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*

Comments

If you like school, You'll Love Work.

[Ryandav]

"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.

"Nanny states?!"

[Pope]

Wow, if that phrase isn't flamebait, I don't know what is.

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.

Taurine

[krakan]

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.

Huh?

[chamont]

the energy drink that has become popular among the over-worked and the over-partied

Over-partied? Certainly this article ended up on the wrong site.

Sweet! Where can I get it in Canada?

[tbo]

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 "Stories" of Red Bull

[smirkleton]

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?

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 /. story as a roundabout way to drive sales of caffeinated beverages.

Re:Caffine is a Drug.

[Speare]

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

Absinthe & Red Bull

[gimbo]

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!)
--

Re:A bit more background information

[Argy]

> 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."

They were warned!

[aralin]

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?

Nanny states?

[legLess]

"Ah, the wonders of nanny states."

Questions:

1. If several people die after internalizing Substance X, would you or would you not want some competent authority to investigate?
2. Is it possible for a psychopath to taint food and/or medicinal products with the express goal or killing random people?
3. 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:

A public warning advising people not to take Red Bull mixed with alcohol nor to drink it after exercise has been issued by Sweden's National Food Administration.

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.

Mr Glynn said: "What we have is the suggestion that three people have died after drinking this substance, although there is no hard scientific evidence available on this yet. We will be looking at the death certificates and going through the autopspy reports to identify whether or not there is a link."

Another quote:

Red Bull cannot be sold in stores in Norway, Denmark or France because it is classified as medicinal because of its high caffeine content. It could, however, be sold in pharmacies in those countries.

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!"

Re:Red Bull no good anyway [veggie note]

[IronChef]

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.

Answer:

[PopeAlien]

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..

A bit more background information

[dmalloc]

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.

Get your gov't out of my dying!

[SumDeusExMachina]

Ah, the wonders of nanny states.

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!

Baysian reasoning anyone?

[MarkusQ]

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

Re:Baysian reasoning anyone?

[MarkusQ]

I don't know what your culture is, but here in Scandinavia, it is not normal for young, healthy people to suddenly just die.

If you put aside the question begging terms (e.g. "healthy"), it certainly is normal for people to die at all ages. If everyone lived to be 79.5 years old and then suddenly just died, that would be weird. We don't like to think about it, but young people do in fact die.

The problem with terms like "healthy" is that they smuggle in assumptions. You, for example, clearly assume that the set of all healthy people does not include anyone who is going to drop dead in the next twenty four hours or so. While I admit that it is unlikely for any particular healthy person to drop dead, it must happen in some cases. (Or, if you absolutely refuse to accept that, then you must admit that these people weren't healthy when they got up that morning, because in fact they did die, which would contradict your definition of "healthy". You can't have it both ways.)

So the question here is, do a larger fraction of the people in a given condition die if we look only at those who drink Red Bull vs. the whole set. Otherwise the logic is as vapid as saying "Three people with hair died, therefore hair kills people."

-- MarkusQ

Red Bull = Dangerous (for my brother anyway)

[Boba001]

My brother and I used to drink a can or two each day, normally in the morning because it gives you a quick sugar-like rush and would help wake you up. I even drank a few bulldozers (the red bull/vodka mixed drink) and it never seems to effect me anymore than normal alchohol.

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.

Ad for Caffine items on same page.

[A Commentor]

How ironic that Think Geek's Caffine ad showed up on the same page as this article..