As life gets busy and stressful from an earlier age than fifty years ago, people are in desperate need of energy boosters. After coffee shops and coffee take-away chains such as Starbucks, energy drinks, like the ever so popular Red Bull, rapidly made their way into the market.

There is, of course, a wide range of choices (200 new brands sprang up in 2006 and 2007 alone), with different concentrations, flavors, shapes and sizes. Soon, energy drinks reached bars, where they are still dangerously mixed with strong alcoholic beverages, such as whisky or vodka, which the FDA should soon start looking into.

Some energy drinks contain the amount of caffeine found in 14 cans of Coca-Cola, but the concentration is often unlabeled and many lack health risk warnings. Taking into consideration the large amounts of caffeine found in regular energy drinks, one can easily become caffeine-intoxicated or have cardiac palpitations and breathing insufficiencies. Over-the-counter products that contain caffeine are compelled by the FDA to have warning and a detailed scheme of the chemical compounds. Yet these energy drinks, widely available to people of all ages, have no warnings. As the target groups of the brands are teens and young adults, the marketing campaigns advertise energy drinks not only as a source of energy, but also as performance enhancers. These campaigns lead the young to consume energy drinks in high doses before exams and sporting events.

Because of this energy drink boom that soft drink producers seemed to have missed out on, companies have started adding an energy drink to their beverage panel, in order to stay on the market and compete with the energizer niche.

Soon, we can expect a downpour of high-school and college students rushed to the emergency room with different ailments caused, aggravated and augmented by energy drinks, unless the FDA has a say in it.