What Our Kids Are Drinking

Last week I had the pleasure of speaking with 5 freshmen health classes at our local high school. They were just starting their nutrition unit, and I was invited to come answer practical and real life questions. 

This is not my first time, and there are always themes that seem to permeate all of the classes:

–Does food affect mood?

–How much sleep should I be getting?

–How do I bulk up? (literally every freshman male wants to know this)

–How do I get more energy?

–What diet should someone eat to lose weight?

I LOVE addressing all of these and I love how inquisitive they are. 

But there is ONE topic that hands down captures every single one of their attention (hard to do in a class of freshmen) and it’s my personal favorite topic to talk about with teens: are energy drinks safe?

I do truly believe kids want to feel better and that most of them are exhausted and feel like crap. 

I’ve also noticed that more and more kids are curious about what it takes to be “healthy”. 

But they are also prey to marketing tactics by big food companies. 

Energy drinks (and sports drinks) have always been a HARD NO from me. 

But I didn’t have concrete reasons why, except that I knew they were full of chemicals. These kids deserved a better reason because I knew this wouldn’t resonate for them. 

I got lucky, because in one class, the teacher actually had THREE DIFFERENT energy drinks there for herself. 

After giving her a hard time, we dove into the ingredients. 

First 3? 

Carbonated water, cane sugar, glucose syrup (another word for concentrated sugar). 

From there, some diversification happened but generally speaking these ingredients followed:

–synthetic amino acids and vitamins

–natural flavors 

–artificial flavors

–caffeine, green tea, etc

–some other crap (some brands have colorings and all have ingredients even I can’t pronounce). 

Some of these products are VERY sneaky in their serving sizes as well, so once I realized that several of these cans actually contained TWO servings, my jaw hit the floor. 

Many of these can have more than 200mg of caffeine in them. And some kids have multiple servings a day.

All of them have more carbohydrates (aka sugar) in them than one person should have in ONE meal, and it’s not even food. 

So I asked the class: 

“Raise your hand if your energy drink is the only thing you have had today?”

Most hands went up. 

Wowza. 

Not only are these drinks incredibly unhealthy stimulants for our kids, but to drink them on an empty stomach is to send their energy, metabolism, and inflammation responses into an absolutely tizzy (we’ll talk about Celsius in a minute–which is sugar free). 

When sugar intake goes up, insulin goes up, blood sugar crashes, fatigue sets in, we crave sugar or more caffeine. Add into the picture that many of these kids are sleep deprived and we have a recipe for poor focus, brain fog, poor performance, challenges with learning, etc (sound like any kids you know?). And if your kids are drinking one of the brands with dyes in them (that are proven consistently in studies to increase ADHD behaviors)...well, how can we expect kids to sit all day in a classroom and focus? 

Isn’t that the exact opposite effect that these drinks are claiming to have? 

What kills me even more is that these products are LITERALLY SOLD in the vending machines at some schools because they are “healthier than soda”.  The errors in this thinking are unbelievable. 

Let’s break down the ingredients further: 

-We know the sugar, particularly the glucose syrup, is inflammatory and causes a blood sugar ride in our kids bodies resulting in fatigue/crashes and trouble with focus. 

-But did you know that the amino acids and B vitamins in the products are made in a lab and actually are poorly utilized by our bodies? Oh, the freshman boys were disappointed to hear that! They are being excreted in the urine and not absorbed. Sorry guys. 

-Let’s talk about glucuronolactone. This is nearly every energy drink. It is a stimulant. Along with the green tea and the caffeine already in there. There is no scientific evidence that it does anything to support the body. Here’s a list of side effects: 

Aggressive behavior: fighting, bullying.

• Stress, anxiety, insomnia, depressive symptoms, suicidal ideation.
• Negative cardiovascular impact: increase in blood pressure and heart rate.
• Metabolic effects: obesity, increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
• Dental decay.

Sound like any youth today? 

Let’s move on to the “sugar-free” versions of all of these. Every major company involved in the energy drink market has a sugar free version. These must be healthier right? 

It’s great that they don’t have the glucose spiking sugars in them, but most of them use sucralose as the replacement, which has plenty to be concerned about. 

Sucralose is an organochlorine sweetener that is 600x sweeter than sugar. If that doesn’t sound like a recipe for disaster, I’m not sure what does. 

Sucralose is in everything sugar free these days because of the sweetness factor, which I would argue makes them highly addicting, because it hits that dopamine center in the brain. 

Additionally, studies have shown that when adults consume sugar-free foods and beverages, the brain reacts with a “I’m confused” message because it’s expecting food and calories to be coming in. Since they aren’t, the brain goes looking and eventually ends up eating more sweet foods (think chips, crackers, cookies), which just continues the sugar and energy roller coaster we talked about above. 

There is literally nothing good about energy drinks that I could come up with. 

They are so dangerous for our kids and there continues to be more and more reports of heart damage and heart arrhythmias being experienced by our youth after consuming these drinks. 

If kids really want energy, let’s try an electrolyte mix, or maybe we help them just get more sleep. It’s one thing to be staying up late doing homework (except kids tell me this is the rare case unless they are in multiple AP classes), but it’s another to be up on technology because they “can’t sleep.” This is where we must come in as adults and remove tech from the bedroom and help our kids get at LEAST 8 hours (really they need 10). 

Do you have a kiddo who is obsessed with these drinks? Let’s talk about how we can avoid being the big, bad parent and educate them to make decision that will be supportive of their health. 

Here’s the recommendations I gave to kids regarding the consumption of energy drinks. 

1. If you are tired, first look at your sleep. If you NEED a boost of energy, try eating protein and fat FIRST and then have the energy drink. This will slow the glucose spike as well as get some real food nutrition in their bodies. Our energy source SHOULD be food, not liquids.
2. Limit the consumption to when you truly NEED a quick energy boost versus having it daily as a habit.
3. Pay attention to your body-if you notice that after the spike of energy, you feel shaky or actually start to feel really tired, energy drinks are not helping you, they are hurting you. 

Summary: 

–there are no Larson Family Health approved energy drinks

–if you ARE going to consume them, do so after a meal of primarily fat and protein

–limit the frequency of consumption and reserve them for those days where sleep was hard to come by and there’s a big test at school

–fuel with food first, always