Scooby,
As you can probably tell my apathy on this subject comes from the fact that some people really aren't truly happy unless they can find something wrong with everything. We've seen reports about every legitimate food source that says that it is dangerous to your health and so on and so forth. I'm sure many people who read this board were around when the conflicting reports about eggs came out. First they were bad for you, then they were good for you.
Now we've come to the energy drink crisis! When Gatorade first came out it was heralded as miracle water. Then some coaches decided to get samrt and claim that it was harmful because it contained glucose ( a form of sugar ). Now most peopel just see it as better tasting water. And now we come to these super energy drinks such as Amp, Red Bull, etc etc. And you are talking about how you want testing done!!! These energy drinks are not even regulated by the FDA. Why you might ask? Basically because the typical 8oz energy drink contains 80 mg of Caffine the main ingredient from which this "Energy" comes from. While an 8 oz coffee has 120 mg. As you can see this stuff is less harmful to you ( in a manner of speaking) than its coffee equivilent. By the way just for comparison. 8 oz of Coca Cola has 23 mg of Caffine, Dr. Pepper has 28 mg, and our old favorite Moutain Dew has 37mg. By the way chocolate also contains caffine naturally about 5 mg per 1 oz.
As you can see these drinks when consumed normally will not cause any detremental effects than any other caffine containing substance will. Obviously drinking 3 cans of this stuff one right after the other would be like taking no-doz, and if your body doesn't handle caffine well its probably not a good idea. However I might add caffine is like any other drug and can be fatal, want to know what the fatal dose is? At doses above 3000 mg all taken within 15 minutes which is how long it takes the human body to start metabolizing it. 3000 mgs os alot of caffine, somewhere in the neighborhood of 25-30 no-doz pills all at one, and by energy drink you would need to drink about 30 of them as well, and no human stomach can drink that much.
In conclusion, as I said before I am not going to be concerned about energy drinks harming someone until I actually see a case where its proven it does. Otherwise I might as well be worried about a great many other foods as well
