Research: Students don’t read, understand energy drink labels
Body copy Heading link
Almost 40 percent of college students don’t read product labels on ubiquitous energy drinks, and about a quarter of those students say they don’t understand them, according to a study co-authored by Janet Thorlton, PhD ’10, MS ’04, RN, CNE, clinical associate professor at the Urbana campus of the UIC College of Nursing. The energy drink category includes products like Red Bull, Monster Energy, Rockstar and 5-hr. ENERGY.
The findings are important because many of these drinks contain stimulants that could create dangerous interactions if the student has an undiagnosed medical condition, mixes it with alcohol, or is already taking prescription medication containing a stimulant, such as Ritalin, Adderall or asthma inhalers, Thorlton says.
“It’s very difficult to determine caffeine consumption by looking at a label,” she says. “Let’s say you decide to buy a caffeine-free version of an energy drink. That may mean it doesn’t contain the ingredient caffeine, but it could contain other herbal stimulant ingredients, such as guarana, which has about twice the concentration of caffeine found in coffee.”
Thorlton and her co-author, William Collins, clinical associate professor at Purdue University, surveyed 283 students from a large university about their attitudes toward energy drinks for the study, which ran in the Western Journal of Nursing Research.
The study also found that only 18 percent of respondents followed recommended dosages on labels or were aware that some products contained more than one serving.
Triggering the study is the fact that serious injury and death are linked to energy drink consumption, Thorlton said.
In a guest editorial that accompanied the study, Thorlton and David Colby, associate professor of medicinal chemistry at the University of Mississippi, wrote that this issue has captured “the attention of the U.S. Food & Drug Administration, policy makers and researchers who are trying to better understand ingredient interactions.”