Energy Drinks; Contemporary Issues Paper

Energy Drinks; Contemporary Issues Paper

                                    Introduction

Energy drinks, christened as performance boosters, are highly caffeinated non-alcoholic beverages, which are concoctions of caffeine, sugars, proprietary blends, vitamins, taurine, herbal extracts, and amino acids. These ingredients incorporated in energy drinks are mainly aimed at synergizing the body before or during an exercise. Energy drinks marketing strategy is however alarming as marketers refer to them as energy boosters, fatigue decreasing, and that they enhance mental concentration and alertness. This strategy bore fruits to the energy drinks manufacturers as this industry now prides itself on billions of dollars global sales.

The market demand and consumption rate is an issue in question. Most consumers apart from the sports people are children and adolescents. This poses a great danger to these generations, as there exist numerous side effects associated with the high consumption of these products. There exists contradictory and unsystematic evidence regarding the safety, performance benefits, and efficacy of these beverages. The main cause of this is that the energy drinks vary in content and manufacturing formulae.

Sugar, being the highest in percentage ingredients of energy drinks poses a great danger to human health. Various research works established that high consumption of sugars often yields to excessive weight gain, which predisposes an individual to lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, heart-related problems, and gout. This affects adolescents and people with an underlying health condition.

Energy Drinks Side Effects

Energy drinks consumption may subject the consumer to adverse cardiovascular complications. Several studies conducted tend to investigate the short-term cardiovascular effects vested upon an individual via energy drinks consumption. One of the studies reveals that the ingestion of about three hundred and thirty-five milliliters of an energy drink exposes one to an increase in both diastolic and systolic blood pressure (Sera M. Seifert, BS et al, 2011 pg. 520). High caffeine content inhibited in energy drinks may intensify cardiac problems especially in children and adolescents. Energy drinks are therefore cardiovascular disease risk factors in children and adolescents as they result in arrhythmias, syncope, hypertension, and even sudden death.

Habitual consumption of energy drinks poses a high risk to the development of metabolic, renal, and dental problems. Energy drinks contain excess sugars, which exacerbate long- term adverse health effects predominantly among the young generation. These added sugars are associated with obesity and metabolic disorders for instance diabetes especially when consumers fail to utilize the additional energy provided by the deposit of these extra calories into the body. The consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages further escalates insulin and blood sugar levels which further upsurges the glycemic load due to glucose intolerance and also insulin resistance. Dental problems such as caries are associated with the consumption of SSBs. These caries emanate from the dissociation of sugars in the SSBs by bacteria present in the mouth. This breakdown leads to the production of acids that corrode the tooth enamels resulting in caries. Lastly, SSBs contain fructose that induces renal diseases particularly renal microvascular mutilation, and hasten the spread of chronic kidney disease among consumers (Laila Al-Shaar et al, 2017 pg. 3). Excessive intake of energy drinks, therefore, predisposes one to metabolic disorders, renal diseases, and dental caries, and their consumption within the population is a matter that requires interventions.

Chronic consumption of EDs is a precursor to mental health challenges among its consumers. This is mainly among adolescents and young adults who additionally are the major consumers of junk foods. The intake of junk foods alongside energy drinks often have deleterious effects on the mental health of consumers. Currently, twelve percent of teenagers ingest energy drinks once every week according to a recent study. Re-current consumption of energy drinks exposes the individual to a range of mental disorders including insufficient sleep or dissatisfaction, depressive mood, stress, and suicidal thoughts among others. Teenagers who consume more than five cans of EDs weekly particularly are at risk of these above-mentioned mental disorders. A major ingredient of energy drinks, caffeine, is actively responsible for reducing the duration and quality of sleep. This is expressed via increased awaken time after the onset of slumber and decreased quantity of deep sleep. This subsequently leads to moody feelings, which affects the individual’s performance during the day prompting them to consume another energy drink, which consequently becomes a vicious consumption cycle among the consumers. This escalates further poor sleep quality and quantity. Chronic caffeine intake has detrimental effects on the nervous system and may lead to irritable moods. Caffeine abstinence for frequent consumers’ impacts negatively as it causes dysphoric mood status. The mood variation and irritation due to caffeine overdose or rather withdrawal may justify the occurrence of apparent stress, depression symptoms, and suicidal idealities or attempts among adolescents who are habitual energy drink consumers. Junk foods whose main constituents are added sugars expose consumers to detrimental mental problems such as hyperactivity, aggressiveness and criminal behaviors (Subin Park, Yeeun lee&junghyun H.Lee, 2016 pg.5,6)The chronic consumption of energy drinks alongside junk foods is a major concern especially to the young generation and requires revision as it can affect their mental health detrimentally.

Public health concerns about energy drinks

The consumption of energy drinks is a major challenge to the public health sector. This varies from the marketing, taxation, and regulation of these products as there lacks a well elaborate strategy to monitor them.

One major challenge to public health is the tactical marketing strategy of energy drink manufacturing companies. These companies aggressively advertise their products on every available platform. This in turn culminates to an exponential growth of the market share with a growth rate of more than 200% every year reported in many parts of the world. These strategies pose a great danger hitherto the public health of the world’s population as they mainly target adolescents and young adults. Of concern to public health is that the danger of aiming at adolescents, as these young people are immature in key brain areas (Visram, Shelina et al., 2016 pg.6). The adolescents have deprived impulse control hence likely to indulge in risk-taking activities thus vulnerable to becoming habitual energy drinks consumers. It further puts them at risk, due to their curiosity, of learning, and indulging in irresponsible sexual behavior brought about by advertisements depicting such behavior in the marketing of these beverages (Al-Shaar et al, 2017, pg.3-4). Considering the marketing techniques by the manufacturers are tactical, adolescents appear most susceptible as these products are readily available, and at convenient prices affordable by almost everyone across the population.

Another public health concern of energy drinks is the lack of taxation and regulation of this industry. For instance in the US the body that regulates beverages Food and Drug Administration (FDA) enforces and recommends a caffeine content of 71 milligrams for every 12 ounces of soda. However, it does not regulate energy drinks, which contain around 120 milligrams of caffeine in 12 ounces. Energy drinks manufacturers are however tactical as they usually classify their products as supplements as these are not subjected to caffeine limits within the applicable laws. When the companies categorize their items as beverages there exist voluntary guidelines that encompass revealing the caffeine content in their products, restricting marketing to the vulnerable groups mostly children, and notifying the authorities in case of adverse side effects from the consumption of such products. The companies however reluctantly and hardly comply with these set codes of conduct. On taxation, countries that have enforced taxation policies have witnessed a decline in the consumption of these products forcing them to lift these policies to keep the market at convenient levels (John Higgins et al, 2017 pg. 66). This lack of regulation and taxation puts at risk the public health sector due to the adverse effects observed among the youth children and pregnant mothers. It is for this reason that well-established measures ought to come in place to arrest the situation and avoid the negative impacts of the chronic consumption of these products.

To wind on public health concerns, energy drinks consumers are also likely to engage in alcohol consumption. This group of people often mix alcohol with their energy drinks putting them at risk of detrimental health effects of this blending. Studies conducted on these people reveal that they consume more alcohol when mixing it with energy drinks than they would take when consuming alcohol alone. This is because the energy drinks suppress the signs and feelings of drunkenness enabling the consumers to ingest more alcohol until that feeling comes into being. This in turn culminates to alcohol poisoning and severe dehydration among those who undertake such behavior. The health hazard posed by this is that it inappropriately affects the underage population and it is associated with binge drinking, drunk driving, and it imposes alcohol-dependence on the particular individuals. Alcohol and energy drinks cocktails are discouraged to arrest these deteriorating health hazards posed on the consumers.

Recommended mitigation measures

To arrest this situation several policies and measures require alignment. To start with, advertisements for energy drinks call for regulation to include discouraging the vulnerable populations from consuming them. Prohibitive warnings are not optional on the products depicting the side effects on children, adolescents, pregnant women, breastfeeding mothers, caffeine sensitive persons, and people with underlying cardiovascular or metabolic health conditions.

Another recommended measure is the regulation of manufacturing companies. The government should set up a caffeine limit on energy drinks. The drink labels should include the actual caffeine content per energy drink serving. This could aid in ensuring the safety and health of the vulnerable groups. This regulation should include labeling transparency, restriction to sales of people under 18 years, and well-labeled warnings.

The marketing strategy utilized should be non-appealing to the vulnerable populations. Marketing requires banning in social media platforms, websites, and television channels as well as themes and sporting events involving children and adolescents, as they are easily accessible to these groups of people. Vigorous awareness campaigns are of importance to highlight the potentially detrimental effects and responsible safe consumption of health drinks among these vulnerable populations. The nutritional value and effects of EDs should be included in the learners’ curriculum. Health care workers must educate patients about energy consumption and notify authorities in the event of adverse effects. Research-based agenda should be developed to major on key issues regarding the chronic and acute effects of EDs consumption. Safety standards and efficacy studies should follow and submitted to authorities by the manufacturers. The research should be well -designed to give amicable output.

While it is evident that energy drinks have a wide range of health complications associated with their use when taken at recommended doses aid in the enhancement of cognition and physical performance. Among the ergogenic benefits of energy drinks consumption include, among others endurance, sprint type, and muscular exercises. They also tend to improve reaction time and delay fatigue. Caffeine, being the most dominant ingredient has structural similarity to adenosine and therefore inhibits sleep because of its compatibility with the adenosine receptor. This enables consumers to work for more hours and remain active hence improving production (Al- Shaar et al., 2017 pg. 2). Responsible consumption of energy drinks improves performance yielding to productivity which in turn immensely to the growth of the economy.

Low doses of caffeine enhance athletic performance among athletic consumers. The intake of EDs improves the strength and endurance of muscles to physical activities such as jumping and other sport-specific activities. In addition to this, it helps consumers to regain lost energy due to athletic activities. There exists however, less consistent and unclear data comparing the consumption of EDs and performance as it varies among different populations. Most literature reveals that consumers should consume energy drinks with a caffeine content of 3.4% for intended athletic purposes. One such study suggests a ratio of three to six milligrams of energy drink per kilogram of body weight. More research is necessary for this field to draw a clear comparison between the two aspects.

Although energy drinks consumption improves cognitive and physical performance, the high consumption of these beverages may result in detrimental health effects discussed earlier in this paper. It is beyond doubt that the side effects of energy drink consumption are many due to the presence of caffeine and sugars, which have long-term and short-term health effects on individuals.

Conclusion

The above paper has elaborated on the health hazards associated with habitual consumption of health drinks as well as the advantages of its consumption to performance and cognition. These beverages affect mostly special populations among other children, adolescents, pregnant women, lactating mothers, caffeine-sensitive individuals, and people with underlying medical conditions. Among these special groups, children and adolescents are the most susceptible due to their risk-taking behaviors and the marketing strategy employed by the manufacturing companies as they mainly target these youngsters while advertising their products. Due to these open advertisements, adolescents and children fall prey to high consumption of these products leading to detrimental health effects due to high sugar and caffeine contained in these beverages.

Owing to these, the sale and marketing of energy drinks to underage people calls for banning and restriction across the world to mitigate the significant health effects associated with their habitual consumption. The energy drinks sale ought limitation to restricted counters inaccessible to adolescents and children to avoid easy availability to these special populations. It is also of good importance to educate these special groups on the dangers facing them should they consider taking energy drinks habitually.

Governments should, therefore, develop policies and serious laws and protocols governing the sale marketing and consumption of energy drinks as it does to alcohol and other drugs to protect the lives of these susceptible individuals. These protocols require serious regulation and enforcement for their effectiveness and better results.

Works cited

Al-Shaar, Laila, et al. “Health effects and public health concerns of energy drink consumption in the United States: a mini-review.” Frontiers in public health 5 (2017): 225.

John P.Higgins, et al. “Energy drinks: A contemporary issues paper.” Current sports medicine reports 17.2 (2018): 65-72.

Park, Subin, Yeeun Lee, and Junghyun H. Lee. “Association between energy drink intake, sleep, stress, and suicidality in Korean adolescents: energy drink use in isolation or in combination with junk food consumption.” Nutrition Journal 15.1 (2016): 87.