Since the start
of the 21th century energy drinks have become commonly drank by many people
across the globe. Most regularly in the United Kingdom and the United States of
America. Many of these drinks contain a high amount of Caffeine some have the equivalent
of 6 shots of espresso. This is bad enough as it is but what makes it worse is
the fact that there are Children in the UK as young as 4 or 5 drinking these
products almost every day.
Energy drinks
can cause harm to your body in many ways as when drinking one, a person is also
taking in a great deal of caffeine. This is bad for many reasons, regarding one’s
health, which include:
- Insomnia
- Nervousness
- Rapid heartbeats
- Spark of energy followed by tiredness
- And even muscle tremors
These symptoms
occur because Caffeine acts as a central
nervous system stimulant. When it reaches your brain, the most noticeable effect caused is alertness. One would feel more awake, so it's a common ingredient in medications to treat or manage
drowsiness.
After
watching a frequently watched program in my house, Jamie and Jimmy’s Friday
Night Feast, I became instantly astounded by how many children are consuming
these drinks. During the program, when visiting a secondary school in England they
found out that there are many children consuming energy drinks such as monster
or red bull for breakfast. The children said that this is done for three
reasons. The first is that they never have time to make a substantial breakfast
in the morning; the second is that many families in the country cannot afford
to feed their children suitable breakfast and the third is many children get
tired in school and therefore need energy drinks to keep them awake so they can
do their best. In this post I am going to attempt to tackle these problems by
trying to find other alternatives regarding the positives about energy drinks
but also have in mind the problems they can cause you.
The first
reason stated in why many children have energy drinks is because many children
never have time before school to make a substantial breakfast and the second is
many children cannot afford to buy breakfast. However a box of muesli bars can
cost on £1.19 for a packet of 8. This is only about 15p per bar. A can of
Monster from the same store could cost you 79p for a 500ml can. If you were
buying five for a school week it would cost you £3.95. A packet of 5 breakfast
bars could cost you only 75p which is almost a 1/5 of the price. The breakfast bars also do not require any
preparation and are supposed to last you a whole school day without going tired
therefore one can still achieve without the help of the caffeine normally being
used.
The last
problem stated was that Children rely on energy drinks to keep them awake
during the school day much like many adults rely on Coffee to keep them awake. However,
caffeine works like sugar in a child, you will suddenly have loads of energy
and be wide awake bouncing off wall, whereas the next minute you would start to
nod off again and would therefore start to drink another energy drink. This would
continue throughout the day and you could be consuming up to 5 cans of the
product which is about 2.5 litres. The NHS recommends you to drink only 1.2
litres of water in a day so 2 and a half litres of monster or red bull is way
too much to be drinking alone.
The last
thing I wanted to write about is what you can have which is similar to an
energy drink. It would not cost much and would be healthy, full of energy and
most importantly, DELICIOUS!
~ ~ ~
Lottie’s
leftover fruity smoothies:
Ingredients:
makes 5
·
Any leftover
fruit you can find
·
Milk/water
Method:
·
Pour the
fruit, (in my case strawberries, bananas, raspberries and chopped apples,) into
a blender
·
Blend with
the amount of water you would want based on how smooth you want your smoothie
·
Pour into a
jug and leave in the fridge for up to 3 days.
This could
be made on Sunday and could then last you until the middle of the week and
would fill you up with only a glass or two. Most fruits such as apples are
cheap therefore you would still be saving money.
~ ~ ~
What you
can do:
As you may
have seen there is a hash-tag going round looking like this.
#not for children. This
can be posted on Instagram, facebook twitter and many other social media sites
and is aimed at the government so that energy drinks cannot be sold to anyone
under the age of 16 much like alcohol. So get posting and spread the word that
children should not be downing this much caffeine.
Instagram- follow @Eat.Teen
product statistics stated in this post are all the prices of Tesco
