Is there such a thing as too much caffeine? I'm speaking specifically of caffeine in beverage form and more specifically of energy drinks.
For me, with a low tolerance for the stuff, nearly any amount of caffeine is too much. Not that I let that stop me from drinking a lot more caffeinated tea than I should.
As you may have heard, Coke and Pepsi both announced recently that they would include caffeine content on their product labels. At about the same time, Pepsi announced a June 2007 release for Diet Pepsi MAX, a slightly revved up version of DP that contains extra caffeine and some ginseng. Apparently a version of this product has been around for some time in several other countries.
According to a Reuters article, Diet Pepsi MAX will have about 1/3 more caffeine than Mountain Dew, which is near the high end of the caffeine range for "mainstream" sodas. According to Pepsi's numbers, eight ounces of Mountain Dew has 36 mg. of caffeine (Pepsi has 25). If you do the math, you'll see that Diet Pepsi MAX will have 48 mg. of caffeine, which is actually less than Pepsi's Diet MDX (50 mg.) and their AMP energy drink (74 mg.).
All of which palls, of course, when you stack it up against energy drinks. Which, quite frankly, seem to be getting a bit out of hand. One of the more extreme examples I've run across lately would have to be Spike Shooter, which contains a fairly staggering 300 mg. of caffeine per 8.4 ounce can.
Do we really need drinks with this much caffeine? Does it reach a point where maybe you should just start mainlining the stuff?
To put it into perspective, a can of Spike Shooter has about as much caffeine as you'd get from eight cans of Pepsi. To put things further into perspective, let's look at Energy Fiend's handy Death By Caffeine calculator. It just happens to have Spike Shooter on the menu and thus we find that a 165-pound fellow, such as myself, would need to drink only 37.54 cans of the stuff before I expire. Sounds like a lot, actually, but it's sure a lot less than the 312.81 cans of Diet Pepsi that I'd need to do the same job.
Ultimately, I guess it will be up to consumers to decide where the energy drink madness ends. If fans of the stuff want these super-caffeinated drinks, then I guess we'll keep seeing more of them. I'm inclined, however, to think it's a bit of a fad and before long the fuss will die down, leaving a relatively modest amount of these products on store shelves.
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