Energy Drinks part 3

"Cocaine looks so freaking tight. I NEED THIS STUFF. Next weekend, me and 3 friends are going to take a 6 hour roadtrip to NYC just to get our hands on this stuff." В— From a comment on the MySpace page of Cocaine Energy Drink.

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Red Bull founder Dietrich Mateschitz based his product on tonics sold in Asia. He started selling Red Bull in 1987 in Austria, his native country, and today 2.5 billion cans are sold a year in more than 130 nations. The industry leader grabbed more than 37 percent of the U.S. market last year, according to Beverage Digest.

Rumors have swirled around Red Bull for years. Contrary to hearsay, the ingredient taurine (an amino acid important in making bile to aid digestion) is not made from bull urine, and Mateschitz did not learn about Red Bull from rickshaw drivers in Thailand. The urban legends-debunking Web site http://www.snopes.com has a page devoted to exposing the false claim that Red Bull contains a banned substance linked to brain tumors.

No evidence was ever found that sudden deaths in Ireland and Sweden were caused by people drinking Red Bull. But it's true that the Swedish government studied energy drinks and recommended they not be used to quench thirst or replenish liquid when exercising. And they should not be mixed with alcohol.

Too late. Anheuser-Busch and Miller Brewing now produce several "energy beers" В— beer containing caffeine. And Red Bull and vodka В— mixed up by bartenders who call it a Friday Flattener or a Dirty Pompadour В— has been popular for a decade. On Red Bull's MySpace page, the product's 11,000 "friends" include alcohol products, which also have their own MySpace pages.

A Brazilian study found college students didn't feel as drunk as they actually were after drinking vodka and Red Bull. Their perception of their coordination and reaction time didn't match objective tests.

The potential for accidents and alcohol poisoning worries Dr. Sandra Braganza, a pediatrician and nutrition expert at the Children's Hospital at Montefiore in New York. As she prepared to write an article about energy drinks for a pediatrics journal, she was surprised how little published research she could find on them.

"The truth is, we don't know what kind of effects these ingredients can have," Braganza said of taurine, glucuronolactone and guarana. "We have to start doing more studies on this."

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"How much of your favorite energy drink or soda would it take to kill you? Take this quick test and find out." В— From a "Death by Caffeine" calculator on the Web site, http://www.energyfiend.com. Fill in your weight and click the button marked "Kill Me."