Mrs. Anderson
English 8th
14 March 2011
Energy Drinks
Are you ever extremely tired? In the generation we live in today, the average person does not get the eight hours of sleep that the body needs. They do not eat right or take vitamins, and they do not get the physical exercise they need to keep their body healthy. As a result; they get extremely tired, stressed, and moody by the middle of the day. A smart choice would be to get more hours of sleep, eat healthy, take vitamins and exercise daily. However, because we changed from a fast and active society to a lazy and overweight one, people have decided to take the easy way out. This easy way would be energy drinks. These drinks are said to give you a “quick boost of energy” and they claim to have some sort of nutrition to them.
Energy drinks have been around for over fifty years and are getting more popular as the years go by. They now are in almost every store you can go to and in many commercials and advertisements. The most popular energy drinks in the United States are Monster, Red Bull, Full Throttle, and Rockstar. However, my point here is that these energy drinks do the exact opposite of what they say they do. They say “Healthy benefits” I say “Heart-attack”. Energy drinks are unhealthy because they can cause health problems that will last you a lifetime.
First, the most obvious ingredient in an energy drink is caffeine. The bad thing about this ingredient is that people do not realize how much of it is in one can. Jenna Hogan, an author of the article “What You Need To Know About Energy Drinks”, states “In comparison, an average 8 ounce serving of a soft drink and a cup of coffee contains 25 to 85 milligrams respectively. This means that an 8 ounce energy drink can have as much caffeine as 14 colas!”(Hogan 3) This much caffeine can lead to things such as bad sleep, kidney problems, dehydration, seizures, high blood pressure, and a decrease in bone mass. Caffeine increases heart rate