Energy drinks have been around since the Scots started bottling Iron Brew at the beginning of the twentieth century (now marketed as Irn-Bru so consumers aren’t led to believe that it actually is brewed). Gatorade, named for the University of Florida football team that drank it to play harder, has been on the market since the 1960s. But it was Jolt Cola, introduced in the mid-1980s with the slogan, “All the sugar and twice the caffeine,” that opened the floodgates to the contemporary market of high-octane, nonalcoholic libations. There now are more than a hundred brands, grossing some $10 billion annually in the United States alone. The wide-awake, 900-pound gorilla among them is Red Bull, which accounts for nearly half of all energy drinks sold in America.
Red Bull, which originated in Austria, hit the States in 1987. A single can has less than a coffee cup’s worth of caffeine, but it is turbocharged by taurine (inspiration for the beverage’s bovine name), which originally was derived from bull bile but is now made synthetically. In addition to taurine, which the body needs to support the stress of vigorous exercise, it contains vitamins B6 and B12, niacin, and glucose, all adding up to a seismic kick in the head and heart. You won’t get drunk sucking down four Red Bulls, but you will get seriously buzzed, sometimes to the point of panic. One study indicated that a single serving will put a normal person at the same risk of having a heart attack as someone with coronary disease, and in early 2009 a woman died after drinking four cans (plus, it must be noted, a quart of VK, which is vodka plus caffeine), but it is generally considered no more harmful (or helpful) to physical well-being than strong coffee. Actually, Red Bull is relatively mild compared to such energy drinks as Speed Freak Fruit Punch, Endorush Orange Fix, the briefly marketed Cocaine Energy Drink, and the strongest of all, Wired X505, of which each serving contains six coffees’ worth of caffeine, quadruple the taurine in Red Bull, and approximately 1000 percent of the daily recommended dose of B vitamins.
Although it has been around for more than twenty years, Red Bull, in the svelte can that is slimmer than dowdy old soda pop, remains a happening beverage, especially among the young and the restless. Two-thirds of the people who regularly consume energy drinks are under thirty-five years old, most of those students, a segment of society that typically never gets enough sleep.