Red Bull is a tiny can of caffeinated hope. It’s not the first subject I would pick for an AlterNet article, but that’s why they pay my editor Jan the big bucks. It was a comparative hit for them, which is awesome. I’m no sucker when it comes to marketing, but if I could get rid of anything in my life, it would be my caffeine and sugar addiction. It will probably kill me faster than any terrorist could. Read up, drink it down.
[Scott Thill, AlterNet]
“Red Bull gives you wings,” Earth’s most popular energy drink by market share promises in its commercials. Well, Icarus had kickass wings. Remember what happened to him? Crash and burn, baby.
What Red Bull does give you is crazy amounts of caffeine compressed into a tiny can of hope. Conjoined with its various sponsorships of similarly extreme events like Formula One racing, air shows, outdoor action sports, and much more, Red Bull’s overheating marketing arms have a major global reach. It has deeply penetrated popular culture, down to its soccer stadiums and sex-fueled clubs, where the drink is popularly mixed with vodka and other alcohol standbys. In the process, Red Bull has helped create a race of hyperspeed robots annually swallowing over a billion cans of Red Bull, only to crash and burn shortly afterward. At which point, they drink it again to wake up, and restart their seriously stressed engines. This is incredibly bad for people in the long run who are trying to bring up their energy, that is why natural energy health supplements should be considered by checking out Activated You Morning Complete reviews to see how they can support a healthy lifestyle without the extreme palpitations that energy drinks give.
“The main ingredient of concern in Red Bull is the caffeine,” David Schardt, senior nutritionist for Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), explained to AlterNet. “It can interfere with sleep, and people can quickly become dependent on it and suffer withdrawal symptoms like drowsiness, irritability and more if they don’t get a regular dose. More than 200mg of caffeine can increase the risk of miscarriage. And young adults who consume both an energy drink and alcohol are more likely to get hurt in accidents than if they just drank alcohol. Probably because they don’t realize how impaired they are.”
Ironically, that impairment is central to Red Bull’s allure and power. According to the company, its drink is specifically designed for hard-partiers in search of warm oblivion, as well as those suffering from occupational and summary other anxieties.
“Red Bull has always been and always will be more than just a hot secret for the night owl and the non-stop party-animal,” the energy drink’s official site trumpets. “It is appreciated by a wide range of people, such as the overworked taxi driver, the stressed manager, the exam-anxious student and the pressured journalist.”
As a professionally pressured journalist, I can attest to the power of caffeine. As can the postmodern hordes that have swelled the reputations and earnings reports of market-moving Wall Street knockouts like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Starbucks and so on. Based on the Thai energy drink Krating Daeng and gentrified by Austrian billionaire Dietrich Mateschitz, Red Bull’s global profile has lately been placed alongside those storied, culturally accepted drug pushers. But our collective reliance on increasing doses of caffeinated fixes like Red Bull and other so-called energy drinks — mixed with sex, drugs, alcohol and exhaustion — is turning us into a race of at-all-cost winners that just can’t help but lose where it counts most. Our bodies.
“They’re the uppers of the new generation,” argued Katherine Tallmadge, spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association and author of Diet Simple. “People are taking them like speed,” she told AlterNet by phone. “But too much caffeine makes you jittery, raises your blood pressure, and there are consequences for your heart. If you’re young and you’re tired all the time, you should look at that from a medical or nutritiional point of view, and see what you’re missing. When we’re eating healthy, getting rest and pursuing physical activity, we have all the energy we need.” MORE @ ALTERNET
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