Our supermarkets stock an amazing variety of energy drinks with the weirdest names: V Guarana, Power Play, Monster Energy, Spike, Red Bull, and my all-time favourite for over-the-top advertising, Stripped Battery! We know they can give us energy, but can these drinks also have detrimental effects on our health? Read on...

One of my forum users recently told me she was drinking a caffeine- and vitamin-laced energy drink to keep her regular.

Consequently, I decided to investigate the nutrient contents and ingredients of these energy drinks and whether they can be used indiscriminately for purposes like the prevention of constipation.

Keep in mind that these drinks are not sports drinks, which are often used by athletes and recreational sportsmen and women to boost their carbohydrate and electrolyte intakes. These are drinks designed to give you a massive boost of energy.

Misleading information

The first thing that struck me about these energy drinks is that they're expressly designed to mislead consumers. Misinformation is presented in various clever ways:

a) Dark colours and illegible text

Most of the cans are in dark colours (black or midnight blue) and small lettering is used, which makes it difficult to read the nutritional and other information displayed.
Most consumers will probably not go to the trouble of trying to decipher the text on these cans and will, therefore, drink the contents while being blissfully unaware that they're ingesting massive amounts of sugar and caffeine and totally excessive quantities of certain vitamins.

b) Misrepresentation of volumes

According to food labelling regulations, the nutritive content of a foodstuff should be listed per 100g or 100ml, and also per serving in gram or millilitres.

The purpose of this regulation is to make it possible for consumers to compare different products with a similar content by looking at the 100g/100ml column. The ‘Per Serving’ column is intended to show you how much of each nutrient you'll consume if you have a serving.

For some of these energy drinks, the ‘Per Serving’ column lists the same volume as a whole can, which is the logical thing to do. However, a number of the products, especially the massive cans that may contain up to 473ml (Monster Energy – a "monster" of a can indeed!), list their ‘Serving’ as 240ml or half the contents of the can.

While it's feasible that some people may buy a large can of the energy drink and only use half the contents per day, I'm sure that the majority of users open the can and drink the entire contents. If they checked the nutritive content on the can, they would be mislead into thinking that they have only had half the caffeine and other ingredients, which would of course not be true.

c) Warnings

Some of these drinks display warnings on the can such as "High caffeine content", "Avoid drinking before sleeping" or "Not suitable for children, expectant mothers or persons allergic to caffeine".

Once again, it's highly unlikely that casual users will ever get to see these warnings, thanks to the clever way they're displayed against a dark background in illegible lettering.

Manufacturers are, therefore, protecting themselves against being blamed for overdosing the public with caffeine and vitamins by displaying warnings, but they do this in such a way that consumers won't easily become aware of this information.

Warnings also include instructions or recommendations such as “Don't drink more than 3 cans a day” or “Consumer Responsibility – Limit to 3 cans per day”. This statement appears on the Monster Energy can. In the latter case, this would mean that a consumer would have up to 1065mg of caffeine and B vitamin intakes exceeding 1000% of the RDA by being "responsible".

Excessive caffeine, sugar and vitamins

Anyone drinking only one can of such an energy drink will ingest between 75mg of caffeine (Red Bull, 250ml can) to 166mg of caffeine (Monster Energy, 473ml can).

Seventy-five milligrams of caffeine a day on its own isn't regarded as potentially harmful, as most international experts agree that the majority of people can have about 300mg of caffeine a day without suffering negative side effects or developing serious caffeine addiction.

But a person drinking one of the larger energy-drink cans, like the Monster Energy product, will have more than 50% of his or her caffeine allowance in one go. Having more cans a day could push up your caffeine intake to over 1000mg per day, which is three times more than the recommended amount.

The potential for developing side effects that include rapid, irregular heartbeats, restlessness, irritability, anxiety, insomnia, tremors, headaches, abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting and even ulcers, plus addiction, is high if you overindulge in these drinks.

For slimmers, it's also important to keep track of your energy-drink intake because those products that aren't artificially sweetened, contain about 50g of sugar and provide up to 867kJ per can (e.g. Power Play). This is a lot of energy (about 14% of your daily requirement if you're slimming), which could hamper your weight-loss efforts.

And then there are the added vitamins! While we all need to have small quantities of B vitamins every day to keep us healthy, drinking products that contain massive doses (e.g. 1320% of the RDA for pantothenic acid in Stripped Battery), isn't a good idea.

Just because small quantities of a nutrient are beneficial, doesn't mean you should overdose on vitamins. Excessive vitamin intake has been identified as potentially harmful and should be avoided.

How to handle energy drinks

Recent research has indicated that foodstuffs and beverages containing caffeine can help to reduce fatigue, or help you stay awake and remain alert in situations where you need to concentrate.

So, if you have the occasional energy drink when you're feeling tired and washed out, it will probably not do you any harm.


Safety tips
  • Don't drink these beverages every day
  • Select the smaller cans to keep your intake within reasonable bounds
  • Don't have more than one can at a time, especially if you purchase one of those mega-cans that contain 400ml or more
  • Be aware of the danger of addiction and be careful not to get hook on them
  • Don't use these drinks in the place of a balanced, high-fibre diet to keep you regular, or as a vitamin supplement.
(Dr I.V. van Heerden, DietDoc, June 2009)

Health 24 - Beverages - Cold drinks