Panera Bread’s highly caffeinated Charged Lemonade is now blamed for a second death, according to a lawsuit filed Monday.
Dennis Brown, of Fleming Island, Florida, drank three Charged Lemonades from a local Panera on Oct. 9 and then suffered a fatal cardiac arrest on his way home, the suit says.
Brown, 46, had an unspecified chromosomal deficiency disorder, a developmental delay and a mild intellectual disability. He lived independently, frequently stopping at Panera after his shifts at a supermarket, the legal complaint says. Because he had high blood pressure, he did not consume energy drinks, it adds.
It’s not so caffeinated, it’s about as much caffeine per ounce as coffee
Yeah, but nobody’s drinking 3 30 oz coffees in one sitting. Nor is coffee really marketed as a health drink.
Found this as well:
If any sugar soaked beverage is allowed to be marketed as a health drink, that’s a problem that applies to the entire industry.
And drinking 90oz is the fault of the consumer, remember how much blowback there was when New York banned selling drinks above a certain volume? The people want to be able to do drink ungodly amounts of soft drink, apparently.
Only thing I really blame Panera for is not clearly labeling how much caffeine is in a cup, which I also don’t really blame them for because the last time I went to Starbucks or McDonald’s I couldn’t find out which latte had the most caffeine, so that’s standard behavior I guess.
Push for more required disclosure if you’d like, I’d probably agree, but Panera was not out of line IMO.
If it is an industry problem, then this sort of event is usually what snowballs into actual change.
The tip of this case, I believe, isn’t just the caffeine content, but the fact that it:
While the company isn’t required to cater to individuals with very specific tolerances of the simulant, they likely had data available to them that suggests that this outcome was always a possibility, yet they supposedly ran the product until people died.
To be fair, its absurdly stupid to think banning the sale of large drinks does anything positive for anyone. I never get larges of anything, but I’ll fight stupid laws like that any time.
ehh, I think it makes sense in that it eliminates perverse incentives like “give us 50 cents more and you can double your already extra large soda,” but as implemented it was certainly just a lazy band-aid solution
1200 mgs of caffeine can cause seizures in even healthy adults btw.
You obviously haven’t ever worked in IT.
Also, a cup of coffee is about 4x smaller than a 30oz drink.
To be fair nobody should be drinking 3 30oz lemonades in one sitting either
Dunkin serves their large iced coffees in 30oz cups. I also will frequently drink a whole pot of coffee throughout the day. 390mg of caffeine is really not that significant for the average person.
You may have a caffeine problem. Like, that’s objectively a LOT of caffeine, my friend.
A pot is seen as having between 643 to 857 mg of caffeine in it. You’re ostensibly drinking the equivalent of 11-14 shots of espresso daily. That’s… That’s a lot.
Idk I’m not dependent on it. I don’t drink coffee every day but sometimes I’ll drink a lot. It doesn’t really effect me much when I drink it and I can easily skip coffee for days at a time so it’s hard to call it a problem.
Regardless, the FDA says that 400mg of caffeine per day is safe for healthy adults so the 390mg lemonade is fine.