The Current - How energy drinks became the teen drink of choice

Episode Date: September 10, 2025

The latest wellness-branded must-haves for young people can contain dangerous amounts of caffeine. The drinks are raising concern from experts about the health risks that go with them like anxiety, heart palpitations and trouble sleeping. Now, England is moving to ban energy drinks for people under 16 — should Canada do the same?

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Mother Mary comes to me by Arundati Roy. Now, wherever books are sold. This ad is brought to you by Simon and Schuster, Canada. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. Red Bull, Monster, Rockstar, Venom, Energy drinks have not usually given off the healthiest of vibes. But that is changing. It's 4.49 a.m. Let's go. First is Celsius. No sugar. All the good stuff. 12 miles. Six comes easy. The next six punish. Quick change. change back to work. I've got a goal to hit.

Come with me for my three to five before my five to nine. Unfortunately for me, you heard that right. Your girl is a resident doctor who also cares about staying fit. This is the daily MVP. I've got just 45 minutes to crush a workout before my shift. And Zoha energy always has my bat. Electrolites and B&C vitamins have me covered for my workout. I'm tired just listening to that.

Drinks like Celsius and Zoa are just some of the new slate of wellness-branded energy drinks, less all night in the club and more 4 a.m. work is before your shift at the hospital. and they're appealing to wider demographics, teens and kids especially, so much so that the UK is banning energy drinks for people under the age of 16. Sarah Todd is a health reporter at Statt News who looks at this industry. Sarah, good morning. Good morning. Can you just like a definition? For some people, an energy drink would be a cup of coffee or tea. That is not what we're talking about. What makes an energy drink an energy drink? Sure. So I don't know that there's a precise legal definition, but for, you know, common purposes. An energy drink basically is a caffeinated cold beverage that often contains

not just caffeine derived from coffee or green tea, but also other additives like Torrine or chlorana as well. How much caffeine is in typically one of these energy drinks? There's a big range, but somewhere between 150 and 200 is a typical amount. And so I don't know what that means. Compare that to a cup of coffee or something like that. Oh, sure. So again, in coffee, there can be arranged to, but coffee can contain anywhere from 113 to 250 milligrams of caffeine, about 12 ounces. So it's, typically, you'll have a little bit more in an energy drink, but that can vary. This is, in reading this story that you did in stat, the numbers are mind boggling in terms

of the size of this market. We're talking about tens of billions of dollars, right? Yes, and it's really exploded, particularly over the past 10 years. So right now in the U.S., for example, there are 254 different energy drink brands, and that's up to, up from around 50 in 2015. And it's not just here in North America. In China, this is a huge market as well. Yes, yeah, in Japan, you know, all over. Japan was actually the place where the first sort of predecessor to energy drinks was invented

back in the 1970s. So, as I said, one of the things that's changing here is that these drinks aren't just, you know, so you can stay up until the wee small hours, but that, you know, you can stay up until the wee small hours, but that you have more energy, perhaps, for your workout. As we heard that exhausting little bit of clip there, suggesting that this will help you be a better you and that that is falling under the umbrella of wellness. How are brands marketing these drinks as a wellness boost?

So this is a really interesting sort of evolution of branding. One prominent example that you mentioned in your clip was Celsius, which is now the third most popular energy drink after Red Bull and Monster. And Celsius has really succeeded in appealing to both men and women versus previously it was much more categorized toward men. And they've done so. It's lower sugar, it's lower calorie. And they also have a lot of the, in terms of the marketing, a lot of fruit on the front of the cans. So it seems like it's more good for you than a lot of other brands. And then they'll also suggest that you might incorporate it as part of your workout or your fitness routine. And also often for, for, for teens, it becomes a sort of steady accessory as well. And it pitched with all of the kind of wellness jargon, right?

This will improve your focus. This will improve your mental clarity, what have you. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of the idea that it'll help boost focus and concentration. And even energy itself is seen as something that you should feel energetic all the time and sort of deny your body's natural rhythms of being up and down. May you ask you about teens in particular?

Logan Paul, influencer, wildly popular, is behind one of these drinks. Tell me a little bit more about how the brands are trying to attract teens. Yeah, so there are a bunch of different strategies. One that is an interesting brand to follow is Alani New. They are appealing to young women in particular with college ambassadors, and they feature a lot of gymnasts and cheerleaders and other types of athletes in their social media branding. So they've been really successful in getting more women on board with energy drinks.

Then you mentioned Logan Paul. Of course, he is a major YouTube influencer. He has a lot of sway. And he sells both prime energy drinks as well as drinks that are non-caffeinated that can wind up seeming appealing to even younger kids as well. Some of the flavors here are, it seems like, targeted specifically at teens, things like sour kids and popsicle. Yeah, yeah. So that's a really interesting sort of branding. So the brand's ghost and C4 have energy drinks in varieties like Welch's grape or Sour Patch Kids or you mentioned Popsicle.

And there has been a lot of pushback over that type of branding. What do we know? One of the things that comes up in this piece is you speak with cardiologists. What do we know about how these drinks affect kids and teens differently than they might for adults? So because kids and teens bodies are generally smaller, they have lower body weights and. their brains are still developing, caffeine can have more of an impact on them than it would on a full-grown adult. From a cardiology perspective, the big concern is arrhythmia that, you know, we know that caffeine and other stimulants increase your heart rate. So, you know,

that can lead to anything from being more jittery and, you know, and nervous to, in the worst case scenario, it can lead to sudden cardiac arrest. No, that's rare, but that is a possibility. And for teens, and young people, the concern is even more emphasized because they may not know that they have a preexisting heart condition in the first place because it hasn't come up yet. And so energy drinks may carry more of a risk in that sense, too. You quote cardiologists talking about kids coming into the emergency department with tachycardia, like a rapid heart rate, but also chest pains because it turns out after some investigation, some of these young kids have had, what, three, four energy drinks a day. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, in Canada, for example, there is a

limit on how much caffeine can be in one energy drink. It's 180. But there's there's nothing stopping young people from consuming more than one energy drink a day and then quickly exceeding the recommended amount, which is no more than 100 milligrams for between, if you're between the ages of 13 and 18. Do you think parents understand this? I mean, the other part of this is that kids aren't getting enough sleep and so there can be mental health concerns because the kids are all jacked up on caffeine. Do parents understand these drinks and what they might be doing? Yeah, that's a good question. I think, you know, and in some ways, it's harder for parents to parse. The labeling on a lot of energy drinks isn't super clear about what the caffeine content

is. Often it's in very small font. It's kind of easy to miss. So, for example, there was one doctor I spoke with who said that they had been giving their child an energy drink without realizing that it had caffeine in it in the first place. Then there's also the reality that a lot of kids can just walk into a convenience store or gas station and buy energy drinks on their own. So parents may not know what their kids are consuming. The UK is taking the step of banning energy drinks for people under the age of 16. Is there any evidence that those sorts of age restrictions would work? Yeah. So there are a number of countries that are trying to enact these kinds of laws ranging from Sweden and Poland, Czech, lawmakers are moving forward with a similar ban.

And while the data is still early enough that it's hard to say what kind of an impact they have, I think a good comparison is in the U.S., like recently the age for purchasing cigarettes and other tobacco products was increased from age 18 to age 21. And we did see after that a significant drop in teen vaping rates. So there's an implication there that it would have an impact to move forward with the ban. But just finally, given the amount of money that's at stake here, you can imagine those companies will work rather hard to ensure that the drinks that they are selling can get into the hands of kids. Yeah, I mean, you know, the companies will say that they're not marketing to kids, but I'm sure that there is a business impact with any ban that would come into play. Yeah.

Sarah, we'll leave it there. This is really interesting. Thank you very much. Great. Thanks so much. Sarah Todd is a health reporter at Statt News. She was in New York City. This has been the current podcast. You can hear our show Monday to Friday on CBC Radio 1 at 8.30am at all time zones.

You can also listen online at cbc.ca.ca slash the current or on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca. slash podcasts.