Dangerous Energy Drinks
The lamestream media told you:
According to Elizabeth Weise, writing for USA Today, “One hundred scientists and physicians have written a letter to the Food and Drug Administration asking for more regulation of increasingly popular energy drinks because their high caffeine content puts young drinkers at possible risk for caffeine intoxication and higher rates of alcohol-related injuries…
“The United States is the world’s largest consumer by volume of energy drinks, roughly 290 million gallons in 2007, according to Zenith International, a British consulting group. Americans drink 3.8 quarts per person per year.” http://tinyurl.com/5wdbxw
The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that:
In a free country, government has virtually no business regulating what you drink. A scientific examination of the olden Constitution, the theoretical source of all delegated power given to government by the people, has no mention of energy drinks, drinks, food, drugs or anything remotely related. This implies “authorities,” regardless of their agency, have little legitimate power to act in this matter at all.
Instead of standing up for the rights of the citizens, watchdogging the government, applying logic or recognizing the rule of law in its reporting, USA Today and its sycophants who ran the story without question — merely sound a scary-sounding alarm as if it’s the nanny state’s duty to protect you from your diet, and the nannies are falling down on the job.
Energy drinks, a popular and vigorously growing part of the economy, currently earn $5.4 billion annually, which is quite valuable in a slow economy. They are now threatened with increased impediments to doing business by the paper’s promotion of the proposed regulations. The authorities are called “scientists” even though the proposal is for social change.
With U.S. population currently estimated at 305.5 million, the paper’s estimate of 3.8 gallons per person per year is fairly close mathematically. However, since most of the public avoids those brews, and since college-age students and twenty-somethings often subsist on the stuff, the gallons per person is completely deceptive, a typical and recurrent lamestream mistake. Most publications and broadcasts viewed by the public don’t even advertise the products, which the drink makers know would be a complete waste of money, despite “America’s newspaper’s” claim that we all consume nearly four gallons of the stygian go juice.
Red Bull, the top seller, has about as much caffeine as a cup of coffee, 80 milligrams. “The drinks are aggressively marketed to young men as performance enhancers,” says Weise, contradicting her own average U.S. consumption figure, a point editors, who are known to be bad at math, apparently missed. “Caffeine intoxication,” a new scare phrase, is undefined, but five cans of Red Bull in rapid succession would equal an amount that does not put people “at risk from potential adverse effects from caffeine, according to health authorities worldwide,” she says, further undercutting any veracity she might still have.
The entire story is a result of the press release the 100 scientists issued to publicize their letter to the FDA, since a letter to the FDA by itself is so un-newsworthy it would not make the news, even for USA Today. Their PR agency is not named, but is believed to be proud of placing the story.
| More from Alan Korwin
Stumble It!
December 3rd, 2008 at 11:29 am
The only people more witless than the press are today’s “scientists.” The phrase “tunnel-visioned” applies to no one if not to them–especially as we move from math and physics towards medicine and, laughingly, the social sciences. The entire meaning of the word has been corrupted to refer to self-aggrandizing emperors whose research is mostly devoted to finding the money.
From beautiful forests to published rubbish.