When I am very tired in the morning I will usually just pick up a coffee and that will get me through the day just fine. There has been a lot of back and forth about whether coffee is good for humans in the long run or not. I put a lot of terrible junk into my body pretty much every day so I don’t think a coffee here and there will really disrupt my trash body.
Energy drinks are a whole different story. When there is a warning on the can saying “Not recommended for children pregnant or breast-feeding persons or to be mixed with alcohol” and it also has a recommended two-drink maximum it already sounds like bad news.
I would say the first energy drink was probably Coca-Cola which contained cocaine until 1904 when fresh coca leaves were replaced with “spent” leaves which are the leftover leaves from the cocaine extraction process. Obviously they don’t do that anymore. Instead they use a coca leaf extract. Other cola companies followed suit into creating beverage companies with a little pick-me-up such as Pepsi which actually started being marketed as an energy booster. In the 1980s beverages such as Jolt Cola were marketed as having a higher caffeine content than any other cola beverage. But it was in 1987 when Red Bull was created in Austria.
Red Bull is the highest selling energy drink in the world with 5.387 billion cans sold in 2013. The drink was actually inspired by an energy drink invented in Thailand called Krating Daeng. The ingredients were modified to suit westerners. I guess westerners are really into flavoured cough syrup with a heavy dose of chemicals.
I think this is actually not that terrible of an idea. It lets the drinker know just what kind of thing they are consuming. Each gulp is a reminder that yes you are pumping a large amount of unhealthy gunk into your body just to make you more alert for a short period of time. The large warning label on the side is also a good indicator that your body is going to hell but the print is small enough to ignore if you really want to party.
The label also says that the drink is “appreciated worldwide by top athletes students busy professionals and travellers on long journeys.” I don’t know if these people can actually concentrate on anything that well after drinking one of these. I am drinking a Red Bull as I type this and it is making me feel really weird and displaced. Maybe I should go for a walk? I don’t think the drink would really help me study as my brain feels like doing 10 different things at once.
There is no claim that this drink will help me focus but the claim that “Red Bull Gives You Wings” was brought up in court recently where complainant Benjamin Careathers sued Red Bull because he did not get wings or any heightened intellectual or athletic performance. He won the suit and Red Bull has to pay $13 million to settle. Now $6.5 million will go out to about 1.4 million customers who can apply for a refund through a website. Maybe I should apply considering this drink is really ruining my concentration right now. This article is way too long and I am starting to lose focus. Rather my focus is on this bird squawking outside of my window.
Overall Red Bull is pretty gross unless you love drinking cough syrup and it makes you feel really strange. Kind of upbeat but like you are always needed elsewhere. Maybe to look at a bird or stare into the fridge for too long without actually getting anything. Maybe I just suck at concentrating in the first place and the Red Bull has just heightened that experience. This drink is awful.
