Is there actually any evidence that caffeine is bad for kids? From the article, it looks like the impetus for this change is concern from teachers, not from scientific research regarding the impact of high doses of caffeine on children under 16.
I can't speak to the caffeine but that is by far not the worst aspects of energy drinks.
- The drinks have an addictive property due to caffeine and many of these drinks are full of sugar causing the consumer to continuously consume sugar. Nobody should be consuming added sugar especially not kids who's brains are still developing. They do not need insulin resistance yet another fun topic.
- The excessive B vitamins in the drinks are the cheap low quality inactive forms and worse there are only a couple different vitamins. This is a fun rabbit hole to research. Adding even one inactive B vitamin in large quantities can shut down the conversion of all inactive B vitamins in the liver and in some cases the kidneys and can lead to a B vitamin deficiency, somewhat ironically.
B vitamins are required for energy production. Shutting down the conversion process can lead to people feeling tired and weak, thinking they need more energy drinks... This is a vicious cycle that can only be remedied by a healthy diet, exercise and sleep. Excessive energy drink consumption can interrupt or lower the quality of sleep. A lack of good sleep interrupts the healing process which every person requires or they start taking age related damage earlier and faster leading to more diseases and vulnerabilities.
This rabbit hole goes many layers deeper and would require writing a book and this is even before talking about how this exacerbates all the effects of drugs that doctors have shamefully prescribed to kids and adults.
I have a different kind of appetite hormonal issue (ghralin sensitivity), but for people that don't know, insulin resistance will make your kid constantly hungry, increasing the likelihood of him/her being fat.
The Danish Technical Universities Food institute had some research suggesting that around 40% of children experienced sleep issues and restlessness from drinking to much caffeine. [1]
The risk associated with to much caffeine according to the same study is: Disturbed heart rhythm, high blood pressure, palpitations, shortness of breath, stomach ache, nausea, anxiety, nervousness, trouble sleeping, and in the worst case, cardiac arrest.
It's not that children can't safely drink an energy drink, it's just that some teenagers might down can after can and the "safe" amount of caffeine is less than 1L of energy drink per day (which already seems like a lot).
In Romania, in 2024, after a 17-year-old the previous year and a 13-year-old died from consuming too many energy drinks, authorities decided to ban their sale to minors
> Is there actually any evidence that caffeine is bad for kids
It's complicated as there can be beneficial effects as well. The issue is likely with the dosage as typical tea drinking hasn't seemed to cause any issues and us brits have been drinking tea for a long time. I've heard anecdotes of extreme coffee drinking (multiple espressos over a short time) causing heart palpitations, but that's not common as excessive coffee tends to make people jittery (c.f. Futurama episode where Fry drinks 100 coffees).
Energy drinks have high levels of caffeine and high levels of sugar and tend to be chugged, so they're likely to excessive doses.
I think just about every school in the land has one or two kids in each year who spend their lunch money on Monster/Red Bull (Caffeine is addictive - they cannot help it).
Sadly, there is often only enough money for caffeine or food: So you end up with children who are living off Sugar & Caffeine. They look as healthy as you'd expect.
This legislation is as much about preventing such scenarios as it is about the effects of the energy drinks themselves - (not that it'll work, but that's a another point entirely)
As for the tea/coffee points - I don't think any school allows access to a kettle - it is already a moot point.
In Sweden a bunch of teenagers died from drinking red bull and vodka, and politicians raved and limited sale of energy drinks to people under 16.
Of course, it was almost certainly 99% the alcohol, and the rest 1% could be equally blamed on having a broken heart, or a hamburger, or candy as on the energy drinks.
Mixing caffeine and alcohol is genuinely and generally considered more dangerous. Caffeine masks the effects of intoxication, so you don't act as drunk nor feel as drunk at the same blood alcohol level. It was almost certainly the alcohol that was lethal, but caffeine (especially in high doses) absolutely contributed to increased lethality when paired with alcohol.
Coffee is approximately the same as an energy drink (very approximately), but how many kids can down a pint or three of bitter coffee? The flavor is enough to keep it relatively self regulating.
Poland issued similar ban with 16mg/100ml as limit - matching coffee and Cola/Pepsi. Most energy drinks on market were at 32mg/100ml level, with few uncommon ones at 40mg/100ml.
Kids, just in general, are the most anxious people? No, I don't think so. If you'd gone with restlessness that might have been true, but then I guess that wouldn't have been such a compelling argument.
This doesn’t solve the underlying issue: heavy marketing towards minors, using all available channels. Sure, heavy sugary/caffeinated drinks are bad for minors, but regulating this at the sales level feels like playing cat/mouse game with the industry.
Two points: 1. Marketing towards illegal markets seems foolish, and 2. Marketing towards illegal markets sets the company up for easy failure at court, in many conceivable lawsuits.
The alcohol industry is very comfortable with age limits. The more the better (e.g. beer and wine at 18 but liquor at 21).
The reason is that they understand that this enshrines alcohol as a maturity symbol. It ensures that you're seen as immature for not drinking.
An alcohol lobbying group around here made posters with a huge foaming glass of beer and the text "over 18? Prove it!". Nominally it was about showing ID, but I think youth got the intended message, and it wasn't about showing ID. Alcohol advertising is forbidden, but profit finds a way.
I see no reason to think energy drink restrictions will be different.
I think there should be as few different age limits as possible. Put everything at 18, or possibly 16. If there's something you really think there's good reason to have different age limits on, implement it differently (e.g, say that you can only take a driver's license two years after you started driving lessons, and let the limit for taking driving lessons be at the one age limit.) The exact age of majority is largely arbitrary. Fine-masked age limits suggests it's not. Also, one of the reasons we have an age of majority is that kids are easy to manipulate. Age limits and the carrot of "maturity" can be abused to do just that, manipulate kids. I think we should discourage it.
Things which have no possible cachet as a maturity symbol can still have other age limits if they really must (e.g, the age at which you can be decide which of your parents to live with if they're divorced is usually well below the age of majority, and that's fine).
As for alcohol, I think there should be harsh limits on private profit. I'd let you drink whatever you want, but not profit from whatever you want. Redistribute profits from alcohol sales (and also gambling, tobacco and other things where most of the profit comes from self-destructive use) in such a way that no one has an incentive to sell one more unit. Then the problems will take care of themselves, is my belief. Also, I think profit restrictions are much more palatable to the actual public than restrictions on alcohol itself, which people often chafe at. This makes profit restrictions more democratically sustainable.
Based on various studies about things like acetaminophen toxicity, effects of screens on nervous system and eye health, effects of eating ultra processed foods, etc. we know that anything that harms kids tends to harm adults, just less acutely. I think realistically energy drinks are just not healthy for humans. But it's interesting how we moralize harms to kids while enabling them for adults.
I think the thinking is something along the lines of adults can understand the consequences better. I actually am not certain I buy that, as adults rarely understand the consequences of their actions, broadly.
I'd counter that an individual who routinely fails to understand the consequences of their actions is by definition not an adult. Pondering the full implications of this are left as an exercise.
While it seems clear that permitting adults to do what suits them is broadly reasonable it is less clear that it is reasonable to permit business models that profit from individuals harming themselves with or without marketing.
It's still not reasonable from an individual perspective, but good luck enforcing a draconian rule about not drinking alcohol. The harm outweigh the benefit.
But at the same time, there's basically no benefit to consuming alcoholic beverages that could be achieved some other ways,
I think what most commenters are missing is the fact that we now live in an age where it is trivially easy to heavily market to kids on social media like tiktok etc.
I think this is similar to why we ban sales of cigarettes to the under aged. It's just common sense no?
To those who advocate for zero drug prohibition, can we imagine a world where there was no drug prohibition and kids could be marketed fentanyl on TikTok at will?
Obviously this is an extreme, but it's an example of the kind of problems our society now faces?
(For some reason the catastrophic problems China had with opium in the late 1800s springs to mind).
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- The drinks have an addictive property due to caffeine and many of these drinks are full of sugar causing the consumer to continuously consume sugar. Nobody should be consuming added sugar especially not kids who's brains are still developing. They do not need insulin resistance yet another fun topic.
- The excessive B vitamins in the drinks are the cheap low quality inactive forms and worse there are only a couple different vitamins. This is a fun rabbit hole to research. Adding even one inactive B vitamin in large quantities can shut down the conversion of all inactive B vitamins in the liver and in some cases the kidneys and can lead to a B vitamin deficiency, somewhat ironically.
B vitamins are required for energy production. Shutting down the conversion process can lead to people feeling tired and weak, thinking they need more energy drinks... This is a vicious cycle that can only be remedied by a healthy diet, exercise and sleep. Excessive energy drink consumption can interrupt or lower the quality of sleep. A lack of good sleep interrupts the healing process which every person requires or they start taking age related damage earlier and faster leading to more diseases and vulnerabilities.
This rabbit hole goes many layers deeper and would require writing a book and this is even before talking about how this exacerbates all the effects of drugs that doctors have shamefully prescribed to kids and adults.
B1 - Thiamin [Inactive] vs Thiamine Diphosphate [Active]. B2 - Flavin Mononucleotide (FMN) vs Flavin Adenine Dinucleotide (FAD). B12 - Cyanocobalamine vs Methylcobalamin.
Interesting. So the idea is that an excess of (say) FMN would block conversion to FAD?
A Starbucks Frappuccino has 150 mg caffeine and 60 g sugar. Almost the same as a full can of Monster.
The risk associated with to much caffeine according to the same study is: Disturbed heart rhythm, high blood pressure, palpitations, shortness of breath, stomach ache, nausea, anxiety, nervousness, trouble sleeping, and in the worst case, cardiac arrest.
It's not that children can't safely drink an energy drink, it's just that some teenagers might down can after can and the "safe" amount of caffeine is less than 1L of energy drink per day (which already seems like a lot).
1) https://www.food.dtu.dk/-/media/institutter/foedevareinstitu...
It's complicated as there can be beneficial effects as well. The issue is likely with the dosage as typical tea drinking hasn't seemed to cause any issues and us brits have been drinking tea for a long time. I've heard anecdotes of extreme coffee drinking (multiple espressos over a short time) causing heart palpitations, but that's not common as excessive coffee tends to make people jittery (c.f. Futurama episode where Fry drinks 100 coffees).
Energy drinks have high levels of caffeine and high levels of sugar and tend to be chugged, so they're likely to excessive doses.
Found this review is likely relevant and in my view, the sleep disruption is a red flag for a healthy lifestyle: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7177467/
Sadly, there is often only enough money for caffeine or food: So you end up with children who are living off Sugar & Caffeine. They look as healthy as you'd expect.
This legislation is as much about preventing such scenarios as it is about the effects of the energy drinks themselves - (not that it'll work, but that's a another point entirely)
As for the tea/coffee points - I don't think any school allows access to a kettle - it is already a moot point.
Of course, it was almost certainly 99% the alcohol, and the rest 1% could be equally blamed on having a broken heart, or a hamburger, or candy as on the energy drinks.
Though one should point out that energy drinks have silly amounts of sugar and more caffeine than a typical mug of tea does.
Is a compound known for its primary side effect, anxiety, bad for people at the most anxious time in their lives, children?
I guess some need things to be spelled out in full.
Why assume the future won’t be even more stressful for this latest generation of young people?
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The reason is that they understand that this enshrines alcohol as a maturity symbol. It ensures that you're seen as immature for not drinking.
An alcohol lobbying group around here made posters with a huge foaming glass of beer and the text "over 18? Prove it!". Nominally it was about showing ID, but I think youth got the intended message, and it wasn't about showing ID. Alcohol advertising is forbidden, but profit finds a way.
I see no reason to think energy drink restrictions will be different.
Things which have no possible cachet as a maturity symbol can still have other age limits if they really must (e.g, the age at which you can be decide which of your parents to live with if they're divorced is usually well below the age of majority, and that's fine).
As for alcohol, I think there should be harsh limits on private profit. I'd let you drink whatever you want, but not profit from whatever you want. Redistribute profits from alcohol sales (and also gambling, tobacco and other things where most of the profit comes from self-destructive use) in such a way that no one has an incentive to sell one more unit. Then the problems will take care of themselves, is my belief. Also, I think profit restrictions are much more palatable to the actual public than restrictions on alcohol itself, which people often chafe at. This makes profit restrictions more democratically sustainable.
I'm not necessarily in favor of prohibition, but drinks—at least sugary ones—are engineered to be addictive. And no, diet doesn't cut it.
It’s far less reasonable to allow companies to advertise and promote that harm as if it’s exciting and beneficial to anyone.
It's still not reasonable from an individual perspective, but good luck enforcing a draconian rule about not drinking alcohol. The harm outweigh the benefit.
But at the same time, there's basically no benefit to consuming alcoholic beverages that could be achieved some other ways,
I don't find that interesting. It applies to anything that adults do, even things as basic and "positive" as having a job.
Working 8 hours at 8? Absolutely not.
Working 8 hours at 18? Double it and give it to the next person.
Toddlers shouldn't be allowed to play with electric fans. I'm OK with mommies, and even strangers, telling them not to and physically preventing it.
I think this is similar to why we ban sales of cigarettes to the under aged. It's just common sense no?
To those who advocate for zero drug prohibition, can we imagine a world where there was no drug prohibition and kids could be marketed fentanyl on TikTok at will?
Obviously this is an extreme, but it's an example of the kind of problems our society now faces?
(For some reason the catastrophic problems China had with opium in the late 1800s springs to mind).
Or data on the amount of kids under 16 actually doing this thing?
Energy drinks are the main source of caffeine for those age 10 - 14 and 10% of those exceeds the recommended limits. For ages 15 - 17 it's 20%.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7177467/