Tuesday, October 23, 2012

FDA Investigating Monster Energy Drink - Responsible For Five Deaths

I have seen people drink energy drinks non-stop all day and all night and they never seem to have any ill effects. I have also seen people who can only drink half of a can and they start to get jittery and they feel like their heart is going to explode. It doesn't matter if they are coffee drinkers or not, it just seems to affect people differently. I also think that your mind thinks it is getting a boost and you might actually contribute something to the effects mentally. That all being said, The Food & Drug Administration is investigating Monster Energy after their drink has been blamed for the deaths of at least five people, including a 14 year old girl (above)who had one drink one day and another the next and then died of a heart attack. Monster's stock is crashing and the company could be in huge trouble. The parents of the 14 year old are suing for millions and if the FDA is investigating then there must be some reason they think that the drink and the deaths are related and Monster should just settle with the family and get them out of their lives quickly. Monster contains seven times the amount of caffeine you would get in a coke.

60 comments:

skimpymist said...

Ok so the mom let's her kid drink monsters for two days and didn't find anything wrong with it? I can't even drink a redbull without getting jittery. What did this mom think monster was? Fruit punch. If she would have told her daughter the dangers of drinking so much caffeine her daughter would still be alive. Irresponsible parents always want to find someone to blame and sue when things go wrong cause they didn't intervene.

NapAssasin said...

One of my managers just spent a week in hospital for this exact thing- non specific cardiac trauma. A WEEK. He's 40, in fantastic shape and no health problems but drank two of these a day for many months. That is not a normal reaction from your body and this shit should not be ingested.

Alicia said...

Monster should just settle and get them out of their lives completely ???

How about Toyota just settle with victims of bad seat belts and let the deaths continue as long as the public doesn't get to upset..

How about Monster take some fucking accountability and stop poisoning our kids?

Jeesh Enty. Your last statement was hella ick nast

Audrey said...

Some people are sensitive to nuts, strawberries, gluten, etc. What, are we supposed to "ban" all these foods too because some people can't handle them?

How about some personal responsibility? Know what you're ingesting and deal with the consequences.

Treesap-Covered Lady, the Humanist said...

Caffeine doesn't affect me much so I've never bothered with energy drinks.

+ 1 for me.

Unknown said...

I bet the people who died will be found to have had some underlying heart or other health conditions they probably didn't even realize they had.....I can't drink caffeine at all without getting wayyyy jittery and feeling anxious, but the fact that millions of people drink this stuff regularly with no ill effects make sit seem to me that there are other factors involved.

Kamil said...

I've drank no less than two Monsters a day for, god, six or seven years now. They've never made me as jittery and twitchy as coffee does, and to me they taste much better than coffee.

No doubt, since I love them so, they will be rarer than Dodo birds, this time next year. *woe*

Karen said...

I used to drink two sugar-free Red Bulls a day and the only problem I had was becoming immune to their effects. Recently, I had one after going Red Bull-free for 1-2 years and I was fine, but also happy to learn that caffeine works on me again.

thetruth said...

Have u actually ever been 14? I dont remember my mum being with me 24/7! For real?! Oh yeah mum told me not to drink and smoke- guess what? I did!!!

Agent**It said...

She had 2 x 24oz drinks within 24 hours. An autopsy concluded that she died of cardiac arrhythmia due to caffeine toxicity and the medical examiner also found that she had an inherited disorder that can weaken blood vessels.

Princess ButterKwup said...

+ 100 Audrey! Exactly what I was thinking!

BubbleKitten said...

So judgmental!

discoflux said...

Thank you, Agent.

Now I'm going to go sue the sun for giving my friend skin cancer.

auntliddy said...

This energy drink fad is not natural of healthy for you. Eat a oc fruit, catch a nap, meditate- but dont put that crap in your body, please? :)

alabrava said...

Know what you're ingesting and deal with the consequences?

The truth is that we don't know half of what we're ingesting, or how safe it is, even in something like apples or chicken. You're telling me you know exactly what every ingredient of every food or drink item chemically does and whether or not they are safe. Safe in what quantities? Safe period? 99% or people simply aren't going to or aren't capable of doing the research on they're own. They assume that because something is on the shelf, and not expired, that it is safe to eat. This should be a reasonable assumption, but unfortunately it is far from it.

Jemtastic said...

@thetruth: We've all been 14 and some of us actually listened to our parents; you didn't and you were one of the lucky ones. Others that decided they knew better died tragically young, like this young girl that literally poisoned herself over a 24-hour period.

I agree with SkimpyMist; the young girl's parents are pointing fingers in the wrong direction.

Roman Holiday said...

Really, why do you need all that extra energy anyways?? Eat a fucking piece of fruit!!!

Audrey said...

No, I don't know what's in all I eat, but I have educated myself and try to eat unprocessed foods BECAUSE I take personal responsibility for what I ingest.

Anyway, teenagers do stupid things and die as a result all the time. Example, at 1:45am this morning, in a Chicago suburb, 5 15 year olds were joying riding, slammed into a house and one was killed. Again, stupid teenagers doing stupid things. You're going to ban cars now?

Save Monster!

Pip said...

She drank one Monster one day, the following day she drank another one. Two all together. She didn't drink it nonstop for two days.

Unknown said...

More than Likely she died from something else. This is how ephedra got banned. Some guy was taking huge amounts and exercising and died of a heart attack. They blamed ephedra and it got banned, turned out the guy had a heart defect but no one ever mentioned that till after it got banned.

skimpymist said...

Thank you. I knew she drank two within 24 hours. I also had suspected she had an underlying health problem. For everyone that said I was wrong, this proves me right.

rhinovodka said...

I have never been tempted to drink one of these caffeine drinks. I prefer drinking tea. Sorry these people lost loved ones.

Unknown said...

My cousin died of a heart attack, yes, he had underlying issues (not previously known) but it was the energy drinks that sent him into an arrhythmia. He was 22 and an only child.

Unknown said...

I don't think most people realize that a lot of those energy drinks are 2 servings in 1 can. It usually says it on the can though, but most people don't read the chart on it. You're only supposed to drink half the can one day, & the other half the next day.

Feisty said...

A friend of mine who is a nurse in a unit that specializes in brain aneurysms (people come from up to 1000 miles away to this unit)has said that they're seeing more and more kids come in who have been drinking a lot of Monster and Red Bull.

There's personal responsibility and then there's drinking what you think of as the equivalent of a Mountain Dew every day and ending up paying with your motor function. And it's not just the caffeine, it's also the B vitamins that are in them.

figgy said...

Kids think it's hilarious to be jittery. When I was in 10th grade I went thru a very stupid phase where I was taking tons of No Doze. I showed my friends my shaking hands, thought it was so funny. D'oh.

iheartjacksparrow said...

It says right on the label that you shouldn't drink more than one can in 48 hours. She drank a can a day for two days. And the commenter above is absolutely right that the gal had a pre-existing health condition. I don't know about the other deaths, but this gal's family should not get a settlement. Glad "Enty" isn't giving legal advice to Monster.

.robert said...

I can't drink any of those energy drinks or coffee as they make me feel miserable but I can and do drink unsweetened tea all day long with no ill effect.

Mango said...

I don't bother with energy drinks, but I can drink a pot of coffee and then turn in for the night. Caffeine just doesn't keep me up.

katsm0711 said...

Caffeine shuts down your kidneys for 4-5 hours and interferes with your immune system. Not to mention the obvious heart effects. Plus all the disgusting untested chemicals in energy drinks. I feel like a broken record but the American government doesn't care what we eat as long as it keeps us sick. They allowed Monster to go on the market, now it's going to get pulled only bc someone died. In Europe to get a prescription drug approved, FIRST they have to prove that nobody will die from it. Caffeine is a drug not a food. I used to drink energy drinks back in my processed food days and Monster cans are huge!

Jamie 2 said...

@skimpymist: I'm so glad that you think you found internet validation for your theories on why a 14-year-old girl died.

You need to learn English and stop spouting uninformed opinions.

In the first post, you don't know how to spell lets (kill the apostrophe). You confuse your tenses. "If she would have told" should be replaced by "If she had told."

And then you leap to the conclusion that if she had told her daughter of the dangers of drinking too much caffeine, her daughter would still be alive.

How sweet of you to lay a guilt trip on a mother who has just lost a daughter.

sparklynan said...

I have a friend who had epilepsy and didn't really find out until she had seizures after drinking too many "5 hr energy's" Caffeine dehydrates you severely too.

Ingrid Superstar said...

People in their 20's love this shit too! I used to work in a deli and we would get loaded on energy drinks and act like assholes. Our Supervisor, who was a bit older than us, said he was going to energy drink us under the table. He had a Red Bull, a shot of Espresso and some drink that was banned for sale a few months later because it contained Ephedrine, and promptly became ill and went home. Ah the good old days of being young and dumb!

Unknown said...

You know, we keep going down this road we're all going to be wearing mandatory helmets and drinking nothing harder than chamomile tea. Shit happens. A friend of mine had a boss that died of a severe allergic reaction to a prescribed opioid painkiller after a tooth extraction. You can't always know what your body reaction will be to certain things, and some medical conditions can be hidden for decades.

What I do know is that anyone who says "Won't someone please think of the children!" probably isn't using a rational or evidence based argument.

skimpymist said...

Go crawl under a rock please. Thank you.

kelgela2 said...

I don't drink Monster. I drink Rockstar.
Anyway, I heard that the girl had heart problems and that the mother knew.

Jamie 2 said...

@skimpymist: Carry on blaming a mother for her daughter's death when you have no facts at all to support one whit of your opinion.

Your command (or lack thereof) of English alarms me.

Go crawl back to your particular rock and keep on unleashing unfounded, hateful, ignorant, and badly-spelled things on the internet.



lostathome said...

I like the taste of monster. But energy drinks don't really do anything for me. Sometimes coffee will every once in a whole but I guess I have a slight immunity to caffeine.

Anyway, I don't think the drink should be banned. People should drink it in moderation to avoid these kind of things. Especially if they think it could have an adverse effect on them. I like the comment one poster made about suing to sun bc of skin cancer. Lol good one.

MacAttack said...

@Jamie 2 you sound like a MASSIVE bitch! what the hell's you're problem?

also, i drink monster, red bull and other drinks like that occasionally and they don't really affect me at all. how can they sue if she had a heart condition???? 5 people have died out of the millions upon millions that drink it and they might have to stop making it? that's crazy!

Jamie 2 said...

@MacAttack: I've been clear with "my problem" since the start. A poster here blamed the mother for her daughter's death. Her science was wrong, her grammar was woeful, and her conscience was way off base.

Also, it's YOUR problem, not YOU'RE problem. You're means "you are." "Your" means, belonging to you.

Sweet that you white-knighted a woman who can't speak at sixth-grade level by plunging in at 4th-grade level.

It was wrong of the first poster to blame the mother of a dead child for not knowing stuff most moms would not know. I have no idea of the caffeine content of an energy drink. It was heartless of her to blame the mother, who must be devastated.



MacAttack said...

Is it lonely up their on your pedestal Jamie?

Stacey Charter said...

Me thinks I see a troll afoot...don't feed it Macattack and perhaps it will go away.

PS - if we're gonna start checkin' speelin' and grammer I am f'd!

Rowan said...

What kind of mother lets her daughter drink these "energy drinks"? Me. I am absolutely clueless about these drinks. I only drink unsweetened tea or water as my "out and about" drink, coffee in the morning. I know little to nothing about this product. I have never bought one, never tasted one. I just assumed it was an over sweetened drink like Mountain Dew.

I send my deepest condolences to the family of those who have lost a love one to use of these kinds of products.

Zeeky_Boogy_Doog said...

Even if she had an underlying condition, it may not have been enough to kill her on its own. Adding two Monster drinks might have made the difference.

Sorta like if you have a large cut on your leg. If you clean it and do whatever bandaging necessary, you'll probably be fine. But if you instead opened a swollen, bacteria-infested can of mushrooms and spilled it on the wound, you could get very sick. If you spilled the same can on a leg with no open wound, you'd probably not get sick then, either. Putting the two together makes all the difference.

At any rate, I'm very sorry for the loss of their daughter, and I wish peace for her family and friends. Also, I hope they find the truth in what happened, whether it's causing deaths or not.

Brenda L said...

Damn, I'm trying to work out the logistics of keeping my daughter under 24 hour surveillance and failing miserably.

Zeeky_Boogy_Doog said...

One thing that's a little strange about Monster and some other energy drinks is the two-serving can. It seems they want you to consume the two servings at once. There's no way to close the container; to keep it fresh you'd need to transfer it to a bottle, or wrap cling film around the can. If they're serious about it being two servings, a resealable container would be a big help.

Brenda L said...

@Zeeky_Boogy_Doog - check your Campbell's soup cans....same thing, 2 servings per can. And "1 cup" of coffee is only enough just to piss you off...the average coffee mug is a 2 cupper.

ablake said...

7 times the amount of caffeine?

I hope those folks win.
That CERTAINLY is not advertised on those cans.
My BF loves them (and up until about 4 seconds ago would drink 4 in an hour)

Not anymore. No sir.

Amy in MI said...

Ok these energy drinks have been around for YEARS and now we want to ban them? No death is acceptable, but 5 out of how many drinkers, and most were due to underlying conditions? Hmmm. And at 14 my parents had no clue what I drank away from them.

Unknown said...

has anyone looked at what the product (energy drink) is!? look at it- not natural-look at the actual liquid...those "drinks" are not natural. this coming from someone who was totally into redbull for a while and then i actually LOOKED at the drink and i (NOT MY parents) said NO...this or any "artificial" is NOT good for you.
sad that this young girl is taken too early but if i was a parent and saw what this "drink" really is...i would say have a cup of tea!
and did the parents actually know about the drinking of this?!?
so many elements can to this horrible conclusion

misspeg86 said...

Whoa, I feel exhausted going through this comment thread. Calm down people! Why are we being so mean to each other?

Also is Monster the one with the big black coloured can with a green M on it? If it is, it tastes like shit compared to other energy drinks. I think energy drinks are ikind of unsafe altogether as they affect people so differently (they don't work for me at all but I have friends who go nuts after half a can) so I guess the only thing that people 'should' do is stick to the recommended dosage guideline on the cans.

cinephreak said...

I used to drink a monster (or 2 or 3 or 4) a day, before school. My mom bought the huge cases at costco, but made me stop when I started getting really bad stomach problems.
Monster = bad

Unknown said...
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Unknown said...

Are you joking me?? It's always another persons fault, huh?? Do you know how easy it is for kids to get a hold of things when their parents aren't around especially at the age of 14 when she is spending more time with friends?? This comment outraged me. Are you suggesting that the parents keep her locked up in the house until shes 18? Rub the parents nose in it when they are devastated that they lost their daughter. You have got to be absolutely dense to blame the parents in this situation.

First time commenting, love reading

Jamie 2 said...

Evan, thank you for commenting. I can't blame the parents for this. Skimpymist is way off base here. I can't get over the callous disregard for what the parents of a dead 14-year-old are facing.

They have lost a child, and all skimpymist has to contribute is that they failed as parents and should somehow have known that two Monster drinks + an underlying unknown condition would kill their teen.

And she is smug about it. That's the bit that really annoys me. How can you be smug about a teenager's death or the parents' grief?







Unknown said...

I read skimpymist's comment and I was infuriated. This is a young girl! Not to mention two parents lost their child, no parent should have to bury their child. We all do things as kids our parents didn't know about. How fast we forget our teenage secrets and sneaking around we did. A couple people here blamed the parents, but none as harsh and unforgiving as skimpymist. I completely agree with you and I laughed all the way through your comments!

Amills said...

They will probably find out that she had an undiagnosed heart problem. Although I feel sorry for the loss I don't think the family should get anything. I don't see the people going after coffee so they shouldn't go after Monster.

Amills said...

@Alicia Really your going to blame Monster? Why not make ever beer and liqure company close there doors? Even if an adult drinks it they still effect other people by D.D. accidents and the fights they get into because of the booze. Or every car company for making cars that go faster then 5 miles an hour. Or every TV for making fat, lazy, and uneducated masses.

Principessa said...

No, no one is going to ban cars. But while your example is a shame, there are laws which are supposed to prevent 15 year olds from driving. Unfortunately it's not foolproof because, as you said, kids do stupid things and sometimes, there are consequences.

But cars and drivers licenses are at least regulated and governed. There's no law prohibiting the sale of energy drinks to minors, and perhaps there should be? Massive amounts of caffeine may not be quite as bad for a kid as alcohol or tobacco, but it's also not much better.

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