390mg and not labeled in-store as an energy drink

a diner cup of joe contains roughly 65mg, making this six cups of coffee in an unlabeled lemonade

labeling it "the ultimate energy drink" online BUT NOT IN THE STORE????? holy fuck!

since the lawsuit broke Panera stores have moved these drinks out of customers' reach (requiring employees to warn them about the caffeine before pouring it)

but yeah employees (and others) were pointing out that customers were treating them like lemonade, not energy drinks soon as they were introduced

letting their young kids fill up and such

might want to put in the top plurk that is about panera's charged Lemonade?

komikbookgeek: good point, added!

absolutely batshit imo that there was no HUGE brightly colored ad banner above these drinks on the drink board with the words ULTIMATE ENERGY DRINK

someone on my personal plurk pointed out that without the fine print labeled with quantities, this could be misconstrued as "260mg in the lemonade and 390mg in the coffee"

and another that your average consumer may not know what a "normal" amount of caffeine is in mg in the first place

and if you're ordering this off the drink board at the counter, you are not looking this closely at the label on the dispenser

also might i add, there is a huge movement that has been picking up speed of late that anything labeled anything along the lines of 'all natural' and 'organic' is just automatically completely fine and healthy for you

which is ignoring just how many natural things want to kill us but anyway, that's a huge, huge part of it i would bet

people just assume it's fine because it's natural

and maybe I'm dumb, but I personally would expect 'charged' to mean that it's got a shot of fruit syrup, or maybe carbonation, not caffeine

honestly i would assume it was alcoholic were it not in a soda dispenser lmao

That too!

?!?! dude, drinks like bang and this new wave of like Super Energy Drinks usually have 300 mg and A WARNING LABEL ABOUT HOW MUCH CAFFEINE THEY CONTAIN

who even thought this was a good idea

VoidRot

the fact that panera is both exceeding that and only labeling it in a way that goes with caloric information is just... baffling to me??

DryadGurrl: I would have assumed "charged" meant like, taurine, guarana, ginseng, maybe at most a little green coffee extract, so you're not alone!

Honestly I suspect they're only 'labeling' what they are 'required' to do legally and/or what will help them sell the drink. Maybe I'm being too cynical but I'm pretty sure it's all about the money. -_-

oh i'm sure you're right

especially with how many places are offering things like "vitamin C shots" and "clean caffeine free energy shots"

like i can't believe it but i can

I could see that one too, yeah, but definitely not enough caffeine to launch someone into orbit

chocoballs: +1 to this, and "plant-based" baffles me. coffee is a plant...

...................... if you drank 3 of these you would get caffeine poisoning for sure but even 2 would probably be Pretty Bad

anyway, getting sidetracked from the main point - thank you for spreading the word

i'm just so baffled, if they wanted to capture the market of people who want the 'clean organic' drinks, why did they have to put so much caffeine into it?

like for realsies that would probably kill me if i drank it, my heart doesn't like normal energy drinks so i had to stop drinking them

look i fucking love caffeine which is why i know how much x or y product contains, how much is safe to consume, whatever but obviously like... a teenager is going to look at "charged lemonade" and prob not think much beyond "tasty lemonade with a lil caffeine in it"

ANYWAY thank you for warning everyone w this post, it's so wild that this happened

flyingthesky: yeah I was just thinking, what if I had gotten a large Dunkin cold brew (333mg of caffeine, but I KNOW that and drink it slowly) and then happened to go to Panera later?

I have high bp and rhr due to fibro

like I have four shots of espresso a day and even I couldn't drink a cup of this shit

But also there is a lot of victim blaming in the comments I've seen on this story elsewhere

It was labeled she knew she had a heart condition blah blah blah

which contains more caffeine than cans of Red Bull and Monster energy drinks combined BRUH???

apparently the labels if I read correctly didn't show up until after she died.

Fuck_Mars: I'm. oh my god. of fucking course there's victim blaming. why are people

oh! another thing: i seriously had to cut down on caffeine when i started taking adhd meds, and with there being a rise with diagnoses and prescriptions i'm like... this deceptive ass devil's lemonade could fuck adhders up too

Fuck_Mars: gkds;fkd that makes me even more mad, christ (the labels)

rubs eyes ok
this is actually a caffeine labeling problem
im going to add that the fda does not require amounts of caffeine to be declared anywhere in restaurant or on retail products

tho i will say that organic is v regulated on retail products

the usda will come after ppl

oh god dammit it's the McDonald's coffee situation all over again

these big corporations can get away with so much shit because people trust them and stuff

natural is semi-regulated, as in it requires certain sensibilities and can be held in violation (eg if it has artificial ingredients)

much like any soi

yeah i think people don't realize it's an irresponsible amount of caffeine to be in a product not labelled as a an energy drink (it's kind of irresponsible no matter what but at least "energy drink" sets an expectation)

i just don't understand who came up with this

who was the person who thought this was a good idea

i'm blaming that person, not the poor girl with a heart condition

Right I look at that and I'm like probably a little caffeine but not like my extra small sugar free RedBull in the morning level caffeine

in the restaurant industry there's most likely mixing going on without testing. im gonna bet they're looking at requirements (nfp based requirements like sugar, calories) as opposed to declared amount of caffeine bc it's not exactly required for labeling

also if it's not CLEARLY labeled as highly caffeinated, as an energy drink, something, who is even going to look for caffeine content on a lemonade? this doesn't just affect heart conditions, but yeah people on other stimulants as jackalopes said, people with IBD, people on a lot of prescription medications...

honestly this reminds me more of the ephedra thing

since the fda is notoriously strapped, i doubt anyones here checking caffeine levels, esp since it's not really required

hadal: John Oliver recently did an episode on The FDA and USDA and holy shit they have like 3 people each

it's insane

shrieks

CAPITALISM

YEP THEY HAVE LIKE NO PPL, their backbone is people sending in potential violations for them to review

HOLY SHIT

jackalopes: Right it's insane. Food labels are unregulated though for the most part and it's bat shit.

anyway i did a little digging and high levels of caffeine are considered adulterated, but there's no potential amounts of caffeine that need to be declared:Guidance on Highly Concentrated Caffeine in Dietary ...

this is just in supplements, and not in foods

Fuck_Mars: right, for sure

this isn't to say all food labeling is a sham, the fda does do good work in making sure that people aren't harmed from an array of foodborne illnesses and potential retailer scams (eg "chocolate milk" that's water)

but also certain things have not ..... uh, caught up with the times. at all.

There's no 'money' in keeping up with the times, and the FDA is often seen as big government after all.

and it likely won't in the current climate, aka if it inconveniences corporations from making a buck it won't happen

and can't have big government interfering in people's lives! Think of the poor businesses!

....I think I just made myself take damage.

shinotenshi22 it's not about money as much as it is about widespread compliance for an agency that has like three people

they just rolled out the new nfps and it took like five years

No that's...part of it. If it really mattered they'd FUND the agencies properly.

so money IS still the issue.

yeah I think shinotenshi22 meant there's money for businesses in keeping up with the times, so the people funding the FDA aren't going to give the FDA enough funding to keep up

yeah exactly

honestly the fda needs to be like three different agencies

*no money for businesses

not sure why drugs and food and supplements are all under a single one, anyway

and restaurants

yeah that's absurd

probably because back when they were staffed properly it made sense to have them all under one roof because it was all about what goes into our bodies, you know?

but this is too much for one poorly staffed agency to handle

to the point that supplements aren't actually regulated much at all

supplements are regulated, and in this case, a little more regulated, but depends on what kidn of regulation you're talking about

yeah, having one agency handle what components and quantities are GRAS makes sense. but at this point... that should be one agency, that then passes the GRAS sheet on to other regulatory oversight bodies

and yeah, that was what I meant. there's no money for businesses to bother keeping things up, and every incentive to keep the agencies from functioning properly in favor of the businesses making a buck

chocoballs: Lobbyists are why Supplements aren't regulated to many members of congress have stocks in that market

Same with sugar

afaik supplements are regulated for adulterants and GRAS content but can make claims with any small amount of flimsy backing as long as they
1. don't contradict FDA findings
2. don't contain unsubstantiated research
2. say "these statements have not been evaluated by the FDA"

which, um, that last one is sure fun

it's actually pretty specific, that last one

they cannot make absurd health claims, only structure/function claims. there are lists of these health claims and the particulars they fall under.

there's a list of these claims on the website.

...panera WTF

what psychopath even thought of just... doing that

ah okay, thanks for the corrections. I follow a lot of anti-MLM channels so i see A LOT of unregulated supplements to the point where i thought there was none lmao

sometimes i wish the fda website wasn't an effing maze so this was all easier for people to access and digest.

chocoballs there are a lot out there and that's due to the way that fda collects violations which is a horrible loophole. so it's not wrong, it's just explotation.

tbf as someone who uses herbs and works with an herbalist I understand that not all supplements or treatments pass double-blind rigor because of interactions we're still learning about! but your average person won't really know what's anecdotal/may not work for everyone, and what's just snake oil

sigh the problem with herbs/supplements is that no one wants to pay for those studies bc no one makes money

are we back to point one

i'll rant abt this another day

y e a h

it's why the industry stilted on the declaration of folate for neural tube defects

(more ranting for another day)

fund studies / defund lobbies / regulation is a good thing

and god more labeling should be less opaque

yeah. i feel like if you hit the ground on unregulated supplements it cycles back to "life saving nutrient that used to be $5 now only distributed only by pharmaceutical companies" and there's probably an inbetween there that's a lot better

I definitely agree there

there needs to be a regulatory body for supplements that have separate definitions from drugs

and this is all while living in a society that does recognize caffeine as a drug but doesn't regulate its labeling? bonkers

"and god more labeling should be less opaque" This goes back to my Data-Entry self being OFFENDED viscerally. You want Data, and thus the information, to be CLEAR, CONCISE in that it's easy to understand, and EASILY ACCESSIBLE! huffs

This is How you have an EDUCATED SOCIETY DAMNIT!

(sorry, this part of my outrage is easier to focus on rn)

I don't understand why lemonade should need that much caffeine?!

which again i say, who came up with this

I saw about this on Food TheoryFood Theory: This Lemonade Could Kill You (Panera)but as I don't lemonade didn't give it much thought, I'll admit.

As someone who’s actually drank all three charged lemonades: they don’t taste like lemonades at all. Or too sweet for that matter.

So anyone could drink it and find it refreshing juice

dazfox: I have fibro and high resting heart rate and this is the first I've learned of a correlation between the two. even more information in this plurk.

anyway, thank you for the warning.

christ this is the story where it turns out the victim was a former student of someone on my timeline. heartbreakiing

Dragomorph: god, I'm so sorry

tricia868: give these a read
.Taking a Stand: Fibromyalgia, Orthostatic Intoleranc....https://www.myamericannu...

tl;dr your body is in constant panic from pain and any stress (including standing up) makes the autonomic nervous system collapse. going on a beta blocker and increasing my sodium and potassium intake helped with my pain and my brain fog.

trevenant: that's even more terrifying, the fact that it doesn't have the warning sign of the energy drink aftertaste

gaining a bunch of weight made my orthostatic symptoms go away, fortunately. it's magical being able to stand up without my vision going black due to dizziness

I'm glad you found a way to get relief! My cardiologist put me on a heart monitor for two weeks and gave me an echocardiogram and went "you literally have one of the healthiest hearts I've ever seen; I don't like Just Throwing Pills At The Problem but since your problem is just having fibro uh let's try beta blockers"

Christ, what the fuck even.

That's horrible.

yeah 8[ literally killing someone through lack of labeling regulation. awful.

the other thing that pissed me off hearing about this story was wondering like... what about ice??? i always am cheap and try to get as much drink in the cup as possible which means little to no ice. did they measure the caffeine in the cups of this with ice or without ice?

because at places where the server prepares a drink for you, i am pretty sure the nutrition is calculated including the standard amount of ice the store is supposed to give

but this is self serve so ????

This is effing wild in a bad way. Like that much caffeine in a fountain drink is batshit. And jfc the fact that it doesn’t have the taste hallmarks of an energy drink makes it worse

dazfox: ty for the fibro article

Jesus fucking christ, 390 mg??

yikes

geez even as a certified Caffeine Drinker that is a significant amount of caffeine goddamn

I am the kind of caffeine addict who starts my day with a Monster, I am literally sipping on one right now, and just the existence of that lemonade is terrifying to me.

can we discuss how much caffeine is in a panera dark roast....

I keep close track of my caffeine since Adderall+(New) Wellbutrin+Nightshift=2 hours uncontrollable shaking

wtf math makes this a cup of coffee

also yeah thank you for that heads up abt fibro and resting pulse, my BP is fine (it's been comically low in the past tbh) but my resting pulse has been abysmal my whole life and i always wondered (those little things you have all your life and assume are normal/unexplainable but it's fibro... looking at you, shitty grip in the mornings since i was tiny)

thank you ChickletLARP for the vid, that was a good watch!! i can't get over 390 no doubt being a purposeful number bc 400 is the max caffeine a person can consume in a day before Negative Side Effects

it makes so much sense and that it does makes me mad LMAO

I was in Panera the other day and thought that was weird (as I was getting my Pepsi so like... if you want caffeinated sugar water....)

but I thought at the time that was a weirdly handwavy phrasing "about as much..."

webbonomicon: right!! re: being a caffeine drinker and terrified. i think that it's (or it was?) self-serve throws in this variable of "ok but how much go-go juice did i just pour for myself really" vs "this monster drink has x mg that we have placed in a can"

transilience: i probably would have been drawn to the lemonade over soda, because soda has carbonation which I'm so-so with. like i love those bai drinks, which have about the same as a cup of green tea, which is... what i would assume this was, if it was unlabeled like it was before this scandal happened

yeah it definitely was set up to look like they were equivalent. and OBVIOUSLY NOT HOLY HELL

Yeah I saw these in stores and dodged it cuz I do not want caffeine past 10 am ever, but hearing about how it's just like an INSANE CONCOCTION has been wild since in the store it was just like 'it's lemonade, but caffinated!! just as strong as coffee, yay!'

transilience: to be fair, i guess?? i've seen products like excedrin use "as much as a cup of coffee" like it's some standard caffeine measurement but that feels even worse bc it makes you that much more likely to glaze over it

i am still wondering if they are measuring by actual fluid ounces or if they're measuring by how much they expect you to put in a cup after you've filled it with ice

currymuttonpizza that's a very good point

RIGHT that's one of the variable things that would concern me!!

I never get ice bc it bugs me sensorily so

shakes her head. "So the food industry's refusal to put caffeine content on labels has come home to roost, huh. Horrible that someone has died over it..."

but like. I was in there getting soup for my 70YO MOTHER so thank god I'm too cheap to get two drinks

right!!! bc afaik chain restaurants in the US consider a serving of soda to be WITH the ice, as prepared by staff who were trained to know how much ice to put in. BUT THIS IS SELF SERVE, HOW ARE THEY MEASURING

I've often wondered if that constant fight against labeling has to do with the coffee industry not wanting it to become obvious that decaf isn't caffeine-free.

Out of a perception that sales would plummet if people knew it just has a lot less.

Goddamn Panera…first the food poisoning now this?

like...yeah, because caffeine content isn't labeled, most people don't have a concept of how much is too much. my daily cups of tea come to maybe 1/4th the caffeine of this drink

and the largest size has more caffeine than any can of energy drink on the market (granted, the largest size is also bigger than any can...but people don't expect that from a drink mixed with the sodas)

Also like, the choice of flavors is an obvious attempt at competition with Starbucks refreshers (especially since you can get lemonade versions, and they have/had store versions that were energy drinks) but the problem is that the regular starbucks ones don't have caffeine at all even the store bought ones iirc had like, green coffee extract and ginseng

so someone coming into panera not paying attention might be like "oh these are like those starbucks drinks I like" and not realize how strong they are

Refreshers have caffeine

They're made from green coffee beans so they don't taste like coffee, but a tall (small) has ~45mg

Ahh thank you for the correction! Still though that's a huge difference

y'know, for something that's designed to be comparable

*grande (medium)

so a lot less! but yeah if you can't have caffeine don't get a refresher

I'm finding a lot of pages that claim it's 0 caffeine while looking for the specific numbers, so like, spread the word maybe

in related news, a typical 'cup' of coffee is ~8 oz when you make it at home (source is google but I've also measured my own mugs) and that's ~~95mg depending on brand, and a shot of espresso is ~65mg

just in case folks don't have a great frame of reference for volume

so yeah! math on panera dark roast really doesn't add up

80mg per 8.4 ounces… I have 1 maybe 2 in a day every so often but loaded with fucking ice in a 20 oz cup…

That's more then triple the caffeine of an 8.4 sugar free red bull

a shot of lotus energy drink syrup is also 80 mg, if you get lotus drinks at your local coffee shop instead. so yeah, panera doing shit that can kill even if you dont have a heart disease tbh

I am SO glad they're being sued for this... I actually came close to needing to go to the hospital when I drank one of the charged lemonades, thanks to heart problems and a horrible lack of labeling.

Was only saved by the fact that I was sipping it slowly enough to have a moment of realization that I was starting to feel kinda weird

I'm glad you're okay!

^^^

^^^

I bought one when I made an online order from doordash when they first came out and I don't think it was labeled on doordash as having caffeine

it might be now but I don't think when it first came out it was

this is what it shows on ubereats

doesn't give the numerical amount but feels like a slightly more appropriate warning anyway somehow?

Definitely, CAFFEINE in all caps plus the 'not recommended for etc' warning that's usually on energy drinks

caveat though: idk if corporate sets these or individual stores, since they get franchised out iirc

though I also feel like that's a recent change too somehow? Probably because of the all-caps (still saying it's 'about the same' as their dark roast though)

Yeah, that too

so like, there's a chance it might just be the closest panera to me having a conscience and not like, the chain at large

it feels very "this is what we were told to say" with a warning tacked on at the end haha

"about as much caffeine as our dark roast!!! : ) BUT SERIOUSLY DO NOT FUCK AROUND WITH THIS USE IN MODERATION"

yeah the 'about as much caffeine as our dark roast' feels so misleading now that we know just how much caffeine is in it

DryadGurrl: it is recent they didn't start labeling them until after the girl died

yeah, prior to the lawsuit being announced the only warning was 'about as much caffeine as dark roast coffee' in small print on the bubbler and the mg amount...which most people wouldn't have context for

Fuck_Mars: oh for sure in-store, but DoorDash/GrubHub/UberEats etc aren't attached to corporate (as far as I know), so that's a whole different thing

Mine is giving the exact same CAFFEINE warning on doordash, so i suspect its corporate-level mandate CYA

(and I notice that listing still doesn't show the actual amounts)

why are they being so shady about this????

Re: caffeine content labeling. Some sodas that are storebought like Pepsie & Coca-Cola cola will have the caffeine content on the label in tiny print. There is an orange soda I like that has it, around 80mg but they definitely do not have any labeling at the soda fountain

iirc if there's an ongoing lawsuit (at least in the US) they actually have to be, it's some bullshit about how the mandate has to happen once the lawsuit closes/is dismissed so they know exactly what the warning has to say/how it has to be worded

(shady, that is, but it's still a load of bs)

ravynstoneabbey: which orange soda is that?

but yeah I remember trying explaining to someone that espresso had less caffeine per serving than regular coffee and been accused of lying

america especially does not know what a serving is

a tall at sbux is 12 ounces. a latte would be 1 shot, 65mg. a coffee the same size would be 136

I assure you, people do not order short (8oz) coffees

some do but MOST do not

in fairness to them most people don't know that short is an option

but still

yeah Starbucks likes to pretend they don't have a short

Boy I sure am learning things in this plurk

komikbookgeek: Sunkist

Tea nerd freaking out about a lemonade energy drink from a restaurant brand I never visit? Yes this is a reality I’m in.

ravynstoneabbey: ty!

Welcome! I was surprised to see that.

what the actual fuck

Caffeine concentration is an issue, too. The reason espresso is the go-to 'high caffeine' coffee is because you get all that caffeine in 1/12 the volume of the smallest Starbucks coffee size.

jesus FUCKING CHRIST

While this junk is...about as concentrated as a Monster, but sold in cups three times the size of an energy drink can.

More than three times, really.

So without proper labeling, you think you're getting the equivalent of a cup of coffee, but you're actually chugging three Monster drinks...

^

I think that's what gets to me. It's not like it's not legal to sell this shit responsibly? Why would you do it like this?

rhetorical question

I'm reasonably certain these are partially a response to Herbalife's 'loaded tea' bullshit, as if this wasn't bad enough on its own

I hate to say this without him here, but someone on my plurk timeline actually knew her, and she would never have drunk the item if she knew the caffeine content. She knew her limits, and the stores didn't advertise the caffeine content.

The victim blaming is disgusting.

It's like the McDonald's coffee lawsuit all over again "well it says charged, surely that means there's caffeine!"

The moral of the story: buy or make your own lemonade and maybe protest at Panera’s doorsteps?

I'm so sorry for your friend's loss

kabukimono: Yeah, the article emphasizes that she went out of her way to avoid energy drinks, and absolutely could not have known this stuff is basically three cans of Monster in a trenchcoat...

I've had 3 monsters in a day before (I know, I know...) and even then I spaced them out as much as possible, I had just slept like 2 hours the night before. I can't imagine consuming them ALL AT THE SAME TIME.

oh i've had one of these drinks. i did know it had that much caffeine in bc it was labeled on grubhub and that's why i bought it but also yeah it's A Lot.

it's not a sane amount of caffeine for a person with no health conditions looking for a morning boost, I don't see how anyone could blame her even if she had known it was caffeinated and assumed Normal Human levels

I'm so sorry for your friend's loss, this has to be really rough

it was wild...like, on the employee subreddit up until this story broke it was all 'this is dangerous' 'parents are giving it to toddlers' 'i didn't realize how much caffeine'

and then after, it was all victim blaming

oh damn I saw they moved them and I thought it was because people were letting their kids at them and complaining

and it claimed to have about as much as a coffee so I assumed a medium sized lemonade = 1 cup coffee, jfc

apologies for the late bump, but I wanted to share this update just so people don't get caught up in it:

From the Panera community on Reddit: chargers caffei...panera has lowered the mg of lemonade on the bubbler labels, but if you look closely, the tiny print says they've changed it to reflect a typical amount of ice. they have not actually changed the formulation.

nice of them to specify what's a "typical amount"

woooooooooow