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By Nicole Lyn Pesce
Jittery about how much caffeine you sip in light of the second lawsuit against Panera’s Charged Lemonade? This chart shows the caffeine content of some popular drinks.
How much caffeine is dangerous?
A second lawsuit against Panera Bread that implicates the chain’s caffeinated Charged Lemonade in a customer’s death may have given some folks renewed jitters about whether their go-to energy drink is safe to sip.
Dennis Brown, 46, suffered a fatal cardiac arrest on Oct. 9 after drinking three Charged Lemonades – which contain up to 390 milligrams of caffeine in a 30-ounce serving – from a local Panera Bread restaurant in Fleming Island, Fla., according to a lawsuit filed Monday. The complaint, as reported by NBC News, notes that he had an unspecified chromosomal deficiency disorder, a developmental delay and a mild intellectual disability.
This comes less than two months after Panera was served with a separate suit implicating the same drink in the death of a college student with a heart condition. The student, Sarah Katz, 21, drank Panera’s Charged Lemonade in September 2022, according to the lawsuit filed in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas. She died later the same day, and the suit brought by her parents accuses the chain of failing to warn consumers about the drink’s ingredients. The company was not immediately available for comment. It has started displaying an enhanced disclosure about its Charged Lemonade, a spokesperson told NBC.
So, is 390 milligrams a lot of caffeine for one drink?
It’s quite a lot, in fact. Healthy adults should stick to less than 400 milligrams of caffeine a day, according to the FDA. The problem is that many of us are probably consuming more of this stimulant than we realize, maybe even well exceeding this recommended daily limit, which could pose health risks like insomnia, nervousness, restlessness, nausea, increased heart rate and other side effects.
What does 400 milligrams of caffeine actually look like?
Well, that’s about eight cans of Diet Coke (or 11 cans of regular Coke (KO)), or four cups of home-brewed coffee, so you probably don’t have to worry about completely giving up your favorite coffee or caffeinated drink just yet. (Unless it’s loaded with sugar, which is another story.) The FDA notes that a 12-ounce can of a caffeinated soft drink typically contains 30 to 40 milligrams of caffeine, an 8-ounce cup of green or black tea counts 30 to 50 milligrams and an 8-ounce cup of coffee is closer to 80 to 100 milligrams.
It’s important to know the portion size. Keep in mind that a standard cup is 8 ounces – less than what you probably consider a cup of coffee to be. A single grande hot drip coffee at Starbucks (SBUX), for example, is 16 ounces – that’s two cups of coffee. Many standard mugs or coffeehouse servings today are 12 to 16 ounces.
The caffeine content of different coffee brews and other drinks can vary widely. As detailed on Starbucks’s site, a grande, or 16-ounce, Pike Place Roast coffee contains 310 milligrams of caffeine – meaning that with that single drink, you are already almost hitting your daily recommended caffeine cap. That’s before you consider the other caffeine that you might be consuming throughout the day, from drinking a second cup of coffee or tea, soda or energy drinks; eating chocolate; or taking certain supplements. Some painkillers, like those targeting headaches, might also have caffeine in them.
The American Academy of Pediatrics advises against kids under 12 consuming any caffeine, period, and recommends that teens age 12 to 18 consume less than 100 milligrams of caffeine a day.
The recommended daily caffeine limit is even lower for kids and teens. In fact, the American Academy of Pediatrics advises against kids under 12 consuming any caffeine at all, writing, “There is no proven safe dose of caffeine for children.” The AAP recommends that teens 12 to 18 consume less than 100 milligrams of caffeine – about the amount in two 12-ounce cans of soda – a day. But energy drinks like Celsius and Prime that are popular on TikTok may pack an overcaffeinated punch that easily exceeds that 100-milligram limit. A single 12-ounce can of Celsius Original contains 200 milligrams of caffeine, for example, while Celsius Heat has 300 milligrams of caffeine in a single 16-ounce can. That’s double and triple the recommended daily limit for teens.
On the flip side, Red Bull has a relatively low 80 milligrams of caffeine in a single 8.4-ounce can – well below the amount in that Starbucks coffee.
Caffeine counts can get confusing, so here’s a chart comparing the caffeine content of some popular coffees, sodas and energy drinks to help you get a better idea of how close a single serving comes to pushing you over the recommended 400-milligram limit for adults each day.
Health experts told MarketWatch that many people aren’t worried about their caffeine intake the same way that they may watch how much sugar or sodium they’re consuming. Kids, teens and young adults in particular don’t pay attention to these amounts.
“I see a lot of younger patients, particularly young men, who are drinking these caffeinated drinks in the morning, or before they go to the gym, and the feeling is that it helps them perform better,” Dr. John Whyte, the chief medical officer at WebMD, told MarketWatch.
A recent Mintel market report valued the U.S. energy-drink industry at $21.1 billion worth of sales in 2022, and forecast to hit $22.7 billion in 2023, largely thanks to young men. “Energy drinks are largely a younger consumers’ category, with men aged 18-34 leading consumption,” it noted. But there’s plenty of potential to get more younger women on board, as “the narrowest gap exists between men and women for hybrid energy drinks (coffee, ice tea, etc),” it added.
“The biggest myth is that ‘caffeine doesn’t hurt me,’ because you don’t hear about it being regulated as much,” WebMD’s Whyte said, “and so people are more concerned about sugar and calorie counts than caffeine.”
Yet the FDA warns that toxic effects, like seizures, can be observed with the rapid consumption of around 1,200 milligrams of caffeine.
“Caffeine itself, remember, is a stimulant,” Whyte said. “It’s going to increase your heart rate. It’s going to increase your blood pressure because it’s going to constrict the blood vessels and make your heart work harder and make it go faster. And it may make you more dehydrated.”
And this can have a bigger effect on kids and teens, who are drawn to energy drinks in particular, noted Dr. Mark Corkins, the chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics committee on nutrition. “Kids think [caffeinated energy drinks] are cool. It’s an ‘adult’ drink. And we all like our stimulants. They make us feel good,” Corkins told MarketWatch.
But higher concentrations of caffeine can hit younger consumers harder than adults. “For a kid, one cup of coffee [or one energy drink] is a bigger dose per kilogram [of body weight] compared to a grown man,” he said.
So what should consumers know?
First, be aware of the signs of caffeine overdose, which include:
InsomniaJittersAnxiousnessFast heart rateUpset stomachNauseaHeadacheA feeling of unhappiness (dysphoria)
It’s important to read labels or look up a product’s nutrition information online to be aware of how much caffeine you are consuming.
“I don’t think anyone has a sense of what the generally recommended amount of caffeine is,” Whyte said. “So even if you see that a drink has 390 milligrams of caffeine in it, you don’t have a reference point” for whether that’s too much caffeine or not.
The bottom line: Adults should stick to less than 400 milligrams of caffeine a day. Teens age 12 to 18 should stay under 100 milligrams. And kids under 12 probably shouldn’t have any caffeine at all.
-Nicole Lyn Pesce
This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
12-05-23 0959ET
Copyright (c) 2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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