"ENERGY DRINKS" FULL OF CAFFEINE ...NOT LABELED
http://cbc.ca/consumers/market/files/health/guarana/index.html
Air Date: Feb 25, 2003
Reporter: Wendy Mesley
Producer: Ines Colabrese
Researcher: Sarah Stevens
Caffeine. Most of us either can’t live with it, or can’t live without it. At least we know where it is usually in coffee or cola drinks. We also know where it’s not in Canada, caffeine cannot be added to clear pops and juices. But some companies may have found a way around the rules.
There's a crowd the soft drink companies love. They're young, brash and always in search of a rush. But in Canada, that crowd hasn't been able to find it in clear pop.
Health Canada prevented Pepsi from adding caffeine to that beverage a few years ago. The idea was that too much caffeine is bad for you and that it should only be in drinks where we know to expect it like coffee, tea and cola drinks.
But the drink companies have found a way around those rules with drinks like Dark Dog. Some of the new drinks pack a bigger caffeine rush than cola drinks. Many are spiked with a bean that bears a lot of similarities to a coffee bean. It’s called guarana. If you lived in South America, you’d know all about guarana.
Almost as popular as cola
In Brazil, guarana drinks are almost as popular as cola drinks. The companies are very up front about what's in the drinks: everyone knows they are full of caffeine.
Guarana grows in South America. When the guarana bean is roasted it looks remarkably like a coffee bean.
There aren’t a lot of guarana experts in North America. Terry Walker is one. He’s an associate professor of Bioprocess Engineering at Clemson University in South Carolina.
"The extracts that come from guarana can get up to two to three times the amount of caffeine that coffee has," Walker told Marketplace. "It's the richest known source of caffeine known at this point."
Guarana drinks have now moved to Canada. But they’re called energy drinks. Check out a corner store where young people hang out and you’ll find the shelves crammed. Many of them list guarana in their ingredients. But there's no mention of caffeine. Eighty million litres of the stuff was sold in Canada last year, and the market just keeps getting bigger.
The energy drinks are not cheap: they cost about $2 a can, about twice the cost of regular pop.
Marc André Bazinet is a sales rep for Guru, one of the hottest selling energy drinks in Canada. The company is based in Montreal. It has just cut a distribution deal with Molson Quebec.
"They’re getting very popular. When we started in Toronto two years ago nobody knew about energy drinks and now the category’s growing," Bazinet said.
Not for wusses
The drinks usually come in skinny little cans. The aggressive packaging gives you a hint they're not for wusses.
We wanted to find out how much of a caffeine punch these drinks deliver, so Marketplace sent out a batch for testing.
A couple of numbers to remember: a can of Coke or Pepsi has about 36 mg of caffeine. A cup of coffee has about 100 mg.
Some of the drinks we tested had far more than that:
Guru 125 mg
Speedster Fruit Punch 169 mg
Pro Circuit Thermo Charge Fruit Punch 246 mg
Raw Extreme Thermogenic Fruit Punch 259 mg
A can of Coke, containing 36 mg of caffeine is regulated by Health Canada. It must list caffeine in its ingredients and keep the caffeine below a certain level. A can of Guru, with four times the caffeine of Coke, is not regulated. The label does not have to list caffeine and there's no limit on how much caffeine the drink can contain.
Air Date: Feb 25, 2003
Reporter: Wendy Mesley
Producer: Ines Colabrese
Researcher: Sarah Stevens
'Energy' drinks available in schools
In Montreal, where the energy drinks first landed in Canada, kids can even buy them in
the school cafeteria. The drinks are also a hit with the snowboarding crowd. They're pitched as all healthy, all natural.
"[Guru contains] guarana extract, lemon concentrate, salt, Siberian ginseng, Echinacea, gingko biloba extract. There's no added sugar. So you get a natural rush, you get natural energy," Guru's Marc André Bazinet said.
Steve Gilbert is a toxicologist who worked at Health Canada for 15 years. He was there in the late 1990s when the government fought to keep caffeine out of clear pops like Mountain Dew.
Gilbert knew there was guarana-based caffeine in these new drinks but he had no clue the levels were so high until we showed him the results of our tests.
"It’s very important that a drug that acts on the central nervous system, people should be aware of how much they’re consuming," Gilbert said. "I think it's important that they know."
Knowing made all the difference for Francis, who used to love having a hit of Guru before playing hockey. But the day after a game, his parents started noticing he would crash. He had no energy and was unable to concentrate. They thought he had mononucleosis. They took him to the doctor, who determined that Francis was suffering from caffeine withdrawal. Two weeks later, he was back to normal.
Drink companies sponsor 'cool events'
There's no in-your-face advertising about guarana drinks in Canada. Instead, the drink companies reach their young audience by sponsoring "cool events" like extreme sports.
Over the past couple of years, the target market for these drinks has begun to shift. It's becoming a little older, 25 and up, a little more mainstream. Some of the clubs in downtown Toronto say they sell cases of the drinks in a night.
"It’s an adrenaline boost and people love it. They come here and drink 20 of them in a night. They won’t have one alcoholic beverage and they’ll be dancing all night long," one club worker told Marketplace.
Like all caffeine, drink too much and it can be a problem.
Steve Gilbert says most people want to know when a drink is full of caffeine and that Health Canada should force companies to put it on their labels.
"Government needs to come out and say 'if your drinks have caffeine in it, label it as such, tell us how much caffeine is in these drinks.' People need to be aware that this is a drug and that they’re consuming an active ingredient," Gilbert said.
There are strict regulations limiting caffeine, but absolutely none on guarana, even though the caffeine levels in these energy drinks can be very high. We wanted to ask Health Canada about what looked to us like a gaping loophole, but they refused to talk to us on camera and so did the Minister of Health.
By phone, Health Canada explained caffeine is regulated because it’s a food additive. Guarana is not regulated because it’s a naturally occurring food flavouring or ingredient. When caffeine is added to cola drinks, it’s usually a coffee bean that’s been reduced to its purest chemical form. However, when caffeine is added to energy drinks in the form of guarana, it may not be quite as pure. And that’s the crux: as long as there are miniscule bits of guarana oil or fibre in the extract, the manufacturers can call it a food instead of an additive.
'A rule is a rule'
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency recently began testing some of these drinks. But spokesperson Francois Breault says the CFIA did not focus on guarana or caffeine. He says a rule is a rule and Health Canada says guarana does not need to be regulated.
"The agency just applies the rules. We cannot force anyone to declare the amount of caffeine," Breault said.
We asked Terry Walker, whose guarana research was sponsored by Coke ten years ago, why the drink companies don’t just tell people the drinks have caffeine in them.
"Everyone knows what caffeine is. [People] don’t really associate that with being a health food, necessarily. I mean there’s a lot of adversity with caffeine as well."
Steve Gilbert, the former Health Canada scientist, says guarana's a good marketing technique.
"Caffeine is a great drug to make money off look at all the coffee joints. Caffeine is a mild stimulant and it metabolizes quickly out of the body so you can’t stop consuming it," Gilbert said.
The heavyweight drink companies, Coke and Pepsi, are entering the market. But most of their guarana products have less caffeine than traditional cola drinks.
We wanted to talk to the drink makers about how they’ve finally managed to legally produce a caffeinated non-cola drink. But Coke, Pepsi, Molson Quebec, and most of the little guys refused to talk to us on camera.
And now, a new player has hit the market. Like the drink Guru, Base just signed a big distribution deal with a giant. Starting this week, Labatt's Quebec will introduce a lot more kids to the guarana hook.
|
|
|