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The Glories of Red Bull
EnnaH writes "An article on the Times web-site stated that the popular energy drink Red Bull is under investigation in Sweden, after three people died shortly after consuming the drink. I thought that this may interest the Slashdot community, as I'm sure many of us drink a lot of these hyper-caffinated products and Red Bull is available on the ThinkGeek site." From the article itself, it appears that the problem isn't so much the Red Bull as people overdrinking with it and such. Ah, the wonders of nanny states.Update: 07/14 11:36 PM by H :So, for those of you who didn't pick it out - my comment about nanny states isn't one about Sweden - it's about system that try too hard to protect people from themselves. By all accounts, Sweden's a very nice place. *grin*
People die from using X? Sounds like FUD from M$.
Opensource propogandist ESR has also entered the world of dangerous consumables.
Controversial discussion website adequacy.org had an interesting article talking about ESR's penchant for the endangered bird, the Puffin.
Now an endangered species, ESR tasted its flesh and said:
My entree was a "wild game feast" -- medallions of reindeer, wild goose (Cathy had a wild-goose entree), and puffin. The puffin was the interesting bit; strong-flavored, not unpleasant, but oily.
The puffin is very closely related to the penguin. Could this Open Source advocate one day be seen chowing down on roast penguin in the wastes of Antarctica? With ESR, you never know.
I bet he would even drink 'Red Bull'.
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Interesting - I've been buying those Pretty brown bottles at my Favorite Asian market for well over a year now, and have been wondering which version came first.
I like the taste of the Blue and Silver version a little better than the brown glass version, but I find the brown glass version gives me a much larger kick, and is MUCH cheaper ($0.70 as opposed to $2.00).
I never really liked the gold cans that much - I think the metal reacts with the contents. (although it does taste a lot better than Shark)
Lately, my favorite weekend all-night codejuice hasn't been any of these - it's been a Mr. Brown with a splash of George Dickel, and a Taurine capsule...
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You could always try some Pernod - it's an Absinthe substitute with a lower alcohol content, and no wormwood; but I've heard the taste is pretty close.
It does the same cool color change thing when it hits water - I used to drink Pernod and water a lot right after I turned 21. I think part of the reason was that I loved to watch the Pernod swirl into the water...
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You must mean booze. Yeah, who would sell that? Or any form of tobacco.
Clearly, then, nobody would ever sell an unsafe product. The examples that I can think of, from cars lacking safety features to pharmaceuticals with serious side-effects (and let's not forget, from long ago, lead plumbing and even radium inhalers) must be misinformation planted by The Wicked Nanny State.
Mind the Gap
It's a Jello Biafra spoken word piece, not a Dead Kennedys song.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The press is already doing enough jumping all over it -- you heard about it, right? If you think that the risk you undergo by drinking this soda is excessive, then don't drink it. But don't pay a bunch of gov't folks to ban the soda so I can't decide to accept the risk and drink it if I want to.
A ban, of course! If there were a question of a civil suit, it would need to be handled by the families of the deceased; wouldn't be the government's job. It's a rare thing to see a government do a study of something, conclude that it can be harmful, and fail to somehow make it illegal.
You're contradicting yourself -- if manufacturers are being routinely sued into oblivion by defective product suits, then they *won't make defective products*, so you won't have to do your own testing!
If you find Pripps Blå a bad beer, you should really buy a can of Eurolager to a person that you hate. The taste reminds me of a sweaty horse, sprayed with dwarf piss. Only beer I have hated more is Budweiser because of it's lack of beer taste.
For a better beer, try Fifty/Fifty (cheap but pretty good) and, of course, the almighty Kilkenny. Having a cold Kilkenny in the summer head is worth almost anything.
War is one of the most horrible things a human can be exposed to. And one of the worlds largest industries.
That Rhubarb is mighty bad stuff. I know because I've seen it kill people. Let's Blame Canada and get it outlawed for the safety of the children!
What? I'm being silly? Okay mister, perhaps you could explain to everyone why you don't want to help the children.
And on, and on, and on .... *sigh*
RFC2119
The whole thing is sampled by Cold Cut on their Let's Play album. Very amusing, though obviously Biafra is on a big ass rant... too easily slipping into the inductive fallacy of the Slippery Slope.
-l
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> It does the same cool color change thing when it hits water
According to my first year materials lecturer, that's the "evil esters". They're soluble in water, and in alcohol, but not in most mixtures of the two. So they start dissolved in alcohol, precipitate out when you add water, and eventually dissolve again if you add a lot of water.
Then we moved onto the phase diagram for carbon and iron, which is rather more complicated...
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rant
I'm aware of this, really.
I was simply using his position as the lead singer of perhaps a more widely recognizable band as opposed to something like, say, his bid for mayor. Which was funny as hell...
Check my Go-related blog for beginners: DGD
"Rejoice Friends! Big Government Is Over.
...
A national law, establishing childrens bedtime.
Betime Patrol! will check up on you,
(Make sure your bracelets on,)
The Nanny State, to reach down your pants
to check and see if you've been moistening yourselves with any unauthorized substance without permission.
Tag Them! Curfew Them! Keep them down. Keep them at home, to school, to rent a video on the way home, and stay home, just like at work,
Do not gather after dark. Curfew! It's such a family oriented word. A much more acceptable, smiling, soft word. A much more palatable concept than "Martial Law". Put your bracelets on, you're safer when you're watched...
Don't go outside, youll set the alarms off..."
With apologies to Jello Biafra, lead singer of the Dead Kennedies and much more, whose spoken word was set to techno backbeat by Coldcut. Find the MP3 by Coldcut, "Every Home A Prison". (not the toned-down version by Keoki) It ranks about my favorite song ever.
Check my Go-related blog for beginners: DGD
ARGH! dammit, i wish i'd said that.
The wonders of nanny states, eh?
Like ones that make possession of marijuana a *criminal offense*?
What about states that suckhole to corporations, providing obscene tax breaks or environment law loopholes?
American citizens should be the *last* citizens on the face of the planet to mutter comments about "nanny states."
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
YUM, Redbull and Vodka is the alcohol of Kings. The best stuff ever if you are a supe lightweight like me. You don't feel the booze until it sneaks up and kicks yer arse. Yes children if you too would like a serious case of alcohol poisoning then try my favorite elixer of Redbull and Vodka
Rule of Life Number 2: Remember, it can all go to hell at any minute. --Jimmy Buffet
... and there are other states where possession of a single viable cannabis seed is a felony worth 10 years in prison (first offence too...) By the way, this is the same state where you can legally wager all your money away on a game you have virtually no chance of winning, and then the same day drive 20 miles outside of town and legally pay a person to have sexual intercourse with you. What a world.
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Yes, We have some fools running this place.
..
The monopoly is pretty good for the people though, the problem is the taxes.
Having one huge company selling all alcohol can be very useful.
They have just about everything you could ever want at reasonable prices (if the taxes were lower) due
to their huge volumes. If the obscene taxes were lowered this would ideal for the consumer.
Caffeine is probably not a good thing to mix with alcohol or workout. And Red Bull is 320mg/kg
The difference is that Microsoft is not state owned.
I've never had Red Bull, but I encountered a very similar situation you describe after chugging a 20 oz bottle of Jolt way too fast. I was really dehydrated after riding my bike to a 7-11, and promptly bought the bottle and drank it in under 2 minutes probably. Dizziness/blurred vision resulted. My unofficial diagnose .. don't drink any stimulants when your body doesn't have the proper amounts of water in it.
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Knowledge is, in every country, the surest basis of public happiness.
I'm just finishing a glass of Red Bull and vodka now
No problems here, mind you the kat wanssingrtg...f
.sd grfpdsf
grfd fg
lkadsk;/ ,
s . o. . i
Trolling is a art,
"Two of the victims, whose identities have not been released by the Swedish authorities, died after mixing the drink with vodka. The third died after taking several cans after a hard gym session."
So two morons die because they drank too much alcohol, and the third died probably from over exhaustion. They ingredients from one Hyper-Energy-Super-Mega-Caffiene-Drink to another don't change, they are all packaged in the same strange little can too. Somone else is probably gonna die because the commercials too literally "Red Bull Gives You Wings!" and pancakes himself into a busy intersection. There are over 6 billion people in the world, and as the Darwin Awards have shown, people die from incredibly stupid things everyday. But the drink is a convient scape goat, just like Ectasy gets blamed for everything ever gone wrong at a rave. A drink that kills people is very counter productive to what most people care about, the profit margin. But the media latches on to one thing and makes the entire populace scared to death of something. Energy Transmission Lines? Obviously the work of the devil. Radiation from Cellphones? Again must be the devil. People tend to believe everything they read in print of on a 'respected' website.
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Insert Witty Sig Here
Or, you could've just given them this link: http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/caffeine/caffeine. shtml, and not only have given them that interesting information about caffeine, but pointed to an excellent site with superb information about practically any drug.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
A few months ago, there was a Fox News report on Red Bull and alcohol. All day long they were hyping it up... "Tonight at 11... Red Bull and alcohol and how it's endangering your life!"
Because I occasionally drink Red Bull and vodka (which is trippy because you don't feel tired at all), I made sure to watch the segment which was well placed at the end of the 11 news hour. The startling discovery was that Red Bull and alcohol drunk in large quantities is not good for your heart.
Course, alcohol alone drunk in large quantities isn't good for your heart--so I chalk most of this up to needless sensationalistic journalism.
However, anything abused is almost certainly bad (if not fatal) to you.
And techies in Norway drink it... (along whith the above mixes :)
Yeah... I've bought it as Kratingdaeng too... In the the small glass 'medicine' bottles. I've heard that the active ingredients are in higher doses than red bull too, but as I can't read the bottle I can't tell for sure.
Does the trick though, and it's heaps cheaper. about $1NZ as opposed to about $3NZ for a can of redbull
The beauty of Red Bull is that the caffeine keeps you just above "stupor" level, so that you may continue to consume alcohol in vast quantites without passing out. Everyone knows that if you're passed out on the floor in a pool of your own vomit, you can't consume any more alcoholic beverages.
If Red Bull kills the occasional party animal, that makes it no less useful to the rest of us who are still alive enough to drink.
(Though, I'll be taking it easy on the Red Devils for a while.)
aÍÍ©ÍÌÍ£Ì'̽ͩÌÍzÍYÌÍÌY
Bull. 3 espresso coffee contains about 450mg caffeine.
2dl RedBull contains about 70mg caffeine.
--
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
People died from a specific, related cause. I'd DAMN WELL expect an investigation, which will most likely exonerate Red Bull, and maybe, just MAYBE, give the public some education about when not to drink energy drinks.
Heck, some kid here in Toronto died after a rave, and the front cover of the paper the next day had a picture of him with his mother's tag line "Please no more deaths!!" You know, because so many people die from using X and going to raves, as apart from the alcohol-related traffic stats.
I finally got to try out Red Bull on a trip to Chicago 2 weeks ago, and quite frankly can't see what the big deal is other than it being the new trendy thing to do. It tastes like Sweet Tarts candy and has less caffeine per volume than coffee. Honestly, I wish more people would turn on their bullshit detector instead of just following trends.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
BTW spelling: Uranium, Natrium/Sodium, Borium Aluminium, a system is not so bad to have.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
That's right! Red Bull promotes longer life spans! Of all the Red Bull drinkers, only three have been reported dead in national media! Turn to page E-7 and look at all the obituaries of NON-Red Bull drinkers!
Canadian immigration policies are working!
I saw it the other day in supermarket, well, Chinese supermarket. Obviously they immigrate many Asians who like to drink Red Bull.
Note: I'm also an immigrant, and depend on coffee to survive the hard work of catching up in Canada. Maybe I should try Red Bull. Not with alcohol though.
A sig is redundant.
I was under the impression that it wasn't made legal again, they just realised that it was never made entirely illegal and hence started importing it again.
:o)
What did shock me was seeing Absinthe in System Bolaget (Off license/liquer store in Sweden). Now if any European country is going to ban something alcoholic it'll be Sweden
What is the LD-50 lethal dose of LSD?
cpeterso
Do you have any more information or links about caffeine and ADD? According to this article "Pharmacotherapy of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: Nonstimulant Treatments
", caffeine is an ineffective treatment for ADD.
cpeterso
I just looked in my fridge. The gold cans say Kratingdaeng-L, but about half the bottles say Theoplex-L and the other half are Kratingdaeng-L. I shop at a couple of different markets, so one has Theoplex instead. It tastes the same, and the ingredients appear to be the same. Same company makes it too.
I like the carbonated austrian version a little better, but for less than half the price, I'll stick with the more potent Thai version. After all, it's the effect that I drink it for, even though it's still mighty tasty.
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As a reader from the country in which Red Bull was invented I would like to toffer some background information.
You mentioned later in the post you are from Austria. I hate to tell you this, but red bull was not invented in Austria, it was invented in Thailand many years before it ever came to austria. You can still get it in Thailand and many asian markets here in the US. You can get it in 200ml gold cans, 250ml gold cans, and 150ml tinted glass bottles. It's sold under the name Theoplex-L. Go to your nearest asian market and pick some up. The Thai version is not carbonated, but it's less than half the price of the Austrian version.
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Actually the caffeine content is not was is suspected for the deaths. The culprit is instead thought to be taurine which is a substance that regulates the salt levels of the body. That seems to me as a plausible explanation. It is a bit odd that the Times article completely fails to mention it, but maybe it was deemed to be too technical.
AFAIK it was only ever banned in France and Switzerland. In France because wine producers were pissed that people no longer drank wine and lobbied the government. In Switzerland due to anti-alcohol propaganda. (They claimed that a man brutally murdered his family while "high" on Absinthe. They failed to mention that he also was a nut case.)
Apparently the propaganda worked though, because a lot of people I know still think it's illegal.
Over-partied? Certainly this article ended up on the wrong site.
Except that sometimes only the dexo-rotary appears naturally, and only the levo-rotary (hope those two terms are right. It's been nine years since organic) can be made. Or vice-versa.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Mixing alcohol and caffeine just seems retarded anyway if you ask me. Mixing two brain altering chemicals is pretty stupid. Makes about as much sense as dropping acid and E at the same time.
:) Leaves me feeling even more tired in the mornings though... of course, that's probably something to do with all the running around madly and dancing like a dancey thing...
It makes wonderful sense. We call it a candy flip.
I'll second that one. Energy, happiness *and* that spaced out, skull-is-open-to-the-world feeling
deus does not exist but if he does
Also, his link to:
/. poster.
http://www.rangers.co.uk
Rangers are the Glasgow Protestant football (soccer) team, in opposition to the Glasgow Catholic team, Celtic. Fans of both clubs have been known to hold up the odd, erm, 'controversial' banner (I seem to remember somthing supporting the Ulster Freedom Fighters being shown at a recent Rangers game).
Again, off-topic, but hopefully illuminating the nature of another
deus does not exist but if he does
I came to know about Red Bull in '94 or '95 as something sold in Europe. And finally had chance to drink it in the U.S. last year.
It tasted surprisingly familiar to me. I am from Japan and energy drinks like Red Bull had been around all my life.
So, I am not surprised that Red Bull came from Thailand.
I did a little research and found this. According to other pages I found, the first energy drink was Lipobitan something in 1962 in Japan.
No wonder Red Bull tasted familiar. It has been part of the Japanese life to see commercials of energy drinks on TV everyday. The memories of those commercials are in the oldest layer of my memory. (I was born in '64, so Lipobitan predates me.) There are many kinds of those drinks in Japan. Some of them are only available in pharmacies, and could cost something like $20-$50. The strongest one I remember having (in 1989 or so) cost about $20 and it was only like 50ml. But the drink kept me going working for a disco with a flu and having not slept the night before.
I'm glad that drinks like Red Bull are available in many countries now. I'm drinking a can right now in Germany :)
It's a nanny state alright... :)
// Tre Kronor
But we sure have a great hockeyteam
If caffeine isn't habit forming, why do I get a splitting headache and mild shakes if i don't get my morning coffee? On the (addmitedly rare) occasions when I decide to decaf myself for a period of time, I am non-functional for the first week or so... Then again, my average daily morning caffeine dose is about 300mg, more as needed as the day continues, so it's a bit more than your average soda.
itachi
And I thought that Red Bull was, well, bull. It sounded like just another "energy drink" with a little caffeine and some hippie herbs (ginseng, bat guano, etc). Looks like it really does pack a punch.
Does anybody know where I can buy this stuff in Canada? ThinkGeek won't ship it out of the US. I promise I won't combine it with alcohol, hard exercise, or viagra.
Just imagine 30 million angry Canadians hopped up on Red Bull, with hockey sticks and no teeth, bearing down on California to collect the few hundred million dollars they owe us for electricity. Maybe that's why they won't sell Red Bull to us.
The aluminum in pop cans will not oxidize unless the can is open and exposed to air. So that argument is bullshit.
IMO, Coke/sprite/etc taste better in a can, but beer is better in a bottle. (Extra old stock being the exception).
Hands in my pocket
Here in Austin about 2 years ago there was a drink called a blaster, 1/2 can red bull and a shot of Jagermeister, that was pretty popular. Having had a few myself I can tell you that the combination is pretty powerful. One or two an hour can keep you bouncing off the walls for hours. The mix is critical, if you have to much alcohol then it wins and you just end up being an awake drunk which means that you seem to burn out fast. To much red bull and you end up getting 'twitchy'. I never really overindulged with them but I've seen a few people who drank them all night long. About the only side affects I ever saw, caused people to act like drunk coke (not the cola) addicts. I'm sure the combination is bad but the ingredients will kill you by themselves. Alcohol will kill you pretty easily, if not directly from overdose or overuse than indirectly from falling off decks, getting run over or driving. Caffeine will also kill you from overdose.
Sorry, it was a knee-jerk response to the "nanny state" comment at the end. (also the article notes it is restricted in Normay, Denmark, and France). Maybe I need to cut back on the Red Bull. :)
But the article does state the purpose of the investigation is to determine whether it is safe for human consumption, so a ban is a possible outcome.
the average consumer is going to have no idea what most of those ingredients on the side of the can will do
Who here isn't familiar with the effects of caffeine?
There is an important difference here between defective cars and Red Bull. With the car, you may not know there is a defect, and the manufacturer probably doesn't want you to know, so you certainly want someone (e.g., the government) maintaining some oversight!
But with Red Bull, the ingredients are on the side, and I have seen warning labels on cans of similar products. You know what it is, and you should understand what you're getting into when you drink it!
I would rather take personal responsibility over the chemicals I put into my body rather than have someone watching over my shoulder and banning Red Bull, etc. to "protect" me.
I felt the need to point out for the masses over here in the USA - the above poster is a bigot. The context is Northern Ireland, and he is promoting the Loyalist / Protestant terrorist "cause" (the opposite side to the pIRA; there are plenty of Protestant terrorists too, they're just not quite so famous over here).
The "1690" in the signature refers to the Battle of the Boygne, a widely celebrated (by the Loaylists) victory during the British invasion of Ireland under the reign of William of Orange.
The slogan "FTP" has nothing to do with TCP/IP, it stands for "F*** the Pope".
It is charming people like this that made otherwise beautiful province of Northern Ireland into a warzone and economic wasteland, a situation from which it is only now emerging; rest assured however that they are in the vast minority, and the majority of people from NI are peaceful and civilized.
I'd suggest that the poster go and peddle his hatred somewhere else, because it isn't welcome either here or in his homeland.
(Btw absinthe + red bull glows flourescent green under ultraviolet light - nice!)
But then so does plain old lager
And what about Thinkgeek, also selling over-cafeinated mints and drinks ?
-- Pure FTP server - Upgrade your FTP server to something simple and secure.
{{.sig}}
Yes, just imagine. I can also imagine that manufacturers try to put a safe product out because consumers tend to stop buying stuff the press is telling them is crap, and that the ones that don't go out of business.
Mmmm, food. Yes, inspection is a good thing for some kinds of food and other potentially life threatening items. Surely no one wants to buy an oven that regularly explodes. But I don't agree that government is the best way to guarantee that. Heres an idea -- a system of independent inspection companies. Let them sheriff each other and get ratings which go on a stamp that goes on the product. Then it is my responsibility to check that stamp before I buy something, or maybe stores won't carry items stamped with a poorly rated inspector. If not this way, surely it is possible to come up with a self-sustaining system that protects consumers without needing any more government then that required to investigate and prosecute fraud.
To me it is interesting that the presence of government testing of tobacco products and their finding of them being addictive and cancer causing did nothing to prevent them reaching consumers. The little white warning box and ban on advertising notwithstanding. But of course an out-right ban would have lead to a black market and associated crime as seen in the Prohibition, so it is a problem with no clearcut solution.
My armchair 20/20 hindsight idea would be to continue to allow people to buy cancer sticks as long as they signed a waiver with every purchase, removing the tobacco companies from responsibility for any side effects, and driving home to those addicted the high risk of continuing with their habit. Maybe this could also be a socially acceptable way to legalize recreational drugs, but I digress...*cough*
Yes, but they don't just investigate and make the results available. They create regulations, mandate tests and send inspectors, increasing your taxes AND the cost of the product. In other words, they assume that the manufacturer is up to no good, and that the consumer is an idiot. I don't believe this, but most do. Hence the nanny state.
With all respect, boy does this show you to be full of shit.
Absinthe is quite different from Jagermeister, though the flavours are similar.
Both have had a history of questionable legal status, i believe.
I can't say much about Jagermeister since i know little about it's history, but i can give some info on absinthe.
The reasons absinthe was banned are somewhat unclear.
The whole 'wormwood drives you insane' thing is rather misleading, you would need to drink an amount of absinthe sufficient to induce alcohol poisoning before you would suffer any ill effects from the thujone in the wormwood.
Prolonged use probably does have some risk attached, but if youre drinking enough absinthe for the wormwood to pose a problem, you've got much bigger problems from the alcohol.
The 'real' reason for absinthe's toxic effects were the dyes the manufacturers used (back in the day - nobody would risk doing this now) to enhance absinthes typical green colour - these dyes, based on bismuth and other toxic metals probably did drive people insane/made their hair fall out/teeth drop out etc.
Traditionally, absinthe is poured into a glass, and then ice water is dripped through a spoonful of sugar (using a special perforated spoon) into the glass.
The cold water, combined with the lowered alcohol content causes the 'louching' effect - where the liquid turns opaque, by precipitating terpenes from the alcohol solution, which were dissolved at the higher temperature/alcohol concentration.
I don't know much about Jagermeister, having only sampled it once at a friend's house. Jagermeister is slightly more viscous, like a liquer, while absinthe flows like water. - it should, it's typically >70% ethanol.
Both are herbally-flavoured drinks, chartruese being another type of this drink.
Not really my favourite drinks, but theyre great when youre looking for something a bit interesting.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
"Small bottled Red Bull", I think he was referring to some kind of hot sauce. :)
do you have any more info on the absinthe/red bull combo? Actually, what is the details of the whole absinthe legality in the UK? I was able to order the different ingredients to make some absinthe in the US, but I don't know if it's entirely legal to make/sell it. This is a wee offtopic, so you can email me personally if you'd like. mattwarren75@yahoo.com
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
ahem.... THC is not a dangerous drug nor is MDMA (used to be perscribed by marriage ecounselers). The dangers of MDMA include dancing like the white boy you are while thinking you look cool (more so than alcohol), thinking that you are popular, and completely depleating your seretonin levels for the next two weeks so that you feel like a blathering idiot.
Stop trying to say that the drugs your mommie told you are illegal are bad for you.
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"Counting in octal is just like counting in decimal--if you don't use your thumbs."
Please give your mod points to others, Im at the cap. They will appreciate it more
Overdrinking? Hmpf. Back in Europe, a year or so ago, I went to a "Night of the ad eaters" show. Middle of the summer, very hot weather, and the only cold drink to be found was Red Bull. I must have drunk 6 or 7 cans during the night, then went home at 6:30 AM and slept like a log. Can't imagine how can one die from drinking such a lousy "energy drink".
yes... the problem they had with the aluminium health thing was that they were storing the defective brain tissue in aluminium salt! so of course it had high levels of aluminium...
90 year old men with heart problems can die from heart attack after an overdose of viagra...
(Come on, use some common sense, people - just because a chemical can push your body to do mor, doens't mean it can handle it. It's like setting that overclock setting on your motherboard without adequate cooling...)
-=- SiKnight
Ya ever feel like stuff you read in the news, about the 'dangerous potency' of certain products is actually a result of extremely calculated publicity efforts from guys who know a little bit about urban legendry and guerilla marketing?
/. story as a roundabout way to drive sales of caffeinated
beverages.
Well you're a dumbass, then, because it happens all the time.
(holding nose while providing link to a Salon.com article about this very intentionally misunderstood beverage...)
I'll leave it to those more cynical than myself to accuse VA Linux of engineering this
Hemos wins the Liberterian Intellectual of the Year award. Keep up the good work, at this rate we'll be paying the police out of pocket to investigate crimes.
I hate to sound so much like an ass, but this Libertarian doublespeak needs to be called on. A techie who's pulled herself from a game of quake for a minute could learn a bit from the American labor movement and how there wouldn't be a tech industry if every five year old was expected to work in a factory instead of going to school.
he drank battery
WTF is battery?
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python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
a tablespoon full?!?!
I hope it wasnt pure caffiene, because when i have seen pure caffiene it is in powder form in baggies(looks like coke), and my guess would be that a table spoon full would be about 10 grams, enough to kill some poeple.
OTOH, if you like that but want something milder, try adding 2 shotss of espresso to 10 - 15 oz. jolt, and chug it. I was told the carbination in the jolt causes the caffeine and something else in the espresso to be ingested into you body faster. We uasualy refer to this as joffee.
-- free as in swatantryam - not soujanyam.
Many people also do not head the warning printed onto the cans, which explicitly states, that you should _not_ ever mix red bull with alcohol, due to the fact, that youw ould be mixing a strong stimulating neuro drug with it as well.
Ah... so that's why at every single Red Bull sponsored party I've been to (and there have been many) I've been offered Red Bull with vodka. Free.
jedrek
Caffeine is dependency-forming. This is the major reason for adding it to cola drinks: it increases consumer loyalty.
Come, come, now, you don't actually believe this bit of tripe? Big bad corporations manipulating us by spiking their drinks with addictive substances much in the way drug dealers spike "gateway drugs" like marijuana with heroin to make them more addictive and thus get more repeat business. Caffeine does not cause an addiction wherein someone simply must get his Coke fix... if anything someone addicted to caffeine would seem more likely to move up to more highly saturated foods than Coke (which, as you point out, contains not even half the amount of caffeine as coffee).
Cola companies add caffeine to their drinks because the consumers WANT caffeine in their drinks, and not because of a mass addiction to caffeine. I know a lot of cola drinkers, but very few (if any) caffeine addicts.
So, let's get this straight. You need caffeine, but only because the cola companies say you need it? Makes no sense to me. You want the caffeine because it helps you perform well, not because some company says you've gotten addicted somehow. By that logic, the blame for alcoholism falls squarely on the shoulders of the makers of alcoholic beverages, and the blame for gun deaths falls on the makers of the guns, and the blame for medical malpractice falls on the institutions who taught those doctors.
Grow up, people. Learn to take responsibility for your actions instead of passing yourself off as a victim of some entity. Rather than whine about how you don't perform well without caffeine, try to break yourself of the habit.
And for the record, I have read books that say that cocaine does not cause a physical addiction, only a psychological one. So perhaps you should see a therapist to help break yourself of this "caffeine addiction". What does that prove? Nothing, really, but whatever.
I personally would love to see them have to put there caffiene amounts on everything that contains it except fresh roasted coffee
Just what we need, more government regulation to help whiners deal with their problems.
Look, folks. I never said nobody gets addicted to caffeine. I simply responded to the statement that cola companies put caffeine in their beverages primarily to create addicts. If you got addicted to caffeine, well, that sucks, and you should have drank more responsibly--I frankly don't pity you a bit. But many more people can drink caffeine regularly without getting even remotely addicted.
I said COKE FIX, not caffeine/coffee fix. Big difference. If you would actually apply critical thinking instead of just responding with inane sarcasm, you might understand the point. I did not say nobody gets addicted to caffeine, I said cola companies don't put caffeine in their beverages primarily to create addicts. That would serve no purpose anyway, as these "addicts" would just move on to harder beverages, enervating the target market rather than bolstering it. And anyway, show a little self control and lay off the caffiene.
CHRIST ON A GODDAMN FUCKING CRUTCH! Tell me where I said "caffeine isn't habit forming"! I didn't say that at all! I don't feel like repeating myself YET AGAIN, so please read the following threads:
3 1&cid=413
3 1&cid=366
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=01/07/14/1772
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=01/07/14/1772
After doing so, go back to my post. If you still think I made the unqualified statement that nobody ever becomes caffeine dependent, then perhaps you really should lay off the caffeine, as it seems to have addled your brain.
Caffeine is dependency-forming. This is the major reason for adding it to cola drinks: it increases consumer loyalty.
Caffeine is a diuretic: it removes water and urea from cells and increases urine output.
Caffeine is a stimulant, only to a point. Once the body has become saturated, caffeine actually acts as a depressant.
Caffeine, like other stimulants, can help people with ADD, by enhancing the person's ability to focus on a goal instead of being distracted by everything else.
Normalized Comparisons (USA distributions):
Drip Coffee (7oz cup): 197-300mg/12oz
Brewed Coffee (7oz cup): 137-231mg/12oz
Red Bull (8.3oz can): 115.5mg/12oz
Espresso (1.5~2oz shot): 100-135mg/shot
Jolt Cola (12oz can): 72mg/12oz
Coca-Cola (12oz can): 46.5mg/12oz
Pepsi Cola (12oz can): 38.4mg/12oz
[
maybe they meant LAN parties... Then this is the right site.
chuckle etc...
So how many languages do you speak flawlessly?
Do tell.
if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans
Great... Absinthe was only just recently made legal again in Britain. Now I have to worry about not being able to drink it with Red Bull? Gaah!
(Btw absinthe + red bull glows flourescent green under ultraviolet light - nice!)
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http://www.gimbo.org.uk/
As has been noted, the effective substance in Red Bull can cause death, if someone was fool enough to consume insane amounts of it. Somehow, I have the hunch that not everything has been told in this case. I wouldn't be that surprised if ecstacy was involved.
But this piece of news did remind me of a science-fiction story I read. The power of statistics should never be underestimated when doing research on reason -> result field :) This is a story any statistician should read :)
There is no such thing as good luck. There is only misfortune and its occasional absence.
No Caffine addicts hu? Well have you friends that drink lots of cola not for a day and see who gets a spliting headache. BTW that is caffine with draw.
> Bullshit! Taurin does nothing besides tasting strange. The rumours are wrong.
Even according to Red Bull, you're wrong. From their FAQ:
"What exactly is taurine?
Taurine is a conditionally essential amino acid, which naturally occurs in the body. At times of extreme physical exertion, the body no longer produces the required amounts of taurine, and a relative deficiency results. Taurine acts as a metabolic transmitter and additionally has a detoxifying effect and strengthens cardiac contractility."
But for some reason our culture always treats death as an annomoly, which must therefore have a proximate cause.
I don't know what your culture is, but here in Scandinavia, it is not normal for young, healthy people to suddenly just die.
Most likely, if they die, there is something wrong. If there was no known reason, people will want to find out what it is, so they can try to avoid it. Red Bull has a fairly big effect on the body, and it would be stupid not to check if this could have been the cause. I'm not quite sure what your actual point is. Do you think they should just dig them down and say that, "well, statistically, someone was bound to die, and it could just as well be them", and forget about it? Isn't it much better to do an autopsy and other research to try to find out?
Apparently it also damages the part of the brain that detects sarcasm. When someone speaks of the 'dreaded FOO' he generally doesn't really dread FOO, but rather wants to mock those who do.
Having suffered from what can be described as heart racing: not really. You don't have a heartbeat of 220+ in pulse when you spot chicks do you? It's a terrifying experience (especially if you're sober) that I imagine may even lead to death if you don't notice it and continue raving full of drugs and alchohole. Instead you should lie down and be calm for about fifteen minutes up to half an hour.
Here's a link on panic attacks.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
There's no time to go to the hospital. I went there afterwards, but they didn't want me. They told me it is normal, and didn't have a clue what was wrong, what I should do and so on. So I changed my diet, stopped drinking cola/sodas with lots of sugar/beer in the middle of the week, started sleeping more, doing breath-exercises/yoga, meditation and worry less. In the beginning I had some similar problems, and then it passed.
I probably exhaggerated the pulse a little. It was probably more like 180-200. I'm not sure though, because it's hard to know without a watch handy. If _felt_ like it was as fast as the heart could go.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
I still remember a study I saw done where they injected spiders with various drugs to see what it did to their web making ability. Here is a link that has some information on the study. I could not find a "official" link to the study. But you can see get a idea of the effect of caffine on their ability to spin webs. Pretty amazing what caffine did to their abilities. Just got to wonder what it does to a human.
Right on. Three rips later, readin' slashdot, gonna go for a bike ride later. Weekend life is good...
Peace
~Religion is O.K., as long as it gets you laid.
Dude, what's your sig from. Interesting quote.
~Religion is O.K., as long as it gets you laid.
Something that has been scaring me lately is the Red Bull vodka drink. It's becoming quite popular, especially with the "Hang at the bar before I get to my 10-page paper that's due tomorrow" drink. The major problem with the drink is the caffeine-alcohol mix.
Alcohol -- depressant. Caffeine -- stimulant. Course, I've seen people who've had JD- or Baccardi-Cokes and have been fine, but there's more in Red Bull than just Caffeine that's an energy-booster. I've seen how people get after they've had two or three of them...they get really hyper and sweat a lot, but they lose their stamina real fast (they'll move like crazy on the dance floor but have to sit out after only one song). I'd actually be curious to see an actual study on this combination, because I think it's just a recepie for disaster.
And get your comparisons a little more in line. Yea, ectasy has gotten a real heavy focus these past couple years, but it's not just because of ectasy. It's because everyone's been an idiot and have been mixing it with alcohol, cocaine, marijuana, speed, and who knows what else. When you mix them like that, that's when "you start seeing angels."
Yep, recognize that. Still do RedBull-vodka when out dancing though. Maybe stupid - I'm a Swede, it seems we're the only ones affected :)
it's in my head
And they sure won't spend money to investigate their own products. And if nobody investigates nobody will be able to establish the link. Which makes the 'little guy' fairly small if they'd try to take things to court.
When money is the only ruler, and you rely on media to extert pressure on those with the money, you'll find that media is also about money=/
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Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Well, what can you say! They were warned! Red Bull says in every advertisements that it gives you wings and displays the figures who drink it as Angels. What more they need to say, damn it?
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Or the same sex in some situations
I knew it was bad to go overboard on the Taurin - it says so quite clearly on the can - but I'd never really considered the negative effects of mixing the drinks. And as I typed that last sentence I realised just how dumb that was of me.
Still, since I graduated I've got considerably less opportunity to go to these things anyway, so I guess I'll live.
Isn't it since that the aluminum (*spelling*) in cans are not so good, it mixes with the beverage and leaves traces of not so healty minerals in it. I could be wrong about this though, but one thing i do know, sodas taste different if they are in a can or bottle.
I dunno about the Danes, but we swedes recycle the cans too, and we get a little money for it too.
Actually, caffine was covered in a previous /. article. There is even a link to the caffine vault which has a FAQ on doseage.
Thus heart racing appears, rapid breath, swetaing and simialr symptoms
so basically it is like talking to a member of the opsite sex?
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
Questions:
- If several people die after internalizing Substance X, would you or would you not want some competent authority to investigate?
- Is it possible for a psychopath to taint food and/or medicinal products with the express goal or killing random people?
- Is it possible for a manufacturing error to produce tainted products (e.g. have 10x the indicated caffeine)?
Also, it's not like Sweden has banned the stuff. What did the Swedish government actually have to say about this? From the 2nd paragraph of the article, which most people (including Hemos) have apparently not read: Most people wouldn't drink Red Bull any differently than they drink Coke or Gatorade. Like it or not, most folks don't know enough biochemistry to determine whether Substance X is safe to internalize under Condition Y. Thus, many countries have government organizations to make this information publicly available. Another quote: Nanny states again? There are plenty of substances in this country which are only obtainable at a pharmacy. Why? So that the pharmacist (i.e. someone who's spent years studying the effects of chemicals on the human body) can give you sensible advice: "Don't chug a case of this after a marathon."I fail to see anything wrong here. If you really want to talk about nanny states, let's start with China and Afganistan, eh?
"We all say so, so it must be true!"
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
Hmm, either clueless, or an excellent troll :) One usually doesn't prove anyone wrong by making a string of factually incorrect statements :)
No, it's called Kratingdaeng-L (which means "red bull-L"... I don't know what the "L" is supposed to mean :) Was it really invented in Thailand though? I had seen it in Thailand years ago, but just assumed it was originally from some other country...
A 8.3-ounce can has just 80 milligrams of the stimulant, about the same amount in a mug of coffee.
I can be mistaken, but ever since I looked at the ingrediente list for Red Bull I found this odd....
In portuguese and spanish (don't know for any other latin-derived languages) the word for bull is touro/toro. So, "taurin" roughly translated to english could be "bullin", or something like that...
Doesn't this seems strange? One of the ingredients has a name similar to the the drink? I'm no biologist, but I've certainly never heard before of taurin before I drank Red Bull. Of course the opposite could be true, that the drink is named after the active ingredient, but I feel more inclined to believe that the "taurin" ingredient is just marketing. People don't know what it is, so they assume that it must be energic.
I don't feel any more energic after drinking red bull or any other energy drink. It's saturday night, I just arrived home after going out with some friends, and drank a can of red bull, and before and after that I drank some alcohol (not much). I feel sleepy. To me, Red Bull is just placebo, it has only a psychological effect. Caffeine has it's effect of course, but Taurin and the other ingredients only matter as much as the people that drink it believe.
It's late, I'm going to bed.
Then in 1993 I contracted flu, and the virus attacked my heart. Since then I can't touch anything with caffeine in it. My heart goes berzerk, my body goes mental. It feels like a cross between a panic attack and heart failure, so if caffeine can effect me like that, I'm honestly not surprised that otherwise "healthy" people died.
Mixing alcohol and caffeine just seems retarded anyway if you ask me. Mixing two brain altering chemicals is pretty stupid. Makes about as much sense as dropping acid and E at the same time.
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Slow down cowboy!
Slashdot requires you to wait 20 seconds between hitting reply on comments.pl and submitting a comment.
It's been 19 seconds since you hit 'reply'!
What a moronic addition to Slash...
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Maybe Slashdot should have changed the threshold for that one to about 3-4 seconds, at least for articles discussing heavy caffeine usage.
("It's been 19 seconds since you hit 'reply' 47 times!")
Slashdot's token middle-aged housewife
Amen. I am so damn sick of the constant snivelling about "nanny states" here; I don't have a freaking chemistry lab in my basement, I can't analyze every freaking thing I decide to eat or drink, and I don't have an army of investigators to compile statistics on what can kill you. Three young, healthy people died after DRINKING A CAN OF SODA. I want the government to jump all over this.
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Certainly there's no reason to say that "Natural substances cannot be reproduced" as the original poster stated.
Of course, I wouldn't be surprised if the taurine were produced by some fermentation process using some taurine overproducing mutant of some bacterium or fungus (their web site states it is made synthetically for Red Bull, but whether the statement is meant to reassure the public that no bull testicles were harmed in the making of this drink or whether it is meant to inform the reader that no biosynthetic processes whatsoever were involved in the making of the taurine, I cannot tell). If that were the case (which is probably not that unlikely), then the taurine they are using is natural taurine (not that there would be any difference between the same isomers synthetically produced or produced by some living organism) so the original gentle poster's faulty point would be rendered moot.
By the way, though it is not easy, there are ways of separating racemic mixtures into the L for and the D form (I believe it is done enzymatically).
this could have been avoided if Red Bull open sourced their formula.
I drink a can in the morning everyday, instead of coffee... am I at risk?
Just finished my 5th can of Red Bull whilst trying to install Slak8.0 on my new machine... this story has made my day a whole lot better... NOT!
Where I can't swim too far from the shore, where I first have to scuba dive in a swimming pool, where I can't drive faster than what ? no speed ? Where I need to be 21 to drink ? Now the question I guess is why am I infering from the Post that it's a condescending way of calling other european coutries here ? Maybe an inferiority complex...
Battery is just another energy drink, quite popular in Finland. Especially when you mix it with Vodka: that's called Battery acid.
I hate people who quote
Natural substances cannot be reproduced, thus you would have to slay a human, suck the Taurine out and put it into a drink.
That is one of the top 3 crazy things I have ever heard. There are PLENTY of chemicals that occur in nature that can be PERFECTLY replicated by industry.
Here, buy some taurine.
I think aluminum pop cans have an insanely thin plastic liner inside them. Could be wrong, but I have read that somewhere.
I think the aluminum health thing was debunked anyway.
Don't be a nutter. Just because a chemical is found in meat doesn't mean it is bad. In fact, taurine is ESSENTIAL TO LIFE, veg-head.
Technically, taurine is classified as a non-essential amino acid, but that doesn't mean that it isn't important to human life. It just means that your body has a biochemical pathway for synthesizing it from other compounds. So avoid it if you like; there's still plenty inside you. Avoiding it because it is in meat is just silly. You're meat.
Yes consumers want it but only because the soft drink companys have said they needed it. Same as with coffee. Please believe they need it and therefor become hooked on it. I for one know this first hand. I am an addict of caffeine and if i dont have it i don't perform well. I have read serveral books that rated caffeine as high as cocaine on an addiction factor.
I personally would love to see them have to put there caffiene amounts on everything that contains it except fresh roasted coffee (for the simple fact that it would be difficult to rate different blends of coffee)
Qua
I drink a can in the morning everyday, instead of coffee... am I at risk?
..That depends.. A can of what? A can of motor-oil? ..A can of Red-Bull?
As long as you drink it after you've woken up, and as long as your not mixing it with Methyl-Ethyl-Ketones, you're probably going to be OK, but just to be safe you should wait for the Governments approval. This goes for everything in life- Sex, Caffeine, loud music, exercise.. Whatever it is that you want to do, please ask you congress-person for permission first..
air and light and time and space
Well, it seems you overlooked some possibilities. There are many people that are no idiots but not good at deciding whether technological / chemical etc things are safe.
And then there are the people like me that could do it (with the right equipment), but don't want to because they want to do others things with the little time they have. There are 100s if not 1000s of things I use each day, many of them composed of many parts that might be harmfull. I can't test them all. I don't want to be forced to watch TV/read papers to know what is dangerous, and even if I would have the time, I would have little confidence in their findings. Government officials may be lazy, incompetent, somtimes bought or whatever, but papers or commercial TV stations have a money interest *each time* they put out a story.
Whoa, Red Bull is nasty anyway. Tastes like rotting apple cider if you ask me. At my office, we prefer the American programmer's standby, shiny red cans of Coca-Cola!
:-). OTOH, when I need to stay awake I now always use Red Bull. The other high-energy drinks might well be equally good, I have not really tested them.
My experience is very different. Red Bull works very well for me when I need to stay awake for a long time. Coca-Cola also wakes me up, but after about 30 to 60 minutes, the oposite effect sets in and I am even more sleepy than before. Actually, if I use Cola early enough I can use it as a sleeping pill
From what I could find on the web, the toxic dose of caffeine for adults of average weight ranges from 1-5g, the equivalent of 4-15 cups of strong coffee. Toxic symptoms are varied, but include such potentially fatal ones as tachycardia and psychomotor agitation. The LD-50 lethal dose is estimated at 7-15g.
But don't be fooled: caffeine is not a dangerous drug like the dreaded THC or MDMA...
I had 20 double expressos in 2 hours the other day, just like a coke buzz, but your mussles ache and twitch, still they couldn't do anything if they stopped me from driving like an idiot.
Lasted about 5hours (not to bad for shopping on either)
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Here's a good page (paragraph?) about taurine.. http://www.graylab.ac.uk/cgi-bin/omd?query=taurine
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
The warnings are after three people died with heart trouble sometime after drinking it, equally many people die sometime after drinking water yet we still risk our lives drinking water :-)
I'm not saying that they are wrong just that it can be misleading to jump to conclusions.
As a regular drinker of red bull I shall watch with interest..
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no sig.
Gah, it's caffine and taurine that are being investigated, at least read the article. Obviously you don't wanna load up on craploads of dehydrating substances when you've been working out or are drinking heavily. Jeez, get a clue. I *LIKE* my right to drink caffinated beverages, even though it may get me wired and give me a headache if I quit drinking it. (cause I drink *way* too much stuff with caffine in it really...) BUT, that's *MY* choice, I don't want the government banning everything that may prove dangerous to me. That's damn near everything...crossing the street, driving my car, hell, even going outside. :P
You are correct - they really do suck, but some of us are stuck with them.
Whoa, Red Bull is nasty anyway. Tastes like rotting apple cider if you ask me. At my office, we prefer the American programmer's standby, shiny red cans of Coca-Cola!
Are you really serious? How do you buy soda pop from the store - glass bottles?
Cool ... and the splitting headake I get if I don't get my cofee on time is because???
Caffeine withdrawal? Not me. Nope. Never. BECAUSE I DRINK COFEE ALL THE TIME!
(Just because you don't experience it, it doesn't mean it's not there.)
"Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead." A. Huxley
*pulling one out of my fridge*
...have no warning about not mixing with alcohol, the only warning of any kind is:
Not suitable for children and caffiene sensitive persons. Pasteurised.
and right down the bottom:
Usage: 5 cans max. daily
Red Bull is not government approved in any way in Australia, it is imported into Australia via New Zealand under a strange loophole as a "dietary supplement"
Is there anyone out there who takes Taurine tablets without caffiene? what's the effect? I find other energy drinks do very little for me (V, Lift Plus etc), and none of the others I've tried contain Taurine.
Caffiene wakes me up a lot, but Red Bull increases my metabolism and makes me hyper-alert. I've been unable to find Taurine tablets so far, so haven't been able to test it myself
a lot of information in that article is not quite right. Drinks it says have the same ingredients do not, and warnings supposedly on Australian cans do not exist.
Red Bull is nothing. You want to get jazzed, try drinking a Sky Rocket (availible from thinkgeek.com). 100 Mgs of caffeine per ounce, 25 ounces total. 2.5 grams of caffeine. That will get you up in the morning.
I am John Hurt.
"wohoo_gnu_is_great does not avoid taurine because it is in meat, but because the taurine in Red Bull is won from meat. This meat is won from animals"
Read the bloody article! It does say that taurine is found in animals (including humans), because it is essential to life, but it specificly mentions that the taurine in red bull is synthesized (as in made in a laboratory).
It probably would be kind of stupid to try to produce taurine from dead cows because from each 10000 cows you would not get more of taurine than only enaugh for like 5 cans of red bull (I'm only guessing, but I really think that's pretty much the case)
you are right, this shows that the general media I follow are less informative than slashdot !
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. Bertrand Russel
Other caféine levels :
2 88994
Red Bull 286 mg/l,
XTC en canette, 300 mg/l,
Smart, 338 mg/l,
Red Devil, 365 mg/l
recommended level in the US 200 mg/l
source : http://www.lameuse.be/ante/pages/wc202.htm#ancre0
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. Bertrand Russel
The troble with Red Bull and booze is that caffeine works against the alcohol, so while a overdoze of alcohol will cause your brain to shutdown non-vital functions and put you to sleep :-), before you kil yourself, the caffeine zeros out the effect. The problems here is that the caffeine wears out faster than the alcohol so when the caffeine is gone, the alcohol is still there and your brain will not just shut down non-vital functions in your body but just about everything as well and thereby killing you.
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At least here in Finland, AFAIK, Red Bull, Battery, Jolt and others have less caffeine than their US counterparts. For example, 1 can of Jolt contains caffeine only equal to 1 cup of coffee, and if I am not completely mistaken, Red Bull and Battery are somewhere on the same levels. Of course, there's also taurine and other chemicals that might react with alcohol (I think those guys in Sweden were boozing at well at that moment)
This is the place where you write something that will make you seem like a complete idiot.
I used to dump a tablespoon of caffiene into a 20oz bottle of Jolt. Stopped that when I chugged a bottle, i thoguht I was getting Parkinson's Disease!
actually now that i think of it, it wasnt a tablespoon, it was a spoon from the kitchen drawer, probably not much more than a teaspoon. the LD50 on caffiene is 5000mg iirc.
Caffeine is a diuretic. Drinking large quantities of it after a workout will do nothing for rehydration. In fact it will dehydrate you further. Mixing it with alchohol and engaging in physical activity (dancing at a club for instance) is just asking for trouble.
I can see the ThinkGeek adverts now: "(Not for swedes or other demi-programmers.)"
(Linus only speaks Swedish, people. Here's where it's at.)
~
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An easy example of this is glucose and fructose, they're both "C6H12O6" but have different 3D structures. Thus they have different effects. [These are called isomers if you want some superflous verbiage to throw around]
My other car is first.
Trolls throughout history:
Trolls throughout history:
Jonathan Swift
Having recently been in Norway this was a topic of discussion (friends had smuggled some back from Sweden). It's the taurine that's a problem in Norway. They have some very diligent health nannies there - some dyes for foods that are legal in the USA aren't legal in Norway.
People say absinthe tastes like black licorice. Any absinthe drinkers want to compare it to Jägermeister? Does it taste the same, or even similar? Anybody ever mixed Red Bull with Jägermeister?
Don'tcha mean Tyramine? Or is Taurine present in meat & cheese too? Does Tyramine metabolize into Taurine or vice versa? I always hear about not eating red meat or cheese nor drinking red wine while taking monoamine oxidase inhibitors, because it messes with the metabolization of tyramines, and causes hypertensive effects including cardiac arrest. Would it be safe to drink Red Bull while on MAOIs such as Deprenyl or Moclobemide? If not, were the three in the article (or any others whose death was blamed on Red Bull) taking MAOIs?
I read that here: http://www.bawls.com/bawls.php?page=guarana
I hate it, it's stupid
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www.shockthemonkey.org
Photos.
It's "withdrawal", not "withdrawl", AC. Bad enough that you have to stoop to a spelling flame, but to mess up yourself in the same breath makes you look more the fool than the person you're flaming.
...when you're writing a game...tweak the difficulty of "Easy" to something [your mother] can cope with. -- onion2k
Nonsense. Taurine (not Taurin) is an amino acid. If they were going to put in some potentially stimulating amino acid, DL-Phenylethylame would have been a better choice. If you want Taurine, eat some meat or cheese.
After some years I was in college and there I saw people drinking that stuff in various ways:
3 espresso coffee concentrated in 2dl of carbonated pee... I still prefer coke
V
word. I often bring work home, and don't hisitate to write a little code after a few bong rips.
;-)
I'm guessing that a surprisingly large percentage of tech people use drugs and party just as much as the non-tech people. We're just smarter!
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The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin
Too much caffiene can seriously mess with your heart. If you have underlying heart problems, this could be a bad thing. Other stimulants will do the same thing. Read the warning labels on workout enhancers like Ripped Fuel. They explicitly warn you that an overdose can cause a heart attack. Definitely something to be mindful of.
That light you see at the end of the tunnel might be from an oncoming train.
Many people also do not head the warning printed onto the cans, which explicitly states, that you should _not_ ever mix red bull with alcohol, due to the fact, that youw ould be mixing a strong stimulating neuro drug with it as well.
There are no warning labels on the Red Bull cans in Sweden (well, one, read below).. In fact, when interviewed, the PR responsible at Reb Bull Sweden insisted on that Red Bull inflicts no harm whatsoever when combined with alcohol or exercise!
Here's what the swedish can says (forgive my poor translation):
"Red Bull Energy Drink - a refreshing taruine- and caffeine-containing carbonated drink which is especially developed to increase the performance level acheived with physical straining."
"Red Bull Energy drink - Stimulates the metabolism - Improves well-being - Increases stamina, reaction- and concentration abilities."
And here's the only "warning" on the can:
"Children, pregnant women and other people sensitive to caffeine are discouraged to use this drink."
The PR woman at Red Bull Sweden actually said that she encouraged people to mix Red Bull with vodka at parties.. From the articles, I found her very ignorant.
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You can die inside your house also.
So climate's changing. So what? It has always changed. The big news would be if it wasn't changing. - Dr. Philip Stone
One of the researchers commented their findings on TV when this was first reported earlier this week: "we've injected substansial amounts of taurine to test animals and we've been dissappointed because of the lack of effect".
In her opionion coffein is much more effective ingredient in Red Bull (no matter what the producer tries to tell you).
I hate to prove you wrong.
Taurin is the synthetically produced counterpart to the naturally occuring Taurine. Natural substances cannot be reproduced, thus you would have to slay a human, suck the Taurine out and put it into a drink. Taurine is the equivalent produced by synthetic means.
Red BUlls Website simply explains the natural Taurine. No one ever said it was _no amino_ acid, re read my comment
I hate to prove you wrong.
Taurin is the synthetically produced counterpart to the naturally occuring Taurine. Natural substances cannot be reproduced, thus you would have to slay a human, suck the Taurine out and put it into a drink. Taurine is the equivalent produced by synthetic means.
Red Bulls Website simply explains the natural Taurine.
There is no distinct difference between synthetically produced and natural substances in most cases.
As a reader from the country in which Red Bull was invented I would like to toffer some background information.
The main "active" ingredient of Red Bull is Taurin.
Taurin is a drug, about 30 times stronger than caffeine together with a combination of Vitamines it is able to fill you body with new "Energy", whereas the Taurin actually only is a helper substance to quicker spread the active ingredients of the Vitamines and aid in the production of sugar. Originally Taurin has been found as an effective drug for encephalitic syndrome, cataract and glaucoma. It is also useful as a neuro-modulator and neuro-inhibitor of the central nervous system. As such it could be effectively used as an anti-convulsion drug.
However, if you consume too much of The substance you will get the opposit of the desired effect, being such a strong stimulator it can stimulate the body to fall into a shock like state. Thus heart racing appears, rapid breath, swetaing and simialr symptoms whihc _can_ lead up to death.
Taurin levels in red Bull are limited to the countries maximum allowed amount, which is limited in the country itself where Red Bull is manufactured. For example in Germany the original recepee may not be sold, it would fall under the narcotics law in germany.
Many people also do not head the warning printed onto the cans, which explicitly states, that you should _not_ ever mix red bull with alcohol, due to the fact, that youw ould be mixing a strong stimulating neuro drug with it as well.
Mixing the two can cause bad damage to the liver, due to some reaction between the active ingredients of the Taurin or better its Glycin Bile acids with the alcohol.
I do not work for Red Bull, nor do I wish to promote their product, but since it has been sold here in austria no issues with it have been reported by the media and when you are consuming a drink, which explicitly states, thaty ou should consume it in a sane way and you do not heed the warning, then something is wrong with you in the first place.
Those people could've already had problems anyways. Maybe for some, caffine was NOT the thing to be having (i.e. HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE).
It's like when those people are shocked that some 92-year old man drops dead from overexertion from using Viagra. It wasn't the viagra that killed him, just the built-up horniness that has been brewing for 45 years, all being released in a week.
Besides, sh!t happens, and without caffine I'd probably...
fall asleep right here.
Thus heart racing appears, rapid breath, swetaing and simialr symptoms whihc _can_ lead up to death.
Wow, you sure did show us the example of how bad the overdose is... Look at the spelling. Does it mean that you're showing us a mild-overdose effect?
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Error 500: Internal sig error
Wouldn't that make speed legal?
It's a hyper-caffinated drink, like Jolt, but instead of tasting nice, like cola, it tastes like cough medicine.
Luckily, it easily forms a layer of aluminium oxide, which is very unreactive and hence it is safe for use in food containers.
Yeah, those damn nanny states, always butting into our lives! Why can't they leave me and my company alone so that we don't have to spend money on fixing the gas tanks on our products so that it stops killing customers?
It is an outrage that the government would investigate a potentially defective product that could be lethal!
Is your company running tools written by ma
And if alcohol was just recently discovered it would undeniably be a Class A drug.
It's funny that the Thai drink red-bull is under investigation, when Alcohol causes thousands of deaths world-wide every year but is still perfectly legal in most non-islamic countries.Right. I'm off for a pint...
Yeah, I thought caffeine was a diuretic anyway, not what you want to in[take|hale|gest] when dehydrated.
The American Dream went to hell in a handbasket when someone decided that "The Customer" was King, and the customer beli
Cause we are not even allowed to drink it here, since it comes in a can and have bubbles. For some strange reason canned sodas are forbidden in denmark, only juice can be sold in a can. :O)
Im actually being serius!!
I'm sold! Do you write advertisements for a living?
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Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
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Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Does this mean that I should quit drinking Jolt and 151 ?
I drink Red Bull since years, I also drink coffee. But it's hard to find good coffee in America, so I just drink Red Bull and I will not stop. If I would die some day, I wouldn't wonder if I had a Red Bull that day (because I drink it almost every day).
>> Had I been going to bed earlier every night? Have I been sleeping later? Has Tyler been in charge longer and l
I thought Red Bull was a fictional product when I saw their ad in Wipe-Out XL for Sony PlayStation. Then when I saw it in stores I thought they had made the drink AFTER the game, you know.. to take advantage of the name-recognition.
Vote for me in 2004.
The funny thing is, when I refreshed to read this story, the "Red Bull" ad was up in the banner slot, telling me to drink! :)
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"The universe is a womb for the genesis of gods."
Why can't the press learn a little baysian reasoning?
</rhetorical>
It isn't that hard to figure the expected death rate among red bull drinkers (expected death rate w/o Red Bull times % of population drinking Red Bull), and ask yourself, is what we are seeing higher than we'd expect? I'll bet it's not.
It would be very odd if no one who drank Red Bull ever died. But for some reason our culture always treats death as an annomoly, which must therefore have a proximate cause.
In the longterm, the per capita death toll is exactly 1.
-- MarkusQ
...especially when you consider that the LD50 of caffeine is 10 grams. In other words, ten grams of the stuff will kill 50% of the people who ingest it. That does not mean 25% of the people who drink a sky rocket will die (it's not a straight slope) but it can't be good for you.
I'm the stranger...posting to
Anyway, soon after my brother started drinking red bulls he began getting periods of dizziness/blurred vision while driving his car! It happened at least 4 times before we figured out it was the red bulls (He/I figured he was stressed, sick or else).
On the way back from a long 4 hour drive he drank a red bull in the car and maybe 30 mins later he had another blur/dizzy spell (NOT good while driving in heavy traffic on the freeway). I had to basically steer the car for a minute or two while he was immobilized.
I commented maybe it was the red bull, so he stopped drinking them... it's been 6+ months and he's never had another dizzy spell.
If caffine was just recently discovered it would likely have laws regulating it... It gives a burst of energy, but it your body is too tired and you have too much caffine, you are putting you self at risk...
Looking for any old 8-bit Heathkit/Zenith software/hardware - http://heathkit.garlanger.com
How ironic that Think Geek's Caffine ad showed up on the same page as this article..
Looking for any old 8-bit Heathkit/Zenith software/hardware - http://heathkit.garlanger.com
Did you try diluting it and adding sugar? From the Absinthe FAQ:
Yeah I just drank one and I don't feel a d...
Well, the printed warning text is available on Red Bull cans all over the world, except in Sweden. The reason for this is somewhat vague, since we've got warning texts on almost any potential dangerous prdouct there is (in Sweden).
Well, i'm a techie and i get completely fuckfaced on the weekend, and not seldom on weekdays.. As a matter of fact i'm drunk right now!g uy on the front of the newspaper, just because he drank battery and vodka, that's news?
Not on battery though..
Here in norway we had some silly-bitch-can't-take-his-drink-and-almost-died-
Damn, no wonder i'm shying more and more away from tv and papers..
-By attempting the impossible we can achieve the absurd..
Fellow veggies, don't drink it! It contains taurine
which is made from meat.
I guess it does matter how much caffeine yuop consume. Most people in here probably drinks a few buckets of tar strength coffee and can easily deal with a few Red bulls. Imagine those who never drink coffe, and once in a while sweeps down a sixpack redbull with alcohol ...