Teens pressured to stay over-stimulated with caffeine
Saritha Prabhu
The Tennessean
April 14, 2008
People who know me
know I'm a caffeine-lover, who likes her chai and coffee
a few times a day. But even a borderline caffeine addict
like me is a little bewildered at the hyper-caffeinated
world in which our kids seem to live.
More specifically, I'm talking about the explosive rise
of energy drinks in recent years — beverages with names
like Red Bull, Monster, SoBe, Rockstar among others.
We're talking about some souped-up amounts of caffeine
here — some energy drinks have caffeine counts up to 350
mg, the equivalent of about 10 cans of Coke or more than
three cups of brewed coffee.
Even more specifically, I'm troubled by the marketing of
these drinks to kids as young as 12 and 13. I guess this
is one of those issues that hit close to home, for my
13-year-old son, along with others at school, was
subjected to a one-time marketing campaign for one of
these drinks. It was disguised as a snazzy contest with
prizes, but the real objective, of course, was to
introduce the drink to a young crowd.
Thirteen-year-olds drinking the equivalent of 10 cans of
Coke at one sitting — are we OK with that?
So I looked up energy drinks, trying to sift the facts
from the alarmism and found the following:
The FDA doesn't regulate caffeine content in energy
drinks, nor does it require manufacturers to list the
caffeine content on the cans. With no regulation, the
sky is apparently the limit when it comes to caffeine
content.
The energy drink market is a roughly $5 billion a year
industry and growing.
One random can once in a while for older teens isn't a
problem, apparently, but many teens typically don't stop
at one drink and sometimes get habituated, and that may
pose health risks.
Health professionals are already expressing concern over
these high-caffeine drinks, especially related to
consumption by kids — studies have linked caffeine
overuse by kids to hypertension, elevated heart rates,
interrupted sleep patterns and anxiety.
A recent Miami Herald article reported that some
pediatric emergency rooms have seen a rise in the last
couple of years in kids with symptoms relating to
caffeine over-consumption.
Perspective is, of course, key here. Teens' partaking of
energy drinks is, of course, not as bad as their
swilling alcohol or taking drugs. But taken by itself,
it is a potentially harmful habit.
To me, this issue does point to some bigger ones — like
how almost anything borderline-harmful can be marketed
if it is branded "cool" or "sexy"; like how many of us
parents will buy almost anything for our kids for
different reasons — under-informed, too busy to research
the product, want our kid to fit in, whatever.
It's also about a society that is pressured to stay "on"
all the time, about how many of today's teens and young
people ignore their body's pleas for rest, and go to
extraordinary artificial means to stay energetic. They
sometimes learn a little too late that the body can
withstand only so much abuse.
Regardless, the market always seems to come up with new,
ingenious ways to endanger people's health. Reading
about it gave me a headache, and I reached for a
pick-me-up — my usual, a 6-ounce serving of instant
coffee, containing, I might add, a paltry 60 mg of
caffeine.