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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*
"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
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
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.
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.
Over-partied? Certainly this article ended up on the wrong site.
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.
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
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.
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!)
--
http://www.gimbo.org.uk/
> 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."
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."
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.
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."
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.
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
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
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.
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...
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.
How ironic that Think Geek's Caffine ad showed up on the same page as this article..
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