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Gaming Fuel: 4-way Shootout
Neil Yates writes "It is 2:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning. You have been up all night, fragging away in a Quake3 clan match. Your early morning schedule wore you out and you never had time to take a nap. The server is resetting between games, and you are starting to get a little sleepy-eyed. Milk is not going to do one bit of good and regular Coke or Pepsi are too run of the mill. The last thing that will keep you awake and at the top of your game is some pansy sports drink. Which of these four energy drinks do you reach for?
Pepsi Blue, Vanilla Coke, Dr. Pepper's Red Fusion, or Sobe's Mr. Green?"
What's wrong with plain old Mt Dew? It did represent 80% of my intake by volume from age 15 to 22.
FYI: Red Bull + alcohol
Just sayin'.
The law is that caffeine may not be added to any beverage unless it is a cola-type beverage. The addition of caffeine to beverages has been rationalized by the soft drink manufacturers as giving their product a distinctive flavour. Since caffeine is a drug, it has been restricted to only being added to cola because of the historical use of caffeine in these products. Or something. Here's the text of the relevant section of the food and drug act. Search the page for the word caffeine.
This sig is umop apisdn.
This might be useful information for some people out there. It took me long enough to figure it out!
Taurine is the principal ingredient in Red Bull energy drinks, and in Australia, recent relaxations in the various what-you-can-put-in-drinks laws means that Taurine is now an additive in most energy beverages.
That's all fine, except I'm apparently allergic to Taurine. I started throwing up for no apparent reason last year, and it turned out to be the Taurine, which just got added to my favorite energy drink, but didn't kick in until three days after ingestion, which is why it took so long to figure out.
Taurine is a bull protein, in the same way that Lactose is a cow protein. Some people are lactose intolerant. I seem to be Taurine intolerant, with many of the same symptoms.
The only energy drink left in Australia that does not contain Taurine is called 'Lift', it is quite tasty, and has Guarana and Ginseng in it. Try it.
Since I figured all this out, I ran into another Jeremy who had precisely the same reaction. So, if your name is 'Jeremy', you might want to stay away from the Red Bull.
Any faulty logical inferences in the above message are left as excercises for the reader.
Jeremy Lee | Orinoco