Blog Response #1
Oct 8th, 2011 by davidjhinku
Adelle Tepper came upon a very interesting article, one I believe involves an industry many post secondary students have tried at some point throughout their academic career. It’s an article about energy drinks, yes from Redbull the drink that “gives you wings” to 5 hour energy shot.
Recently though the Canadian government has put forward a plan to limit the amount of caffine that these drinks are allowed to have awhile not going as far as calling them stimulant drugs only to be sold in pharmacies.
While a consumer of energy drinks the first thought that came to mind was, the government shouldn’t be allowed to do that. Not wanting the drinks I had come to enjoy to be lessened in their value, it sounded like the government had overstepped its bounds; that is till I read on and found out the average energy drink has 80mg of caffeine, 100mg less then the imposed limit. It is the health departments role to protect the Canadian consumer from harms unknown to us but with the levels of caffine in a cup of coffee being higher I think they may have overreacted to the acceptence of energy drinks among youth.
Reffering to the chart on the right, you can see that a grande Starbucks coffee has over double the amount of caffeine as a Red Bull. It seems only fair that if the government is going to be placing caffeine restrictions on energy drinks they should look into implementing the same system to the coffee industry as well.
You can find Adelle’s original blog post here, or for the original article please check the link below.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/06/canada-energydrinks-idUSN1E79514D20111006