Energy Drinks

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!

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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.

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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