Grumpy Old Man: 'Energy Drinks'

In my day, we didn't have energy drinks.

If we wanted to get a sugar/caffeine rush, we chomped on Vivarin or No Doz, and chased it with Jolt cola.

And if that didn't do the trick, we would buy tubs of ready made frosting, to nosh on through Western Civ.

By the end of the day, you'd be so cracked out and crashing from the sugar/caffeine jolt, you felt like the walking dead.

That was of course, before we discovered Mini Thins.

Docs worry about kids buzzed on energy drinks

Experts warn beverages can hook kids on unhealthy jolt-and-crash cycle

Thirty-one percent of U.S. teenagers say they drink energy drinks, such as Monster, Red Bull and Rockstar, but experts warn the beverages can cause serious health problems.

CHICAGO - More than 500 new energy drinks launched worldwide this year, and coffee fans are probably too old to understand why.

Energy drinks aren't merely popular with young people. They attract fan mail on their own MySpace pages. They spawn urban legends. They get reviewed by bloggers. And they taste like carbonated cough syrup.

Vying for the dollars of teenagers with promises of weight loss, increased endurance and legal highs, the new products join top-sellers Red Bull, Monster and Rockstar to make up a $3.4 billion-a-year industry that grew by 80 percent last year.

Thirty-one percent of U.S. teenagers say they drink energy drinks, according to Simmons Research. That represents 7.6 million teens, a jump of almost 3 million in three years.

Nutritionists warn that the drinks, laden with caffeine and sugar, can hook kids on an unhealthy jolt-and-crash cycle. The caffeine comes from multiple sources, making it hard to tell how much the drinks contain. Some have B vitamins, which when taken in megadoses can cause rapid heartbeat, and numbness and tingling in the hands and feet.