.
The law, which goes into force at the start of 2024, defines an energy drink as a beverage containing over 150mg/l of caffeine or taurine, excluding products where those substances occur naturally.
“excluding products where those substances occur naturally.”
That seems like a dumb exception. It’s not like naturally occurring caffeine is somehow better for you. If it’s above that limit, then the law should apply to that as well.
It’s a lot easier to pass a law banning the sale of artificial drinks to minors than it is to ban coffee sales to minors.
Artificial drinks, not caffeine? Coffee is artificial drink too because it is human-made.
It nearly impossible to define energy-drinks in a way that does not include coffee, but include off-the-shelf drinks.
Coffee has its beans dried and roasted, then ground and seeped in water. If you’re going to call that artificial, then you are claiming that literally any cooked food is also artificial.
And you are correct.
For those who think energy drinks are not the same, please point out at which stage coffee is no longer coffee and why:
- Make coffee
- Filter it
- Evaporate more water
- Add sugar
I’m gonna go with the step you didn’t list which is soaking them in dichloromethane or ethyl acetate for several hours, or submersing them in high pressure, supercritical carbon dioxide, to extract the pure caffeine. Then adding that pure caffeine into a mixture of artificial sugars, preservatives, and food dyes.
But sure, that’s totally the same as something that’s essentially a type of tea.
Coffee has its beans dried and roasted
Coffee beans are dried. Then beans then ungo a Maillard reaction, caramelisation, pyrolysis and decarboxilation to form new organic componds
then ground and seeped in water
Then ground to maximize the surface area. The prouder is then extracted using unpure H2O as solvent. A higher temperature is needed to raise the solubility of the compounds.
You can describe anything that’s consumed by people with chemical terms and it’s gonna sound unnatural.
You remind me of that old joke site warning people of the dangers of the chemical compound DHMO (dihydrogen monoxide)
I would argue that naturally occurring caffeine is much worse than synthetic caffeine because it also contains rest of plant’s toxins and other not so good stuff.
On the other hand not that anyone uses sunthetic caffeine in their drinks. It is expensive as hell.
Rare Poland W
good for poland. I have a nickname for “Energy drinks”: Heart attacks in a can. If you want/need caffeine get a coffee or a pop like a normal person.
Good. When I was young, an energy drink almost gave me a heart attack because my heart was beating too fast. In my opinion, these drinks are dangerous.
How fast was it?
I was measured at 180bpm after a night of Red Bull and Vodka.
Only time I hit 180 was sober, no caffeine, the first time I won a 1v99 round of PUBG. This was a few months after 1.0. I had to lay down in bed and vibrate for a while. I have never felt like that before/since.
180bpm is fine. That’s basically my heartbeat when I need to catch the bus. So I sprint 500m uphill.
Yowsers. Glad you’re doing alright
I stay away fro the energy drinks now. A little coffee in morning is all I need.
and Vodka
Killswitch.
Zombie mode, engage.
Funny nickname, but have you got any evidence for your claims?
What is it that makes coffee better for you than an energy drink? I know they usually have an obscene amount of sugar and caffeine, but you can get that in coffee too. I make a drink fairly often with 4 shots of espresso, around 250mg of caffeine. It doesn’t have that much sugar but I could easily add as much as I wanted. A normal cup of coffee would of course be much better than an energy drink, but if energy drinks should have restrictions then why shouldn’t coffee too?
Everything makes coffee better. Energy drink is ultra processed crap, coffee is natural and has been used for centuries.
coffee is natural and has been used for centuries.
So is cocaine and opium. Are you joking? I honestly can’t tell.
You are comparing coffee to cocaine and I am the one joking ?
Well according to you, being natural and having a long history means its safe. Are you now saying that maybe a substance’s origin has nothing to so with how dangerous it is?
That’s what I don’t understand too. They can just buy a doubletripple espresso and add a lot of sugar to ease the taste. Maybe a bit of cinnamon hint too. What’s the real difference here?
The difference is popular conception. Laws aren’t set based on science. They’re set based on what enough people believe. People believe energy drinks are worse and thus they get regulated whether or not it’s true.
Advertising, audience, and stereotypes play a part in this too. Coffee is stereotypically consumed by older people, whereas energy drinks are often younger people (who older people find annoying). Coffee also has a much greater social acceptance that would make it controversial to regulate. End result is that it’s popular to limit energy drinks but unpopular to point out that coffee has far more caffeine.
It’s a weird trend. Products that are popular with youth and “seem” un-healthy get banned by populistic laws, despite limited evidence proving them actually being un-healthy.
The other prominent example I can think is vaping. I don’t even vape, but it’s weird to see it demonized as much as cigarettes, when the evidence for it being as harmful is very limited.
Laws aren’t set based on science.
That is big problem in our societies.
It’s the convenience I think. You can carry an energy drink in your backpack all day and consume it whenever. A coffee is more motivated so you order it when you want to drink it. But of course there are exceptions. It seems the goal of this is just to cut down the caffeine by making large doses less convenient, not to remove caffeine completely.
You can literally buy a coffee in the super market and it isn’t really better than an energy drink health wise.
What is it that makes coffee better for you than an energy drink?
He drinks coffee instead of energy drinks, therefore coffee is better.
Same thing with drugs. All the drugs I do are okay, all the drugs everyone else does isn’t.
It’s a childish mentality that we’ve yet to get over as a species, even in adulthood.
did you just make an assumption about what I consume? Damn, that makes you look pretty dumb. I don’t drink coffee, btw. I love the smell, never had it or tasted it. The only way caffeine gets into my body is through pop (Dr Pepper, preferably) and I guess chocolate since chocolate has caffeine. But definitely not the absurd levels of caffeine that energy drinks have
So are they going to ban coffee too for under 18’s as well or pretend that doesn’t contain the same/more caffeine than an energy drink?
If it’s not the caffiene content thats the issue are they going to ban all soft drinks if you are under 18?
I can’t speak much about Europe, but when I was in the beverage industry about 10 years ago, energy drinks often had ADDITIONAL ingredients (supplements) far beyond caffeine.
If you look on the back of those energy drink cans in the US, they don’t say Nutrition Facts, they say Supplement Facts. That is important, it tells you how the item is classified and whether it has to follow FDA rules on Foods or FDA rules on Dietary Supplements (like vitamins do).
And if you look at the list of ingredients in many energy drinks (I have a tub of powdered GFuel before me so I’m refreshing my memory using that–it says “Supplement Facts”), you see a lot of ingredients like L-Tyrosine or L-Citrulline Malate which never appear in anything categorized as a food with the “Nutrition Facts” label on it. These fancy designer ingredients are basically newly-developed things that do not yet have a long-term proven track record of safety when eaten regularly on an everyday basis like a food.
A “food” is expected to be eaten regularly, so the standard of safety is higher for ingredients that go in a “food”. There’s a specific list the FDA has that lists ingredients considered GRAS (generally regarded as safe). New ingredients have to be evaluated by the FDA to determine whether they can be treated as GRAS, or if they have to have additional regulation if a corporation wants to put them in a food, drink, or supplement.
Corporations, unsurprisingly, LOVE to throw all sorts of newly created ingredients in things, for marketing purposes, so they do a lot of shady shit like labeling their product as a dietary supplement–but marketing it as a food so people think it’s a food.
Something classified as a “dietary supplement” (as many energy drinks are) is not meant to be eaten regularly as a food item. It’s meant to be consumed less frequently to SUPPLEMENT other things you consume or put in your body. However, people often treat energy drinks as a “food”, as if they’re the same thing as pop or juice, which could potentially be dangerous to your health because the ingredients in them have not yet proven they have a track record of safety when consumed frequently in food-like amounts. (I’m not really talking about caffeine here, I’m talking about all the OTHER stuff they throw in it.)
Whether a drink is classified as a “supplement” or a “food” is important. It is a big thing, because the regulations for what can be put into something that’s a “supplement” is looser than what can be labeled as a “food”.
I don’t know exactly how Europe draws the lines or what the regulatory landscape is there regarding energy drinks, but it sounds like this ban is possibly because Energy Drinks tend to have ingredients that push the boundary on what is safe eaten in large amounts like a food and what might be more harmful like a drug. Europe is generally stricter than America when it comes to food safety.
The EU is a regulatory hellscape and it’s one of the biggest problems the EU has.
So are they going to ban coffee too
Probably not
You know, that wouldn’t bother me, and I’m a big advocate for personal choice and freedom.
It’s not caffeine, it’s sugar
Okay then why does Coca Cola get a pass or chocolate or any kind of confectionery or soft drink?
Coca cola? probably because they are Coca Cola. Also it’s like 10% sugar. Maybe energy drinks are higher in sugar?
Solid things? That involves some effort - chewing - and you are less likely to eat that much sugar as opposed to chugging it down from energy drinks.
Energy drinks have so much shit in it to help give you energy/keep you awake. Coke and other sodas have sugar and caffeine. And I never said that the others got a pass, they’re both bad for you, just one is way fucking worse.
So when they ban sugar and junk foods? I think they cause more problems than soft drinks :D
No more caffeine for you!
Next step: Poland bans tap-water to under-18s
Just because you have a debilitating caffeine addiction, doesn’t mean that everyone else does
in Estonia it is 17+ from the last time i heard
I remember being so confused when I was shopping there and I was asked for my ID. I did a double and triple take over what I had purchased to see if I accidentally bought alcohol.
eh, fair enough. teenage energy drink addiction has caused me years of insomnia. we already have an age restriction on energy drinks in the UK, though it’s 16 not 18
I don’t think that’s true anymore. The ban wasn’t formally finalised and was quietly dropped during the pandemic. The store I work at still sells energy drinks to under 16s. We used to have to check, but they changed it and took the warning off our tills.
ETA: stores can implement their own policies though, if they do wish to age check people buying energy drinks.
I have no idea what’s going on then lol. pretty much every shop I’ve been to has asked for ID when buying energy drinks
It is essentially a popular voluntary movement by stores.
Reading those comments drops your IQ by 5 points. Now calculate the economic impact that will have… You can’t because reading this comment drops your IQ by another 5 points :(
the whole point of banning energy drink sales to minors is that minors are at a higher increase of heart issues because their body can’t handle caffeine like adults. but sure, everyone else is the idiot on this one and “the economy” is definitely more important than kids’ health
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