Shock Study: Energy Drinks May Not Be The Healthiest Things To Give To Children

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Bad news for those of you in the audience who love energy drinks, particularly those of you with children or younger siblings. Well, and if you make a habit of giving energy drinks to said youngsters. A University of Miami study suggests that—and this will shock you—that energy drinks may not be safe for young children, primarily because we have no idea how the combination of ingredients usually found in energy drinks, including caffeine, taurine, and guarana, affect young children’s physiology. Reminds me of how people used to use put radium in toothpaste and other household products because of its “curative” powers. Makes sense.

The study doesn’t necessarily say that energy drinks are bad for you, the healthy adult, just that there hasn’t been any real work done trying to ascertain their effects on younger folks.

What the study does say is that “have no therapeutic benefit to children, and both the known and unknown properties of the ingredients, combined with reports of toxicity, may put some children at risk for adverse health events.”

“But wait!” you may interject. “Doesn’t a cup of coffee has as much caffeine as your standard can of Red Bull or whatever?” True, but a cup of coffee probably doesn’t have random quantities of relatively obscure ingredients like taurine, now does it? It’s the combination of these disparate ingredients that has scientists so concerned.