It’s the Most Caffeinated Time of the Year

Lo and behold, amid the twinkling lights and passersby with their brightly wrapped packages and the ten-thousandth playing of Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want from Christmas,’ there exists another season on college campuses all across United States: finals season.

And like any major event in the U.S., this season has its corporate sponsors. In recent years, none has been more present than the Austrian company Red Bull GmbH. This past week the company’s red, white, blue, and yellow cars with the rotating beverage affixed to the hood have been stationing themselves at various high traffic points around NYU’s campus including Bobst, Cantor, and Silver. Representatives have been passing out free cans of the energy drink along with a small, accordion booklet that is a perfect example of target marketing. With a cartoon bull parody of Sir Edmund scaling Mount Everest, the cover states that “if you want to stay on top of things in this 24/7 world, you’ll need some wings.” Then on both sides of the booklet, the same cartoon bull depicts the many ways Red Bull can be beneficial. One side explains what is in the drink while the opposite shows how different types of people including people in the work force, students, hard partying night owls, and the super-star wonder mom have all realized how Red Bull can help propel them through their hectic lives.

And if Red Bull’s familiar claims to increase performance and concentration, improve reaction speed, increase endurance, and stimulate metabolism weren’t enough, a study at the University of Loughborough incorporation with the British Ministry of Environment and Transportation has cited Red Bull as a positive influence on cognitive as well as reactionary performance. Of course, the sales pitch does its best not to bring attention to the fine print. The study’s results were limited to the improvement in the “efficiency of a ‘functional energy’ drink in counteracting driver sleepiness.’ As we all know anything with caffeine in it will stimulate your body to some extent, and the fine points of the study including the drink’s range of effectiveness in correlation to the driver’s exhaustion are left up to the proactive consumer to pursue.

Interestingly, in the pamphlet Red Bull goes beyond listing its healthiest aspects including taurine and vitamins B6 and B12 to including crouching the carbohydrates and sugars as a “unique mixture of substances [that] results in a dose of pure energy.”

Though this is not necessarily medical based media criticism, I believe that Red Bull operates with the same bill of fare as the ads for Lunesta and Gardasil. They emphasize the benefits of the product, but glaze over the consequences of excessive or improper use. Furthermore, at least most people take prescriptions with a grain of seriousness while with regards to energy drinks; less savory consumers may believe that he or she is receiving an appropriate amount of vitamins. They keep chugging it down without a second thought which leads to its own medical complications such as elevated heart rate as in the case of this University of Lincoln which may have contributed her death. (http://www.heraldscotland.com/red-bull-caffeine-drink-may-have-helped-cause-student-s-death-1.901617 ) Therefore, during this crazy final season, perhaps we should think twice about how many energy drinks we’re guzzling down when ninety minutes—an entire sleep cycle—may be just as refreshing and less harmful.