Boy Hospitalized After Red Bull Overdose
Red Bull sold over 3.5 BILLION cans last year. Just take a moment or two to ponder that. 2007 sales figures increased 17% over the previous year.
However, I digress. A 15 year-old in the UK was taken to hospital with heart palpitations after drinking eight cans of Red Bull.
Eight cans is about 640mg of caffeine - which - to be honest is not a huge amount. Red Bull also contains 1000mg of Taurine, 60mg Glucuronolactone, and 27 grams of sugar per can.
So to get things straight - the overdosing teenager consumed 216 grams of sugar (that’s about 54 teaspoons) along with 8 grams of Taurine.
8 cans of anything is plain stupid.
It’s odd how caffeine makes the headlines - but we never see this: “Boy gets intoxicated after beer overdose”. Despite the fact that happens every single day (or hour). And despite the fact that 1,400 college students lose their lives each year due to alcohol-related injuries (source).
Energy drinks are the latest thing attacked by PTAs and other wannabe “suburban politicians”…as if they didn’t have enough control over their little preppy brats anyway…they attack caffeine because it’s easy; all they have to do is complain. They’re too lazy to touch the real problems like drugs and alcohol, because they would have to actually do something. There are hundreds of news stories about some idiot kid drinking X number of cans of X drink and dying after a basketball game, or being hospitalized with heart palpitations. That’s their own fault; you shouldn’t drink in excess of anything. Even water is a poison at a high enough dose. Stupid people making stupid choices like that kid are going to ruin caffeine for the rest of us responsible junkies. You have to know your limits; I am tolerant to caffeine; one day I had two Amps, a Rockstar, a Nos, and a Sobe NoFear within an hour and a half and didn’t feel more than alert.