To drink or not to drink? Hesitantly, Sara bathed her top lip in the ice cool liquid. The moment of indecision passed, her lips parted and the swallow reflex did the rest. The liquid's active ingredients quickly worked their way into her bloodstream, travelling straight to her brain. Once there, they went to work interfering with Sara’s neurochemistry – lowering her adenosine levels and indirectly increasing dopamine. Within moments, Sara’s fatigue dissolved, her heart rate increased and her breathing became easier; she was cured. The “energy drink” had restored her ability to concentrate. The exam revision continued and sleep withdrew to the shadows.
In his best seller, A history of the world in 6 glasses, Tom Standage describes the far-reaching influence certain beverages have had on the world. The agricultural roots of civilisation, he argues, are based on a surplus of grain, because grain surplus makes beer drinking possible and popular. In ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, beer became a staple.
In ancient Greece, wine was celebrated as a social and cognitive lubricant, an essential element in the symposium where thinking and drinking were closely linked. The Arabs gave the world the word “alcohol”, along with the distillation technology to concentrate it. This enabled the advent of spirits like brandy, whisky and rum, each of which shaped societies and fuelled economies. Rum, distilled from sugarcane, was integral to the transatlantic slave trade.
The Arabs also introduced the world to coffee, a game-changing beverage if ever there were one. Coffee has been extolled as the libation of sobriety and scientific progress. The first coffee house in western Europe was opened by a Lebanese proprietor in the university city of Oxford in 1650. Academia and caffeine have had an intimate relationship ever since. Standage ends his history with a chapter titled Globalisation in a bottle, a reference to the ubiquitous cola brands as emblems of cultural homogenisation.
Picking up where Standage left off, I argue that the next big beverage to feature in the story of man will be hyper-caffeinated energy drinks. Students around the globe are using these drinks to facilitate prolonged study. Beverage-assisted study may give them an edge when competing for grad-school places and jobs.
But those who work hard often like to play hard too. You can play much harder when fuelled by energy drinks. With names such as Cocaine, Pimp Juice and Rockstar, these drinks essentially encourage our socially-sanctioned pursuit of excess.
The popularity of these beverages is attested to by global sales data. One Mintel (market intelligence) report suggests energy drink sales rose 136 per cent over a five-year period. In North America, 15 per cent of all adults are reported to be regular users of such drinks. The most common reasons given for using energy drinks were: to increase energy levels, increase mental alertness and to stay awake longer.
Energy drinks vary widely in their content, with the common active ingredient being caffeine. In some cases this can be as much as 750 milligrams. This is a lot when you consider a decent cup of coffee contains about 100 milligrams. This is history repeating itself, just like distilled spirits have a much higher alcohol concentration than their fermented predecessors, energy drinks massively out-caffeinate tea and coffee. One problem with this huge increase in caffeine content is that many countries do not require caffeine content to be stipulated on labels. In such cases it’s impossible for consumers to know just how much caffeine they’re consuming.
Recently, Sharjah Municipality issued a mixing ban, prohibiting all food outlets from mixing energy drinks with other food and beverages. This is a very helpful move, as it allows consumers to monitor their caffeine intake. It’s one thing knowingly consuming 500 milligrams of caffeine in a single beverage, but if someone doesn’t tell you, then that is tantamount to being spiked.
Dr Justin Thomas is an associate professor of psychology at Zayed University
On Twitter: @DrJustinThomas
