News: Panera Bread warns people 'sensitive to caffeine' not to drink its Charged Lemonade following wrongful-death lawsuit

[Dmmetler]

The Panera here now has the charged drinks behind the counter (waiting to pick up a takeout order)

[Corraleno]

1 hour ago, Laura Corin said:

Perhaps the more fundamental problem is 30 ounce cups with free refills. So much sugar and ..... who know what, even before the caffeine is considered. 887ml? That's a lot.

Yeah, 124 g of sugar is 31 teaspoons — not only is this drink equivalent to 5 espressos in terms of caffeine, it's like drinking 5 espressos each of which has 6 teaspoons of sugar in it!

That's the same amount of sugar in an entire box (8 cups) of Lucky Charms, and yet Panera is labeling this drink as "plant-based and clean" as if it's some kind of healthy alternative to soda, which is extremely (and clearly intentionally) deceptive.

[Corraleno]

DS's apartment is practically next door to a Panera that's always full of students studying, so I asked him if he'd ever had the charged lemonade. He said he's had it a few times and knew it was caffeinated but he was surprised when I told him how much caffeine and sugar was in there — he'd just assumed it was similar to a Refresher.

He said that he generally sips a drink over the course of a few hours while studying, plus he's a big guy (6'7" 220 lbs), so it didn't really bother him, but he also said they're quite tasty and easy to drink, so he can imagine how someone who's a lot smaller than him could drink a lot more than he did, in a shorter time period, and be really affected by it.

According to DS, that particular Panera has now moved all the "charged" drinks behind the counter AND they limit people to only one refill and it has to be at least 2 hours since the first one — which seems like a ridiculous burden to put on the employees, who now have to track which customers had which drinks, when they bought them, how many refills they've had, etc.

IMO they really should just label them as what they are — extreme energy drinks — and sell them in 20 oz containers without free refills. 

[KungFuPanda]

This is why other countries outlaw energy drinks entirely.  I'm so over food that's not food.