SPI114...Energy Drinks and "Guano"?

One of the things I love about the note-taking section of Analytical Skills of Interpreting is the freedom to talk about anything and everything. I found a very short article on Energy Drinks that triggered the question... Is it true that they use "guano" or bat poo in most energy drinks? Ewww, I hope not! So, we did some research.

Most energy drinks have "guarana" in them, which can easily be confused with "guano." So, the answer is NO, there is no bat poo in energy drinks.  Which lead to the next question...What's guarana?

Basically, guarana is a plant most commonly found in the Amazon region, mainly in Brazil. It's known as an energy booster, and is rumored to contain twice as much caffeine as a coffee bean. You can find more about guarana at http://www.guarana.com/

Well, that made us wonder if energy drinks have caffeine AND guarana, which is 2x's the amount of caffeine, what else do they contain. We first went to http://www.energyfiend.com/energy-drink-ingredients

In a nut shell, there are more or less than 14 main ingredients in most energy drinks.  Out of those 14 ingredients 3 of them...caffeine, guarana, and yerba mate are caffeine related. That peaked our interest and we decided to look into the different energy drinks and compare the amount of caffeine in each. As an avid coffee drinker, I love my caffeine! Pretty much we all know that caffeine stimulates the body and gives us that so needed "alert, I'm awake" feel. We also know that too much caffeine can cause problems such as sleeplessness, heart palpitations, headaches, nausea, and jitters. According to the sites we checked out the "too much" is more than 200mg of caffeine. On an average a cup of coffee contains 40 - 150mg of caffeine depending on whether it's brewed or instant.

We went to http://www.energyfiend.com/the-caffeine-database/ and were STUNNED to see the amount of caffeine in some of the name brand energy drinks.

Common brands mg of caffeine/oz:

• 5hr energy   69mg/oz
• Amp    8.9mg/oz
• Monster     10mg/oz
• Red Bull     9.5mg/oz
• Rockstar     10mg/oz

Of course we couldn't resist giggling over some of the "odd" named energy drinks...

• Blood Energy Potion     23.5mg/oz
• Booty Sweat Energy Drink     9.5mg/oz
• Cocaine Energy Drink (yes, that's what it said)     33.3mg/oz (hmmm I wonder?)
• Crunk Sugar Free (extra giggle...health conscious!)     12.5mg/oz
• Pimp Juice     9.8mg/oz
• Whoop Ass    5.9mg/oz

And the energy drinks with the highest amount of caffeine mg/oz are....

• Fixxed Extreme     2352.9mg/oz
• DynaPep     571mg/oz
• 5150 Juice     500mg/oz
• Energy Catalyst     434.8mg/oz

Pure insanity!