Watch Out For Monsters!!!

We read about the possible danger in a popular sports drink called Monster Energy and wanted to share the warning with our patients.  They were in the news today for possibly causing the deaths of 5 people.

Dr. Cashion wrote an article for a local magazine a few weeks back about the high sugar content in these drinks and how bad they are for your teeth.  (I will post it next on our blog, so you can read it)


We have included a portion of the article we read in our blog below.  We took it off the internet at the following link.  You can read the full article for yourself, if you want.

http://www.stcatharinesstandard.ca/2012/10/23/us-probes-deaths-for-links-to-monster-energy-drink

 We also took the ingredients chart below off of Wikipedia, so you can see the ingredients for yourselves.  Be sure and read the note at the bottom, below the chart.  They fool you by only listing the ingredients for 1 serving, while the bottle contains a full 3 servings!

"Monster and other Energy Drinks

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Monday that it was investigating reports of five deaths that may be associated with Monster Beverage Corp’s namesake energy drink, and the company’s shares fell more than 14%.

Monster is also being sued by the family of a 14-year-old Maryland girl with a heart condition who died after drinking two cans of its Monster energy drink in a 24-hour period.

Monster, the top-selling energy drink in the United States, said it does not believe its energy drink was “in any way responsible” for the girl’s death.

Still, the lawsuit and reports of other deaths could escalate calls from critics including two U.S. senators and the New York attorney general about the safety of the beverages and the way they are marketed.

The family of 14 year old, Anais Fournier sued Monster on Friday for failing to warn about the product’s dangers.

The lawsuit, filed in California Superior Court in Riverside, said that after drinking two 24-ounce cans of Monster Energy on consecutive days Fournier went into cardiac arrest. She was placed in an induced coma and died six days later on Dec. 23, 2011.

The lawsuit, filed by her parents, said Fournier died from "cardiac arrhythmia due to caffeine toxicity" that complicated an existing heart valve condition related to a disorder called Ehlers-Danlos syndrome.

The highly caffeinated drinks with aggressive-sounding names like Monster, Red Bull, Rockstar, AMP and Full Throttle are often associated with active or extreme sports, which makes them especially popular among young men."

 

Here is the list of ingredients:

**Notice that there are 3 servings per can....so the 27g of sugar is really 81g of sugar!