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This is a programme about the science of a psychoactive drug. | 0:00:02 | 0:00:05 | |
In high enough doses, it's poisonous. | 0:00:05 | 0:00:08 | |
It can also lead to anxiety and dependence. | 0:00:08 | 0:00:11 | |
But almost all of us use it - including me. | 0:00:11 | 0:00:14 | |
All in the interests of science, you understand. | 0:00:14 | 0:00:17 | |
Tonight, we investigate the rise and rise of caffeine. | 0:00:17 | 0:00:21 | |
We've become a caffeine nation. We've almost become addicted to caffeine. | 0:00:21 | 0:00:24 | |
Is there a corner of our lives caffeine hasn't penetrated? | 0:00:24 | 0:00:28 | |
And could caffeine potentially be putting young people at risk, | 0:00:30 | 0:00:33 | |
even of dying? | 0:00:33 | 0:00:35 | |
Unprotected sex, or even a sexual assault. | 0:00:35 | 0:00:37 | |
He walked into his bedroom or something with the gun | 0:00:37 | 0:00:40 | |
and the gun went off. | 0:00:40 | 0:00:42 | |
I have coined the phrase "crack in a can". | 0:00:42 | 0:00:45 | |
Join me on a journey through our caffeinated nation. | 0:00:45 | 0:00:48 | |
Aaah, caffeine. No morning is complete without it - for me, at least. | 0:01:02 | 0:01:07 | |
I don't know about you, but I certainly | 0:01:10 | 0:01:13 | |
can't live without my morning coffee. | 0:01:13 | 0:01:14 | |
A shot of this stuff is, well, the dividing line between night-time and daytime, | 0:01:14 | 0:01:18 | |
and it's the world's most widely-used drug, caffeine - | 0:01:18 | 0:01:21 | |
80% of people have it in their daily lives - | 0:01:21 | 0:01:24 | |
but what do we really know about it? | 0:01:24 | 0:01:26 | |
What do we get out of it and how much do we need it? | 0:01:26 | 0:01:29 | |
Well, it's a stimulant, isn't it? And it goes very well with tobacco. | 0:01:29 | 0:01:34 | |
Sometimes, it's just for the taste, | 0:01:34 | 0:01:37 | |
but usually it's just for medicinal purposes. | 0:01:37 | 0:01:40 | |
I drink black coffee and I prefer it to be brewed...strong. | 0:01:41 | 0:01:48 | |
It seems like whichever way you turn, | 0:01:50 | 0:01:52 | |
someone's opened a coffee shop. | 0:01:52 | 0:01:55 | |
But do the facts bear that out? | 0:01:55 | 0:01:57 | |
Back in the '90s, coffee wasn't such a big thing in this country, | 0:01:57 | 0:02:00 | |
a lot of people drunk instant coffee, now everyone's drunk coffee. | 0:02:00 | 0:02:03 | |
It's become incredibly mainstream. | 0:02:03 | 0:02:05 | |
There's a coffee shop or five on every single corner. | 0:02:05 | 0:02:07 | |
And in terms of the numbers, what do they tell us? | 0:02:07 | 0:02:09 | |
Well, the in-home industry's just been, or just risen to, | 0:02:09 | 0:02:13 | |
over a billion pounds. | 0:02:13 | 0:02:15 | |
So it's been pretty recession-resistant, the coffee shop market is doing incredibly, as well, | 0:02:15 | 0:02:21 | |
it's still seeing steady growth despite the fact that people haven't | 0:02:21 | 0:02:24 | |
got as much money in their pockets. | 0:02:24 | 0:02:26 | |
Basically, people, in recessionary times, don't want to sacrifice their small treat, | 0:02:26 | 0:02:31 | |
the kind of daily indulgence. | 0:02:31 | 0:02:33 | |
And people have got really used to coffee. | 0:02:33 | 0:02:34 | |
And it's not just about the treat or the taste, | 0:02:34 | 0:02:36 | |
it's about people really wanting more energy, and loving | 0:02:36 | 0:02:39 | |
the energy properties they're getting from coffee. | 0:02:39 | 0:02:41 | |
What does it tell us? Are we becoming a more caffeinated society? | 0:02:41 | 0:02:44 | |
Yeah, we've become a caffeine nation. | 0:02:44 | 0:02:46 | |
You know, we have almost become addicted to caffeine. | 0:02:46 | 0:02:49 | |
It's become such an integral part of our everyday life that I think | 0:02:49 | 0:02:53 | |
we would really struggle without it now. | 0:02:53 | 0:02:55 | |
So we're living in a caffeinated society. | 0:02:55 | 0:02:58 | |
But what is caffeine - and what's it doing to us? | 0:02:58 | 0:03:00 | |
So, woke up this morning, no coffee. | 0:03:03 | 0:03:06 | |
I haven't had any chocolate, I haven't had any diet coke, | 0:03:06 | 0:03:09 | |
which is pretty unusual for me, actually. | 0:03:09 | 0:03:11 | |
And it's been really strange because you realise how much | 0:03:11 | 0:03:16 | |
caffeinated drinks and caffeinated food fit into your life. | 0:03:16 | 0:03:20 | |
The big reason is that this morning, here in Cardiff, I'm going to get | 0:03:20 | 0:03:24 | |
my brain scanned to find out exactly what effect caffeine has on me. | 0:03:24 | 0:03:28 | |
I'm going to be tested - first in my caffeine-free state, | 0:03:35 | 0:03:38 | |
then with added caffeine - to see what it does to my brain. | 0:03:38 | 0:03:42 | |
Ken has just gone into a 3-tesla MRI system so that we can measure the blood flow to his brain | 0:03:45 | 0:03:51 | |
before he has a drink of coffee. | 0:03:51 | 0:03:53 | |
All right, time for the science - | 0:03:55 | 0:03:57 | |
what is it that caffeine does to my brain? | 0:03:57 | 0:03:59 | |
It turns out, it's all to do with something called adenosine. | 0:03:59 | 0:04:03 | |
Adenosine is a substance that's produced naturally in the body. | 0:04:03 | 0:04:06 | |
What it tends to do is inhibit neural activity | 0:04:06 | 0:04:10 | |
and what caffeine does is block that inhibition, it sort of | 0:04:10 | 0:04:13 | |
takes the brake off adenosine's natural inhibiting function. | 0:04:13 | 0:04:18 | |
In other words, caffeine acts as something of a stimulant. | 0:04:18 | 0:04:21 | |
Having just been paid to lie down for a while, now I'm having a free coffee. | 0:04:23 | 0:04:27 | |
This is three shots with a splash of milk. | 0:04:27 | 0:04:30 | |
So according to the Food Standards Agency, | 0:04:30 | 0:04:32 | |
something around 150mg of caffeine. | 0:04:32 | 0:04:34 | |
And, oh, how I've missed you. | 0:04:37 | 0:04:39 | |
Ahh, thank you very much. | 0:04:44 | 0:04:46 | |
All in the interests of science, you understand. | 0:04:46 | 0:04:49 | |
Time to scan me again - | 0:04:55 | 0:04:57 | |
this time returned to my normal caffeinated state. | 0:04:57 | 0:05:00 | |
Would there be a visible change in my brain? | 0:05:00 | 0:05:03 | |
This is the image before you had your cup of coffee, | 0:05:04 | 0:05:07 | |
and this is the image taken about half an hour after your cup of coffee. | 0:05:07 | 0:05:12 | |
The blood flow here, shown by darker colours, is reduced | 0:05:12 | 0:05:17 | |
with respect to before your coffee. | 0:05:17 | 0:05:20 | |
Your brain will be used to a certain amount of blood flow, | 0:05:20 | 0:05:24 | |
and it's got used to having caffeine in your system, so this | 0:05:24 | 0:05:29 | |
blood flow here represents a more normal situation for your brain | 0:05:29 | 0:05:33 | |
than your caffeine-starved state | 0:05:33 | 0:05:35 | |
in which blood flow is abnormally elevated. | 0:05:35 | 0:05:39 | |
There is some suggestion that that may be associated with some of | 0:05:39 | 0:05:42 | |
the headaches that people get with caffeine withdrawal. | 0:05:42 | 0:05:46 | |
'So, if my boost in mood is really down to getting rid | 0:05:46 | 0:05:49 | |
'of my withdrawal symptoms, does that make me a caffeine addict?' | 0:05:49 | 0:05:53 | |
I would say not an addict. You like caffeine | 0:05:53 | 0:05:57 | |
and you're clearly dependant on it. | 0:05:57 | 0:05:59 | |
Actually, caffeine is a good example of the difference | 0:05:59 | 0:06:02 | |
between dependence and addiction. | 0:06:02 | 0:06:04 | |
You're dependent, in the sense that you don't function normally | 0:06:04 | 0:06:07 | |
without caffeine, | 0:06:07 | 0:06:08 | |
but addiction is when you have a real compulsion. | 0:06:08 | 0:06:12 | |
That was a fascinating experience - I saw my brain for the first time, | 0:06:14 | 0:06:18 | |
but beyond that, it showed there were physiological changes | 0:06:18 | 0:06:22 | |
sparked off by drinking a not-enormous amount of caffeine | 0:06:22 | 0:06:26 | |
in some rather delicious coffee. | 0:06:26 | 0:06:28 | |
Given that I'd laid off the caffeine for 24 hours before that, | 0:06:28 | 0:06:31 | |
it does raise the question of whether, if I'm not addicted, am I dependent? | 0:06:31 | 0:06:36 | |
And also, whether that is necessarily a bad thing, | 0:06:36 | 0:06:40 | |
because in moderation, caffeine can be your friend. | 0:06:40 | 0:06:43 | |
But what is moderation, and how much are we dosing ourselves with? | 0:06:49 | 0:06:53 | |
Back in Glasgow's West End, I met a man who's made some worrying discoveries. | 0:06:53 | 0:06:58 | |
Alan Crozier tested 20 espressos from different cafes in the city. | 0:06:58 | 0:07:03 | |
Lo and behold, we got these interesting results | 0:07:03 | 0:07:06 | |
where there was six-fold variations in the level of seemingly | 0:07:06 | 0:07:10 | |
similar espresso coffees, going from 50mg per cup | 0:07:10 | 0:07:13 | |
to in excess of 300mg from three or four of the coffees. | 0:07:13 | 0:07:19 | |
And that's for a single shot? | 0:07:19 | 0:07:21 | |
That's from a single shot of espresso like that. | 0:07:21 | 0:07:24 | |
And some types of coffee have a double shot. | 0:07:24 | 0:07:26 | |
And your latte will have a double shot in it. | 0:07:26 | 0:07:31 | |
That's a worry, because coffee drinkers can't be sure what they're taking in. | 0:07:34 | 0:07:38 | |
More seriously, it means that pregnant women - | 0:07:38 | 0:07:40 | |
who shouldn't consume more than 200mg of caffeine a day - | 0:07:40 | 0:07:44 | |
could drink three times that safe limit with just one latte. | 0:07:44 | 0:07:48 | |
Back at the university, I asked Alan what that means. | 0:07:49 | 0:07:52 | |
There's guidelines from the Food Standards Agency. | 0:07:53 | 0:07:57 | |
"There's this much caffeine for an instant cup, | 0:07:57 | 0:08:00 | |
"there's this for an espresso," | 0:08:00 | 0:08:02 | |
and because of the variations, these guidelines are of very, very | 0:08:02 | 0:08:06 | |
limited value for you to estimate how much you're taking in per day. | 0:08:06 | 0:08:10 | |
Even if you don't drink coffee, | 0:08:17 | 0:08:19 | |
there are plenty of other ways for caffeine to get into your system. | 0:08:19 | 0:08:22 | |
I wanted to see what people knew about other drinks, | 0:08:25 | 0:08:28 | |
and that brought me here, to a somewhat damp Dundee. | 0:08:28 | 0:08:31 | |
Coca-Cola. That's classic Coca-Cola there. | 0:08:34 | 0:08:38 | |
'We gave people a wee puzzle - match the caffeine content to the drink. | 0:08:38 | 0:08:43 | |
'No-one got it right. | 0:08:43 | 0:08:45 | |
'For those of you playing along at home, here are the answers.' | 0:08:45 | 0:08:49 | |
The least caffeinated is ordinary Coke. | 0:08:49 | 0:08:51 | |
The most in our selection is a Grande Starbucks latte. | 0:08:51 | 0:08:55 | |
But was that what the people of Dundee expected? | 0:08:55 | 0:08:57 | |
Were you surprised by these levels? | 0:08:57 | 0:08:59 | |
In the cup of tea, yeah - and the Diet Coke and the Coke. | 0:08:59 | 0:09:02 | |
That's actually kind of a shock, that's mental. | 0:09:02 | 0:09:06 | |
I always thought a normal Coke would be a lot hingier than Diet. | 0:09:06 | 0:09:10 | |
That surprises you? Do you pay attention to how much caffeine you drink? | 0:09:11 | 0:09:15 | |
No. | 0:09:15 | 0:09:17 | |
Do you think you get enough information about how much caffeine there is in these drinks? | 0:09:17 | 0:09:21 | |
No. | 0:09:21 | 0:09:22 | |
Caffeine is water soluble - just as well that I'm not, really. | 0:09:23 | 0:09:27 | |
But what I think we've found from the good people of Dundee | 0:09:27 | 0:09:29 | |
is that they really don't have much of a clue as to how much | 0:09:29 | 0:09:33 | |
caffeine is in what beverage - but then again, who does? | 0:09:33 | 0:09:38 | |
Looking at the soft drinks that contain caffeine, it's not | 0:09:38 | 0:09:41 | |
straightforward to tell how much is actually in there. | 0:09:41 | 0:09:44 | |
The ingredients do state they include caffeine, but not how much. | 0:09:44 | 0:09:48 | |
And oddly, many of the biggest-selling drinks list it as a flavouring. | 0:09:49 | 0:09:54 | |
But is that the whole story? | 0:09:58 | 0:10:01 | |
We asked a leading nutrition expert to recreate - on a smaller scale - | 0:10:01 | 0:10:05 | |
an experiment done by researchers in the US and Australia. | 0:10:05 | 0:10:08 | |
It meant I got a chance to taste caffeine in its concentrated form. | 0:10:11 | 0:10:15 | |
Mike is making up two lemonades - one caffeinated at the same | 0:10:25 | 0:10:29 | |
concentration as some major brand drinks, the other without caffeine. | 0:10:29 | 0:10:33 | |
Will I be able to taste the difference? | 0:10:33 | 0:10:36 | |
I can't tell the difference between those. | 0:10:40 | 0:10:42 | |
And as you know, we tasted some caffeine earlier, I know exactly where I should be feeling it. | 0:10:42 | 0:10:47 | |
I'm not sensing anything there at all. | 0:10:47 | 0:10:51 | |
I tasted a slight difference, and I thought B tasted slightly more bitter. | 0:10:53 | 0:10:58 | |
So I'm going for B as being the one with more caffeine in it. | 0:10:59 | 0:11:03 | |
And you'd be completely wrong. | 0:11:03 | 0:11:04 | |
Now, that was a guess, and I'm glad you guessed wrong. | 0:11:04 | 0:11:06 | |
As a guess, you're telling me | 0:11:06 | 0:11:08 | |
it's really 50-50, more or less. | 0:11:08 | 0:11:10 | |
In point of fact, the caffeine all went into A. | 0:11:10 | 0:11:13 | |
'The original research also found | 0:11:14 | 0:11:16 | |
'most people couldn't taste caffeine in this concentration. | 0:11:16 | 0:11:19 | |
'So why is it there?' | 0:11:19 | 0:11:21 | |
It claims to be a flavouring. | 0:11:21 | 0:11:23 | |
When you see that on a food label, what do you think? | 0:11:23 | 0:11:26 | |
Now that caffeine is being added to so many other foods, | 0:11:27 | 0:11:30 | |
it makes them a little bit addictive too. | 0:11:30 | 0:11:32 | |
So if you drink a fizzy drink with caffeine in it, | 0:11:32 | 0:11:36 | |
you're drawn to drinking more of that more frequently | 0:11:36 | 0:11:40 | |
and the companies who sell it think that's a good idea cos they sell more of it. | 0:11:40 | 0:11:44 | |
That sounds a bit dodgy. | 0:11:45 | 0:11:47 | |
What does the organisation that represents most soft drink | 0:11:47 | 0:11:50 | |
manufacturers have to say about that allegation? | 0:11:50 | 0:11:53 | |
Well, I don't accept that it is there to create a dependency. | 0:11:53 | 0:11:56 | |
You're using terms which suggest that | 0:11:56 | 0:11:58 | |
it's designed to persuade people | 0:11:58 | 0:12:00 | |
to alter their mind in some way, which it clearly isn't, in my view. | 0:12:00 | 0:12:03 | |
What I do accept is that many soft drinks across various categories | 0:12:03 | 0:12:07 | |
actually contain caffeine as an ingredient, and that's fine. | 0:12:07 | 0:12:12 | |
It seems to me a very clear distinction between products | 0:12:12 | 0:12:14 | |
that contain a small amount of caffeine, | 0:12:14 | 0:12:16 | |
which will be labelled in the ingredients on the back | 0:12:16 | 0:12:19 | |
of the packet or the can, and a product that contains | 0:12:19 | 0:12:21 | |
a high level of caffeine, for which it's wholly right that we, | 0:12:21 | 0:12:24 | |
as a responsible industry, provide guidance to consumers. | 0:12:24 | 0:12:28 | |
These are the sorts of products Gavin Partington is referring to | 0:12:31 | 0:12:34 | |
when he talks about drinks with a high caffeine content. | 0:12:34 | 0:12:37 | |
Whether or not they give the consumer an energy boost, | 0:12:37 | 0:12:40 | |
they've certainly given the soft drinks industry a shot in the arm. | 0:12:40 | 0:12:43 | |
In terms of success story, it puts coffee in the shade. | 0:12:45 | 0:12:48 | |
You know, the growth of energy drinks is phenomenal, | 0:12:48 | 0:12:50 | |
-way above coffee. -In what way? What sorts of numbers are we talking about? | 0:12:50 | 0:12:54 | |
Again, just like coffee, it's just broken the billion-pound mark, | 0:12:54 | 0:12:57 | |
but whereas coffee's been around for a lot longer, | 0:12:57 | 0:12:59 | |
energy drinks have only been around for, you know, not much more than a decade. | 0:12:59 | 0:13:02 | |
-So who's drinking them? -Certainly 16-to-24s are drinking them the most | 0:13:02 | 0:13:06 | |
but I think a lot of teenagers are drinking them without doubt, as well. | 0:13:06 | 0:13:09 | |
-And children? -I suspect some children are drinking them, yeah, definitely. | 0:13:09 | 0:13:13 | |
That's a worry, because the industry says they shouldn't be. | 0:13:15 | 0:13:18 | |
Well, our guidelines are very clear. | 0:13:18 | 0:13:20 | |
The guidelines relate to products that contain high caffeine | 0:13:20 | 0:13:23 | |
content, that is over 150mg per litre of product, | 0:13:23 | 0:13:28 | |
and they stipulate that they should not be sold to or consumed by | 0:13:28 | 0:13:32 | |
children. It's a very clear form of guidance, and we hope as many | 0:13:32 | 0:13:36 | |
people as possible will bear that in mind when looking at these products. | 0:13:36 | 0:13:41 | |
So the organisation that represents Britain's drinks industry says | 0:13:43 | 0:13:47 | |
that children shouldn't be drinking energy drinks at all, but are they? | 0:13:47 | 0:13:51 | |
This is the Mountain Bike World Cup near Fort William, | 0:13:59 | 0:14:02 | |
about as extreme as sport gets, | 0:14:02 | 0:14:04 | |
and it looks like exactly the sort of thing | 0:14:04 | 0:14:06 | |
that energy drinks want to associate themselves with. | 0:14:06 | 0:14:10 | |
There are plenty of children here, and some of them are drinking the product | 0:14:11 | 0:14:15 | |
made by headline sponsor Monster, | 0:14:15 | 0:14:17 | |
which has around 160mg of caffeine per can. | 0:14:17 | 0:14:21 | |
Where did they get it? | 0:14:21 | 0:14:23 | |
I see you've just come from the Monster pavilion there... | 0:14:23 | 0:14:26 | |
-Yeah. -..and you've got a drink. | 0:14:26 | 0:14:28 | |
Yeah, they're handing out free Monster, to kind of attract people. | 0:14:28 | 0:14:32 | |
And how old are you? | 0:14:32 | 0:14:34 | |
-11. -How many of those have you had this weekend? | 0:14:34 | 0:14:37 | |
Three. | 0:14:37 | 0:14:39 | |
What sort of effect does it have on you? | 0:14:40 | 0:14:43 | |
Hyper. I think it's the sugar or something. | 0:14:43 | 0:14:46 | |
And what do you know about caffeine? | 0:14:48 | 0:14:50 | |
It's... Not much - I know you get it in coffee. | 0:14:50 | 0:14:54 | |
You get it in coffee, but... | 0:14:54 | 0:14:57 | |
I don't know too much about it. | 0:14:57 | 0:15:00 | |
Do you know how much caffeine is in that? | 0:15:00 | 0:15:02 | |
Ehhh... No. | 0:15:05 | 0:15:08 | |
Would you take my word if I said quite a lot? | 0:15:08 | 0:15:11 | |
Probably. | 0:15:11 | 0:15:13 | |
At an event like this, they are giving them away free - | 0:15:13 | 0:15:16 | |
there's a very strong association with the brand, | 0:15:16 | 0:15:19 | |
you see all the riders riding about. | 0:15:19 | 0:15:21 | |
There's no doubt they are going for the cool factor. | 0:15:21 | 0:15:24 | |
And all you need to do is see the kids queuing up inside | 0:15:24 | 0:15:26 | |
and there's fridges full of free drink. | 0:15:26 | 0:15:28 | |
And I think it would be incredibly naive of the brands to | 0:15:28 | 0:15:32 | |
suggest that under-16s aren't drinking them, because when you | 0:15:32 | 0:15:36 | |
come to an event like this, it's plainly ludicrous. You know, I think | 0:15:36 | 0:15:40 | |
they're going for the youth market because that's where you hook them. | 0:15:40 | 0:15:44 | |
In a statement, Monster said: | 0:15:44 | 0:15:46 | |
So according to the industry, children drinking energy drinks is | 0:16:22 | 0:16:26 | |
a no-no, but marketing them to young people is a different matter. | 0:16:26 | 0:16:29 | |
Here, the dividing line between those two things is so thin | 0:16:29 | 0:16:36 | |
as to be invisible. | 0:16:36 | 0:16:37 | |
And it seems it's not just a weekend treat. | 0:16:40 | 0:16:44 | |
This is Cannock Chase High School near Stafford. | 0:16:44 | 0:16:47 | |
I've been summoned to meet the heidie at the school gates. | 0:16:47 | 0:16:51 | |
Even today, with our energy drinks ban | 0:16:51 | 0:16:53 | |
I picked these up at the gate from children walking into school | 0:16:53 | 0:16:55 | |
this morning, two 13-year-olds who were having them for breakfast. | 0:16:55 | 0:16:59 | |
Why do you have a ban? | 0:16:59 | 0:17:01 | |
A couple of years a couple of my key staff - a science teacher | 0:17:01 | 0:17:03 | |
and a pastoral leader - came to me, | 0:17:03 | 0:17:05 | |
and they said they were concerned about the number | 0:17:05 | 0:17:07 | |
of energy drinks the children were consuming and the effect | 0:17:07 | 0:17:10 | |
it was having both on their health and their concentration in lessons. | 0:17:10 | 0:17:14 | |
The ban came from concerns about caffeine, | 0:17:14 | 0:17:17 | |
raised by science teacher Kate Boot. | 0:17:17 | 0:17:20 | |
When I see children as young as year 11 coming, | 0:17:20 | 0:17:23 | |
walking to school in the morning drinking certain energy drinks, | 0:17:23 | 0:17:27 | |
and I'm thinking, "Hang on a minute, we've got to teach these today," | 0:17:27 | 0:17:30 | |
and I know the effects that the caffeine can | 0:17:30 | 0:17:33 | |
have on their little bodies in terms of their hyperactivity, | 0:17:33 | 0:17:37 | |
when it wears off, what they're like. | 0:17:37 | 0:17:40 | |
Their addictiveness, they need another drink, they get irritated, | 0:17:40 | 0:17:43 | |
agitative, and I thought, "I've had enough of this". | 0:17:43 | 0:17:46 | |
And the ban has been popular with pupils, too. | 0:17:46 | 0:17:49 | |
I think it was done for the right reasons - I don't know | 0:17:49 | 0:17:51 | |
if the makers of this drink said under-16-year-olds didn't drink it, | 0:17:51 | 0:17:55 | |
but I don't know where they did their research | 0:17:55 | 0:17:57 | |
because certainly people under 16 did drink it in this school. | 0:17:57 | 0:18:00 | |
What lessons do you think other parts of the country should draw from this school? | 0:18:00 | 0:18:04 | |
I think they should ban them, too, | 0:18:04 | 0:18:06 | |
because children are more likely to concentrate in lessons | 0:18:06 | 0:18:09 | |
without these drinks, so they should definitely ban them. | 0:18:09 | 0:18:13 | |
What age were you when you were drinking these? | 0:18:13 | 0:18:15 | |
It was only a year or two ago so 14, 15, 16. | 0:18:15 | 0:18:18 | |
Did you know the industry says you're not meant to? | 0:18:18 | 0:18:21 | |
No, it's not well advertised at all. | 0:18:21 | 0:18:23 | |
Cans do carry warnings | 0:18:24 | 0:18:25 | |
that energy drinks shouldn't be drunk by children. | 0:18:25 | 0:18:29 | |
But is that message drowned out by marketing that affects young consumers? | 0:18:29 | 0:18:33 | |
Inevitably, in the world of marketing, frankly, there is always | 0:18:33 | 0:18:37 | |
going to be a question mark about whether, on the margins, does it | 0:18:37 | 0:18:41 | |
actually influence perhaps a section of a younger age group? | 0:18:41 | 0:18:47 | |
It may happen occasionally. | 0:18:47 | 0:18:48 | |
So who should be stopping young people consuming these drinks? | 0:18:48 | 0:18:53 | |
This is primarily an issue for parents. | 0:18:53 | 0:18:55 | |
I mean, that would have to be our starting point here. | 0:18:55 | 0:18:58 | |
Yes, we can produce our own guidance and that's designed to be | 0:18:58 | 0:19:00 | |
available for young adults, but also for parents. | 0:19:00 | 0:19:04 | |
But parents need to make an informed choice. | 0:19:04 | 0:19:07 | |
If we're serious about recognising the potential hazard of | 0:19:07 | 0:19:11 | |
high-caffeine drinks for children, then we should certainly be putting | 0:19:11 | 0:19:16 | |
obstacles in the way of children getting them, and for example, | 0:19:16 | 0:19:20 | |
children going into a shop to buy alcohol is forbidden, because | 0:19:20 | 0:19:24 | |
it's bad for them and they're not permitted to drink it. | 0:19:24 | 0:19:27 | |
Perhaps the same sort of approach should be used for | 0:19:27 | 0:19:30 | |
highly caffeinated drinks. | 0:19:30 | 0:19:31 | |
There is another worrying aspect of caffeine - | 0:19:40 | 0:19:43 | |
to find out about it, I had to travel to the United States. | 0:19:43 | 0:19:47 | |
The caffeine trail can lead you to some unexpected places. I certainly never expected | 0:19:48 | 0:19:53 | |
to be visiting the city of Winter Park, Florida. But that's where I am, because here, | 0:19:53 | 0:19:58 | |
they're not just concerned about high levels of caffeine | 0:19:58 | 0:20:01 | |
causing disturbed sleep or reducing blood flow to your brain - | 0:20:01 | 0:20:04 | |
they are worried that it may have | 0:20:04 | 0:20:06 | |
deadly consequences when you mix it with the wrong thing. | 0:20:06 | 0:20:09 | |
'In a suburban attorney's office, | 0:20:13 | 0:20:14 | |
'I met a lawyer and a family with a sad story to tell. | 0:20:14 | 0:20:19 | |
'It's about a young man called Jason Keiran, | 0:20:19 | 0:20:21 | |
'and a drink called Four Loko. | 0:20:21 | 0:20:23 | |
'Jason's parents and their lawyer explained that one can of the drink | 0:20:25 | 0:20:28 | |
'contains the equivalent of five or six beers' worth of alcohol. | 0:20:28 | 0:20:33 | |
'But it also had caffeine in it. | 0:20:33 | 0:20:35 | |
'Four Loko's manufacturers refuse to disclose the exact level, | 0:20:35 | 0:20:38 | |
'but independent analysis suggests as much as in two cans of Red Bull.' | 0:20:38 | 0:20:43 | |
I have coined the phrase "crack in a can". | 0:20:43 | 0:20:47 | |
And, uh, that's what I think of it as, as crack in a can. | 0:20:47 | 0:20:51 | |
It was a simple way to deliver a type of drug, | 0:20:51 | 0:20:58 | |
which are all those stimulants and alcohol, they are drugs, | 0:20:58 | 0:21:02 | |
and sell them to the masses in a very cheap way. | 0:21:02 | 0:21:08 | |
'In 2010, Joe and Vicki say Jason drank three cans of Four Loko, | 0:21:08 | 0:21:12 | |
'and after being awake for 30 hours, | 0:21:12 | 0:21:15 | |
'he got involved in a game with a friend's gun.' | 0:21:15 | 0:21:18 | |
At some point in time, he walked into his bedroom | 0:21:18 | 0:21:22 | |
or something with the gun and the gun went off. | 0:21:22 | 0:21:25 | |
No-one was there to see exactly what happened, | 0:21:25 | 0:21:29 | |
but the aftermath was Jason lying on the floor, with... | 0:21:29 | 0:21:33 | |
with the gun beside him, with a head wound. | 0:21:33 | 0:21:35 | |
That's in Central Park, me and him in the doorway... | 0:21:35 | 0:21:39 | |
'Jason died the next day in what's been recorded as a suicide. | 0:21:39 | 0:21:44 | |
'Friends told police he had threatened to kill himself | 0:21:44 | 0:21:47 | |
'when drunk before. | 0:21:47 | 0:21:48 | |
'But his parents say they don't recognise Jason's actions as those of the son they knew.' | 0:21:48 | 0:21:54 | |
My son, the glass was always half full. | 0:21:54 | 0:21:57 | |
There was no ups and downs. | 0:21:57 | 0:21:58 | |
There was no highs and lows before this drink and that day. | 0:21:58 | 0:22:03 | |
So that's why, to say that my son | 0:22:03 | 0:22:06 | |
killed himself is, is a very... | 0:22:06 | 0:22:09 | |
not...a true thing, as far as what I'm concerned, | 0:22:09 | 0:22:12 | |
because he was more or less poisoned. | 0:22:12 | 0:22:17 | |
It's just so out of character for him that it's just difficult to... | 0:22:17 | 0:22:21 | |
to believe that... | 0:22:21 | 0:22:23 | |
Believe me, before this happened, | 0:22:23 | 0:22:25 | |
I would be one of those mums saying "Well, what did that kid do?" | 0:22:25 | 0:22:28 | |
But being on this side of it, I can assure you that | 0:22:28 | 0:22:32 | |
you're looking through a different set of lenses, | 0:22:32 | 0:22:35 | |
and it's a much truer lens. | 0:22:35 | 0:22:38 | |
'The family is suing the company | 0:22:38 | 0:22:40 | |
'that made Four Loko over the drink's claimed effects. | 0:22:40 | 0:22:44 | |
'After Jason's death, Don lobbied the Food and Drug Administration | 0:22:44 | 0:22:48 | |
'who wrote to Four Loko expressing serious concerns about the safety | 0:22:48 | 0:22:52 | |
'of the drink and mixing caffeine and alcohol generally. | 0:22:52 | 0:22:55 | |
'The makers withdrew the caffeinated version.' | 0:22:55 | 0:22:58 | |
The good news is, is that the FDA did react rather quickly, | 0:22:58 | 0:23:04 | |
60 days to the day, | 0:23:04 | 0:23:06 | |
from the day that Jason Keiran tragically died, which, uh, is very, | 0:23:06 | 0:23:13 | |
very rare to get a governmental agency to move so quickly. | 0:23:13 | 0:23:20 | |
In a statement, the manufacturers of Four Loko said: | 0:23:22 | 0:23:26 | |
It would be hard to blame Jason's death on caffeine alone - | 0:24:04 | 0:24:07 | |
he had consumed a lot of alcohol, and obviously, if there hadn't been | 0:24:07 | 0:24:11 | |
a gun there, things would have been very different. | 0:24:11 | 0:24:14 | |
But regulators in the US clearly believed that mixing alcohol | 0:24:14 | 0:24:18 | |
and caffeine was something they needed to examine. | 0:24:18 | 0:24:21 | |
And here in Florida there's evidence that even at doses many of us | 0:24:21 | 0:24:24 | |
would consider normal, the mix can affect behaviour. | 0:24:24 | 0:24:27 | |
I visited a college bar in Gainesville, to see | 0:24:35 | 0:24:38 | |
what people who were mixing alcohol and caffeine thought about it. | 0:24:38 | 0:24:42 | |
The Red Bull keeps me going and keeps me drinking... | 0:24:42 | 0:24:46 | |
and does it all through the night. | 0:24:46 | 0:24:48 | |
I usually drink Diet Coke and whisky, Bourbon. | 0:24:51 | 0:24:55 | |
And what sort of effect does it have on you? | 0:24:55 | 0:24:57 | |
I mean, it's fighting fire with fire, you have a depressant | 0:24:57 | 0:25:00 | |
and a stimulant, so you're just even at the end of the night. | 0:25:00 | 0:25:04 | |
Does it work for you? | 0:25:04 | 0:25:05 | |
No, it doesn't - the alcohol usually wins. | 0:25:05 | 0:25:09 | |
Do you think there's any down side to it? | 0:25:09 | 0:25:11 | |
Absolutely not...because tomorrow when I'm hungover | 0:25:11 | 0:25:14 | |
you just keep taking more caffeine, | 0:25:14 | 0:25:17 | |
you go to Starbucks, you get an Adderall and you keep going | 0:25:17 | 0:25:20 | |
with the Red Bull and the vodka come five o'clock tomorrow. | 0:25:20 | 0:25:23 | |
So what I think we're getting here from the customers of this bar | 0:25:25 | 0:25:29 | |
is that there is a bit of resistance to the idea that | 0:25:29 | 0:25:32 | |
mixing caffeine and alcohol can lead to a new set of behaviours. | 0:25:32 | 0:25:36 | |
But what's the empirical evidence? | 0:25:36 | 0:25:39 | |
The reason we're on the Florida University campus is that | 0:25:41 | 0:25:44 | |
researchers here looked at the effect on students of alcohol alone, | 0:25:44 | 0:25:47 | |
compared to mixing it with caffeine. | 0:25:47 | 0:25:50 | |
Mixing alcohol with high doses of caffeine results in | 0:25:52 | 0:25:56 | |
a wide-awake drunk. | 0:25:56 | 0:25:58 | |
These individuals are wide awake as a result of the caffeine | 0:25:58 | 0:26:02 | |
and buzzed as a result of the alcohol. | 0:26:02 | 0:26:04 | |
The downside of a wide-awake drunk is the lack of perception | 0:26:05 | 0:26:11 | |
of one's impairment, which results in risky behaviours - | 0:26:11 | 0:26:14 | |
driving while impaired with alcohol, | 0:26:14 | 0:26:17 | |
unprotected sex, or even a sexual assault. | 0:26:17 | 0:26:20 | |
You're not alone in carrying out research into this area, are you? | 0:26:20 | 0:26:24 | |
The cool part about our work is when we were | 0:26:24 | 0:26:27 | |
conducting our research here in Gainesville with young people, there | 0:26:27 | 0:26:30 | |
were several other groups around the country that were conducting | 0:26:30 | 0:26:34 | |
very similar projects, and in the end we came up with the same conclusion. | 0:26:34 | 0:26:38 | |
That is, impaired judgement, impaired behaviour, | 0:26:38 | 0:26:43 | |
much greater than one would see when alcohol is consumed alone. | 0:26:43 | 0:26:47 | |
Not all scientists in this field agree with Dr Goldberger. | 0:26:49 | 0:26:53 | |
A review of the evidence for UK regulators last year | 0:26:53 | 0:26:56 | |
concluded that the balance of evidence didn't support | 0:26:56 | 0:26:59 | |
a harmful interaction between caffeine and alcohol, | 0:26:59 | 0:27:02 | |
although it admitted "substantial uncertainty" over that conclusion. | 0:27:02 | 0:27:06 | |
And US regulators are now reviewing the safety of caffeine in all | 0:27:06 | 0:27:10 | |
food and drink - including alcoholic beverages. | 0:27:10 | 0:27:14 | |
They've been ruminating about regulation for decades. | 0:27:14 | 0:27:18 | |
Now just recently, the head of the FDA has decided to, | 0:27:18 | 0:27:23 | |
and directed his people to look at caffeine | 0:27:23 | 0:27:25 | |
and to establish better rules and regulations. | 0:27:25 | 0:27:29 | |
We're still months or years away from any sort of control over | 0:27:30 | 0:27:34 | |
caffeine in food and beverage. | 0:27:34 | 0:27:36 | |
Back in the UK, we asked the Food Standards Agency what they thought. | 0:27:37 | 0:27:41 | |
They pointed to the recent review of evidence on caffeine | 0:27:41 | 0:27:44 | |
and alcohol, but said they'd also closely consider emerging evidence | 0:27:44 | 0:27:48 | |
on the safety of caffeine in energy drinks | 0:27:48 | 0:27:50 | |
and alcoholic products. | 0:27:50 | 0:27:52 | |
They also said they would consider the results of a European review | 0:27:52 | 0:27:56 | |
of caffeine in food and drink, due later this year. | 0:27:56 | 0:27:59 | |
'It's been a surprising, even shocking, experience for me, | 0:28:04 | 0:28:07 | |
'looking at this drug. Caffeine plays a big part in our lives, | 0:28:07 | 0:28:11 | |
'and it seems it's set to get even bigger.' | 0:28:11 | 0:28:14 | |
Caffeine and caffeinated products have got a lot more potential, | 0:28:14 | 0:28:17 | |
so, you know, caffeinated food is now a new area of growth. | 0:28:17 | 0:28:20 | |
It could be anything, from cheese to bread, you know, you name it, | 0:28:20 | 0:28:24 | |
it could be anything. | 0:28:24 | 0:28:25 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:28:37 | 0:28:40 |