⚖ What should we cover next? 🥗 Get delicious, healthy meals from Factor! legaleagle.link/factor 🦅 Get a great lawyer with EagleTeam legaleagle.link/eagleteam
Caffeine is an alkaline, I've never tested caffeine powder because 1g is enough to kill you but it's chemistry implies it would have a chalky bitter taste. The same applies to gauraine & taurine (sorry I know that's spelled wrong) This is why energy drinks are loaded up with sugars and/or artificial sweeteners. Also fun fact about caffeine it evolved as plant defense, it's a toxin and is generally fatal to non-primate mammals.
Talk about the judge in road Island throwing out another indictment on January 6 do to lack evidence. . So little coverage on court cases after trump win I wonder 🤔 how court cases o the 2020 election he won
I can confirm you used to be able to pour it yourself, and signage did not make it obvious it had so much caffeine. I was using the unlimited pours app. I have an unusual medical history that used to make it where I could/needed to drink enough red bull, coffee, and soda to kill a normal person, and I couldn't handle 2 charged lemonades before I thought I might need to go to the hospital. I have doctors that can confirm my medical claims/drinking history.
I used to work by a Panera and we would frequently have customers come in that still were finishing their drinks. We all knew about the crazy levels of caffeine in the drink, but customers often wouldn’t. One day an old lady walked in with a large charged lemonade. After talking to her about what she came in for I brought up the drink. She brought up that it was a new lemonade and i warned her that the drink she had contained almost twice the caffeine of a monster energy and she threw it away and thanked me profusely. She didn't even realize there was caffeine and she suffered from a heart condition. To this day, it's still weird to think that i may have saved that woman's life because she decided to grab a lemonade at Panera.
Good on you for giving a damn about the people around you. You could have just shrugged it off, and let her suffer the results of her bad decisions, but you didn't, and that's admirable. EDIT: Poorly phrased. It's not a bad decision when the company doesn't provide adequate information. My bad.
Thanks for caring enough to warn her. About this video, and food safety - the sponsor's food is packed in plastic that has to be heated up, and that has been shown to be harmful to health. I wonder if in several years, the industry will be required to care about harming people this way.
As someone who works at panera, you can tell how oblivious our customer base was to the high level of caffeine content. Nearly every time that I explain why we moved our lemonades behind the counter i get a response like "i didnt know they were so caffeinated" or something along those lines. The other big issue is the fact that the drinks are mixed by employees, yet only a few employees are taught how to do it and it's treated like something everyone knows how to do. I have seen multiple times where someone made charged lemonade with not enough water in it, which would result in over 500 mg in caffiene per 30 ounces.
Customers should not expect high levels of caffeine in their LEMONADE. It's not due to the customers being "oblivious", it's to the manufacturer to make it obvious and stop advertising it as a soft drink when it clearly falls under other category, one which should not be available to small children. They should say clearly on the label that it contain caffeine, specially since many people suffer from heart problems and would never expect that a soft drink would contain more caffeine than a cup of coffee or an energy drink.
I have a family member that this was given to, a child, through the drive thru. The person ordering the drink was not alerted to the caffeine content, as normal folks would NEVER think of a lemonade to be caffeinated!
@@Valyoyoable I absolutely agree issued even being considered a lemonade. It's an energy drink. Lemonade is supposed to have water lemon sugar, nothing else. And panera It's supposed to be a healthier safer choice. Put everyone into a false sense of security. Who's going to think their lemonade is dangerous.
@@wimsylogic65Starbucks has the same issue. The frozen lemonade refreshers or the regular refreshers. You have to go to the app under the nutrition info to find out. At least the charged label gives a little clue whereas refresher does not
Former Panera employee here. My manager got mad at me for warning a pregnant woman how much caffeine was in the drink (she said she couldn’t have coffee, so I figured I should warn her), and also got mad at me for warning a mother who was about to get one for her son. They also encourage employees to drink MULTIPLE a day to “stay focused”
As someone who used to work at Panera Bread. I had to CONSTANTLY warn parents about how much caffeine is in those lemonades as most wouldn’t realize there was any. Like keeping it out of 5 year old kids hands was a daily issue
I'd believe it. Just I am sure you had the parents who got all haughty for you daring to suggest they not feed their child a bunch of caffeine and sugar.
@@JJRoelant They definitely should. My brother drank 2 celsius thinking it was a soda not energy drink because he didn't even read the full front of the bottle. Is that celsius's fault even tho they advertise being an energy drink very clearly? No its him being an idiot.
My old job had a Panera across the street and they just let you free refill the charged lemonades as much as you wanted. I drank 2 giant sizes in a lunch hour and I swear I saw the face of god. Every other Panera I've gone to has excluded the charged lemonades from free refills
Yeah, I have an unhealthy obsession with caffeine. I can have 600 mg of the stuff in a span of two hours but like... I know I am going it and I know how unhealthy it is. It's just my choice to do I can also get an extra 10 hours of work done and not have it be a sloppy mess. It is a trade-off but one I willingly make, just having it happen without my knowledge is no good.
The one I worked at advertised using the free refill on it, hell the store owner advertised it to me despite me frequently saying to people including him that I have a caffeine intolerance and had to spend an entire evening on the toilet cause I tried a large
I hope this doesn’t go like the McDonald’s hot coffee lawsuit where the giant corporation spread rumors about the case to make the victim look like an idiot
I mean, knowing you have a heart condition, electing to buy a product known as Charged, the same product that is advertised as caffinated, neglecting to check the caffeine content, and then getting not one but two larges... is much different than spilling boiling coffee on you when somebody else prepared it above guidelines and didn't secure the lid properly. EDIT: Liebeck removed the lid herself, so it can't be said McDonald's didn't secure the lid properly. Either way, the temperature was still higher than advertised.
@@ceulgai2817 ah, but did the victim actually know how much caffeine the drink had? Did she know if it had *any* caffeine? Issues that need to be addressed in the suit.
She's not an idiot, but she definitely failed to take care of herself as she should have. I literally just looked up "what is a charged drink?" and it told me what it was, examples, and warnings. Search results in 2022 couldn't have been that much different. Also, as someone with gluten intolerance who researches everything I consume, you can't blame others for a mistake.
@thatjeff7550 Most of the ads did mention that it was caffinated, but it wasn't very clearly labeled on the store. Charged does make sense as labeling for something that contains caffeine. However, how much wasn't clear. And that is the gap that may show they are liable for her death
Another person has now died from drinking the Charged Lemonade sold by Panera. He drank three, he was developmentally disabled and had poor vision (but no heart condition!), and likely was completely unaware it contained caffeine. Insanely sad. At my Panera store they keep them behind the counter now, but it was free for anyone to fill at the drink station for years!
He did have high blood pressure, and according to his family, he tried to avoid caffeine because of this. If Panera had labeled it correctly and warned their customers about the high caffeine content of the lemonade, he might still be alive right now. It’s heartbreaking.
@@Vinla_Rhoagreed, I worked there when they were introduced to the menu. They are labeled under the name of the beverage on the bubbler. It shows the caffeine content for the regular and large cups.
They had "severe" hypertension, and died from cardiac arrest likely secondary to hypertensive crisis. Healthy people CAN sometimes overdose on caffeine (most case reports involve 3-5g of caffeine taken as powder), but the cause of death is not cardiac arrest, its typically rabdomyolysis. Also in the majority of intentional caffeine overdoses, the patient survives. Whenever you see a death caused by caffeine, outside of intentional overdose, you can be certain health conditions are involved.
Considering a family member was offered this when the decaf coffee was out two weeks ago - I am pretty sure the people behind the counter are completely clueless about what is in the drink.
@@Calibrumm If there is a new product that I had no prior intention of buying is being offered as a replacement for a noncaffeinated beverage by someone who could be considered an expert of the company's products that is not of the consumer. Especially when you are in a pressure situation like ordering and there is a line behind you. Most people will feel pressured to make a snap decision in the moment and chose to trust the individual with arguably the most knowledge. No reasonable person would assume that if you asked for decaf, find out they are out and are offered a lemonade as a substate would think that lemonade had more caffeine in it that a monster energy drink.
Ex panera employee here- yeah they don’t tell us anything. When these came out they let us try them for free so we all had a cup. I could not sleep that night, and I’m the kind of person that can drink 300mg of caffeine and go to sleep right after. I had to look it up myself how much caffeine was in it. I made sure to warn people after that, but the company itself does not encourage anyone to make it known just how much caffeine and sugar is in them. I’ve seen so many parents order them for their children too.
@@Hoodwinklenow we just need you to comment this a million more times. Not really but it would be nice if everyone knew that employees arent told ****, which is basically true with most companies.
I actually learned about this when inside a Panera, where a customer complained to staff that the charged lemonades had been moved behind the counter. The staff member reasonably summarized that there was a death so the lemonades were moved "out of an abundance of caution". The customer's reaction though, was to guffaw and say "how could someone die from lemonade?" I've seen a few comments comparing the misinformation in the McD coffee case. This might have a similar uphill battle in the court of public opinion.
There's a lot more information out there with the Internet these days. Most comments I see online about the McDonald's case have shown a big shift towards the plaintiff. And unlike the Monster Energy Drink lawsuit from about 8 years ago, I haven't seen anyone in the comments placing the blame on the person who died
@@kelseypapst9248there's just as much misinformation on the internet, though... And before and after the decision is found in this case, there will continue to be opinions all over the place
I just informed someone about the reality of the lady's burns last week and she went "oh, I didn't know it was that bad." so... we got a ways to go. It's the dingo's ate my baby case where that's LITERALLY what happened... @@kelseypapst9248
I remember watching the Food Theory on this drink before this lawsuit went viral on the internet. It’s kind of crazy how MatPat already pointed out how dangerous this drink was.
@@skylerricketts7392it’s matt’s video that kept me from ever trying it even as my brother started to down large size cup of it. i have no caffeine issues but i do have an addiction and if i got addicted to a *360g* caffeine drink it would be over for me
@@valen9835 Theories can be true ( math is sexier then loli ) or false ( Overwatch being a better game ) , sadly the Deadly effect of the *D* rink theory is not only right but too true .
I think that one aspect of this that was underplayed is the fact that for most of us, if we drink 400mg/day, it's usually spread out over the whole day. I bet most people drinking this specific drink do so within, say 15 minutes or so. Therefore the body is receiving all that caffeine in one big whammy. That can't be good for anyone.
Depends on what you're aiming for. Caffeine is actually used to treat several medical conditions, though admittedly often as self-medication, which is risky. For some of those, you actually need pretty high doses. I know this because I have several of those conditions, and have been considering it as an option. Especially with how difficult it is to consistently get my hands on my current ADHD medication these days. I am on what's effectively extended release, though, so I probably wouldn't go that high in one dose. But I'm sure someone out there could use it. Maybe.
Its not good for anyone, but its not dangerous. Keep in mine that a large starbucks medium roast has 410mg of caffeine. Caffeine is extremely well tolerated. The reason lawyers use things like energy drinks is because as far as concentration is consumed, energy drinks arent actually super caffeinated, redbull in particular has super low doses of caffeine. Their largest product has less than a single 200mg standard dose.
@@fink7968The highest amount of caffeine in a roast is 360mg. Experts recommend less than that in a day. That’s coffee, not lemonade. You know what you’re getting into. You sip it slow, and it’s hot. You don’t gulp it like cold lemonade and you don’t get refills. 2 grandes in one sitting can kill you. The first that died from the lemonade had 1270mg of caffeine. That would kill a normal person.
I worked at Panera when this charged lemonade came out, I called it from day one when I saw the caffeine and sugar content with a tiny tiny label and parents giving it to their KIDS that someone would die from it. Really sad.
@@kathydelarosa1286They probably weren't the person selling the lemonades for every purchase of the lemonade. Some parents don't understand the harm in things like caffeine and high sugar content. Or they might not realize how harmful it is. It's not the employees responsibility to make a company's product safe for consumers. Also it was self serve so they just needed to order a cup and they could get the lemonade themselves.
@Ooweeeooo yes, but also no. Yes it's the parents fault for giving their kid a drink loaded with sugar and caffeine. But it's not the parents fault they didn't know the drink was loaded with sugar and caffeine when Panara made sure to bury that information rather than presenting it up front.
to me, the most insane part is that a drink that can be dangerous if consumed in large quantities is being offered through an unlimited refill subscription service, imagine if pubs offered a service that allowed subscribers to drink unlimited beer...
Depending on the strength all you can drink beer in a pub could be really easy to do with comparable safety to any other kind of pub drinking. Now if it was all you could drink shots...
Doesn't matter if you have a heart condition. 400mg is the daily recommended maximum by the FDA, and 1200mg is listed on their website as an amount associated with toxic affects, like seizures in a healthy person. That woman who said she drinks one every 2 hours is lucky to be alive.
to be clear, it's very, very unlikely a healthy person would have seizures. The toxicity that the FDA is talking about is a feeling of nausea, dizziness, headache, etc. Seizures are pretty rare and happen at much higher levels.
Toxicology student here and that 400mg is the daily RDI and based off an average 70kg white man drinking 4-5 cups of black coffee over multiple hours. As Dr Mike explained Caffeine has a very long half life so putting 400mg in a drink could easily cause an overdose in most people as the human body can only process so much caffeine at a time - and the toxic effect is dose/body weight/time dependant...meaning that women and children would likely suffer a overdose from a single serve. This is why other countries like Australia set a maximum limit on Energy Drinks of 320 mg and require clear warnings/labels of caffeine per serve and a warning logo to warn pregnant people. It's also important to note that this drink appears to be designed to addict people unaware that the 'buzz' and good feelings from drinking a 'lemonaid' was a s#!*ton of sugar and caffeine messing with their brains!.. No wonder people would go back for seconds when they were mislead into thinking it was from a 'natural buzz' of plant based ingredients - suggesting it was healthier than a soft drink.
That's honestly hilarious to me. I've drank well over 900mg in a day while being on 300mg of wellbutrin and I was fine. I was later diagnosed with SEVERE adhd. My heart rate may have been 110 sitting. But God damn did I have a lot of energy.
I have cardiomyopathy and heart arrythmia. Thanks to MatPat on Food Theory, I was aware of the lemonade and it's high caffeine levels. My mom got me the lemonade because she didn't know about the caffeine. I only drank about a quarter of the drink, when I started feeling my throat tighten (for me it's a sign of anxiety, which corresponds with my PVCs) I stopped drinking it and told my mom about the lemonade. (I'm so glad that I'm aware of the caffeine levels in that drink. It's ridiculous!)
Omg I’m so thankful that you didn’t die to this drink. The fact that Panera bread is not removing it from their stores and saying it is “safe” is crazy when multiple people have passed away from it. They way they market it as healthy too 🤢
@@gigiearth Alcohol: 2500 deaths per year (from acute poisoning alone) Nuts/peanuts: 50 deaths per year Grapefruit juice: has a massive number of seriously dangerous medication interactions Exercise: multiple deaths annually due to exercise induced rabdomyolysis Chewing food: results in thousands of elderly deaths annually due to choking and pneumonia Driving: ..... It's almost as if a lot of things are dangerous in certain contexts, the same could perhaps be said about drinking a highly dosed (dosage was on the fountain label in medium print, very readable) caffeine product, which is statistically substantially safer than most of what I just listed above. The actual crux of the issue is, is it reasonable to expect people to be aware of what they are putting in their bodies? and are restaurants responsible for inquiring about and understanding medical conditions that customers may have? Strong yes and a no from me.
The "plant-based" caffeine thing reminds of the time I read some ridiculous article suggesting people get caffeine from "natural sources" like tea instead of coffee.
@@hurpdurpueruhur Going to be unfun, but your ketchup may have been processed in a gluten-processing location. For strong allergies that's already too much so the branding is not totally absurd.
"plant-based caffeine"... Me to Panera: "you mean the caffeine extracted out of coffee beans isn't plant-based?????? Huh????" (I actually do not know if they synthesize caffeine from other sources or in a lab for energy drinks or caffeine pills)
Considering that caffiene, like most other alkiloid amines, is the plants way of trying to poison you in order to preserve itself from being eaten, how is it then advisible within common sense that we shpuld consume these types of things without the due caution and respect they deserve in their own right?
The crazy thing about this is that MattPat did a video literally highlighting how unsafe and irresponsible the marketing at the time was around these charged lemonades - 10 months ago and they still did nothing !!! Literally in the title was 'this could kill you'...
hey shocker. american capitalism just doesnt care just know that the repiblican party is fighting HARD to neuter our laws so companies like panaera can k!ll us without consequences and to throw anyone that criticises them into prison
4:20 small correction: the caffeine amount is the same, it has not been reduced. the difference is that previously, the caffeine content was listed accounting for NO ICE in the cup. the recent change is that now, the charged lenonades are only available behind the counter and the caffeine content is listed assuming the standard amount of ice in the cup, hence the ~40% "reduction" in total caffeine content
@@aquaintsound you could look at it that way i suppose, but realistically it's moreso that when it was self service, they had to account for the customer filling the cup full and to give an accurate nutrition facts
I was a manager at Panera until this year, and frankly we knew well before this happened that something like it was coming. We got so many complaints from parents who got it for their kids, or when their kids got it themselves without knowing what was in it. I personally saw plenty of high schoolers drinking 2-3 large drinks in one sitting. It was so obviously dangerous that many stores in my area pulled the beverage dispensers behind the counter even before it was mandated, and advised their employees to discourage parents from giving it to kids. The drinks are good, but it’s frankly ludicrous that Panera got away with serving them for so long without anyone noticing.
My sister loves these lemonades and got them frequently this last summer. She has no problem with it and tends to drink a ton of caffinated products, so it didn't bother her. She recommended it to me without knowing it had caffeine. I never consume caffeine, as I have tourettes syndrome and caffeine makes my symptoms worse, along with just making me feel sick and like I'm having a panic attack. So I got a large lemonade because I wanted a drink I could have throughout a long day of work. I felt completely awful. It was a horrible day, I had no idea why I felt so bad that day and why I had such bad symptoms until I went to Panera a few weeks later with my mom who pointed out that the lemonade had caffeine in it. They really need to advertise it better. Even if someone doesn't have a heart condition, caffeine can have a big impact on different people, especially if kids had the drink thinking it was just a flavored lemonade
So true. I can handle small amounts of caffeine but if I drank just one of those lemonades I would end up with a headache and nausea for hours, and even if it would not have lasting health effects that is not a good time.
I get chest pain when I have too much caffeine too, & my limit is lower than most people due to heartburn & what I suspect to be an undiagnosed heart condition. Heart problems run in my family, but don't usually start at my age. I don't live near a Panera, but drinking one of those lemonades could easily kill me or one of my family members. I agree, they need to advertise it better. I don't want to add to, or know someone who adds to, this lemonade's body count.
I have AFib and Tachycardia. Drinking this unaware of it's caffeine content could possibly really hurt me. They should have been more transparent from the git.
As a former worker at panera, I know that my specific general manager always would get mad at me, and other workers, when we had warned people how caffeinated these lemonades were
It's possible that these drinks did contribute to other peoples deaths or serious illness without knowing that the drink is what triggered it. The reason they wold be more likely to figure it out for Sarah was because of her condition and how she monitored what she consumed so closely that it would be easier to spot what factors could have triggered cardiac arrest.
It is statistically likely that they caused a few miscarriages, maybe the republicans should go after them for killing the unborn children they love so much.
And yet she didn't check the ingredient sheet that was accessible online at the time. She was so careful, except this one time right? Just a fluke that this time, she didn't bother checking what she was drinking and it just happened to kill her. I don't think she was as careful as her family and lawyer are pretending that she was.
@@Reinforce_ZweiBecause nobody assumes that lemonade contains ginormous amounts of caffeine. Btw they even label Cola as a drink that contains caffeine over here in Europe although it is obvious.
@@Reinforce_Zwei you're blaming the victim when the drink was not advertised as a energy drink, it did not say that it contained caffeine and was in a self serve/unlimited refill where children could access it and looked identical to their non-caffeinated/normal soft drinks. The information was NOT on display in store at the time and only someone who specifically asked was given the nutritional information. The only warning was that it had the same caffeine content as their black coffee which was misleading as A NORMAL black coffee only contains around 50mg of caffine per serve, not over 300mg. As someone with food allergies it is exhausting/difficult to check every label when eating out which is why context clues matter - I wouldn't ask if a Pizza contains Strawberry unless there was something on the menu to hint that it was a dessert or had berries listed... Instead I just avoid anything listed with Strawberry or 'berries' in general and check if the labelling is unclear.
@@Reinforce_Zwei it can easily be the case that she wouldn't have any problems from coffee or an energy drink and still get a problem from this drink... The amount of caffeine in this drink is just ridiculous...
I have long QT syndrome and had absolutely no clue this drink has that much caffeine in it. I had one a few weeks ago and my heart rate shot through the roof, I thought for sure my pacemaker/defibrillator was going to deliver a shock. At the time I had no clue why but now I do. I got extremely lucky.
@@jokeassasin7733They say how much caffeine is in it, the raw MG content, but they don't say anything about the context of this. And it should also be noted that the 400mg recommended max by the FDA is for over the course of an entire day, not in a single sitting. 400mg caffeine in under half an hour is dangerous to ANYBODY, not just someone with long QT. It's just that, for most people, it takes way more caffeine for the heart problems in the drink to kick in.
@@jokeassasin7733 When something says "Charged" do you automatically think "Caffeine"? Yeah, obviously _something_ is making it "Charged", but that doesn't immediately make you think of caffeine Edit: As another comment said, it could mean "Charged" like full of electrolytes, similar to gatorade. It's an extremely vague term that doesn't properly say what's actually making it "Charged"
@level20art50 . 400mg is safe for a healthy young adult. Even 1000mg within a couple hours will only make you feel sick. The deadly dose is 3000mg, for a normal person. But it's very possible to die from much lower.
I like how the dr mike segment subtly shows us the proper way to use an expert witness. Devin just asked questions to continue the point, and let the expert do all the talking.
one of the real issues is now how many places have nutritional information on their website and not on the product or in the store. I don't think it is unreasonable to say you have to tell people what is in your product.
Yeah, the pressure to list nutrition information clearly was targeted at fast food places like McDonald's, particularly after Super Size Me. People forget that Panera, Starbucks, Chipotle, etc are also arguably fast food restaurants.
Agreed or more reasonable name. When I get lemonade I don't think it's going to have 300+mg of caffeine. You label something as coffee or energy drink and I automatically think that and look at the amount
The problem with this from a legal standpoint is that they technically did tell you. My worry is that with the internet being so readily available, specially with young people being the ones that use it the most, courts would rule that companies ARE in fact informing you. Though, my hope is that stuff like this does end being mandatory for in store information. Secondly, a diligent lawyer (not saying a moral one) might even point out how long she’s had the condition and place the responsibility on her. Not saying I agree but it is these lawyers’ job to win cases and they’ll use any excuse. I’m allergic to shellfish and an asthmatic since 6 months old, I am now 33, I would hope most restaurants practice clean procedures when having a kitchen with multiple proteins but I always make it VERY clear what my condition is. I’ve gone through anaphylaxis which triggered my asthma after closing my throat. Not fun. I do hope the family gets whatever peace they need. I’m heartbroken over this poor young girl and the courts should be reasonable when it comes to this kind of situation.
I wonder if that sort of thing will have an effect on the lawsuit? If the family's lawyers can point to people who work at Panera who have been predicting problems I would think that would make Panera look potentially negligent.
@jaynestrange hear what you are daying, but I don't think that the average Panera employee is qualified to act as an expert witness or give opinions on matters of health.
For reference, in Germany, you need to declare any caffeine concentration in excess of 18mg/100ml. Cola usually is BELOWB that threshold. Calculated that this drink is about 42mg/100ml. That is a LOT. and that's assuming it was mixed correctly, could be higher as comments point out.
Yeah, as someone who's sensitive to caffeine...not insanely sensitive, but if I drink a cup of tea or a can of caffenated soda to late in the evening, my sleep is disrupted.... this drink would have me hanging off the ceiling trying to calm down lol
It was always marketed as caffeinated on the app, but it wasnt a prominent warning in the store. It seems weird they would sell 30 oz cups with free refills knowing how potent it was. Even as someone who needs 3 large coffees with espresso each day, its an obscene amount of caffeine to put in lemonade.
I think what makes it even worse is that they seemed to undersell how much caffeine is in them. If my memory serves me what signage they had claimed it was about as strong as a cup of coffee.
@@rookiemechwarriorthat too!! I refused to even try it because I don't respond well to energy drinks. It's too much caffeine all at once, and they should have learned from Bang Energy and Four Loko how dangerous that is
Yeah even seeing the commercial explicitly stating it has caffeine, nothing in its branding or marketing would lead me to believe that this is a beverage with caffeine levels higher than 2 large lattes (along with other stimulants, and being iced you're likely drinking it and absorbing those things faster). The plant based and green coffee extract stuff, along with being a juice based beverage, makes me immediately think of it as a competitor to a Starbucks Refresher type drink, which has 45 MG of caffeine on the lower end and the highest caffeine content I see is 90 MG on a 30 Oz cup. Nothing about chill vibes outside, "plant based" and "green coffee extract" for caffeine leads me to think at all about stuff like Red Bull or Monster
The açai drinks at Starbucks are a similar story. Parents often order it for their kids, thinking it's just a refreshing fruity lemonade drink, and we have to explain they're highly caffeinated
Wait what???? I have those all the time, and the description on the website is just strawberry lemonade, coconut water, dehydrated strawberries, and flavour syrup. I'm gonna have a look at the nutritional list. If this is true, no wonder I don't feel hydrated after drinking them. Edit: had a check and luckily a grande strawberry acai lemonade has "only" 45mg of caffeine. Still 45mg more than I expected. That's a coffee's worth. I literally try to avoid caffeine due to it flaring my health condition. Wtf. Why do they have to put caffeine in everything? I also tried to check for caffeine in their ice shaken lemon passion tea but it's literally publicly unavailable, you have to email the company. Rhetorical question, caffeine is addictive, they are trying to get people addicted to their drinks.
@@shadycatz85 Former barista here, the passion tea is a herbal tea, so it contains no caffeine. Black, Green, an white teas are do contain caffeine tho. (do they even still serve the white tea? its been years since ive stepped foot in a starbucks lol)
I had one of the Refresher Drinks at Starbucks once not knowing they were heavily caffeinated until after I drank it and felt like I was crawling out of my skin. They are not easily marked as heavily caffeinated at at the time they just sounded 'refreshing'
Something not mention is also the rate at which you could consume one of these drinks compared to something like a Monster or a coffee. Most people will generally pace themselves a little with those drinks (or at least are aware of what they're doing if they chug it). With these lemonades, like you said doesn't really taste caffinated or like an energy drink, and comes with a straw, you could easily down one very quickly, giving yourself a massive and unexpected caffeine dose all at once.
Perhaps it's because I knew there was caffeine in it beforehand, but I never felt like I could drink one of these lemonades quickly. There's also a ton of sugar in them, and it showed in how it tasted. I always up mixing mine with iced tea if they let me fill it myself, because it's too much on its own.
Here, they have banned the sale of caffeinated “booster” drinks in bars because the massive amount of caffeine combined with alcohol is dangerous. You, of course, can’t monitor or stop people from buying alcohol and beer or liquor in stores. And kids find out that the caffeinated boosters (the little bottles sold at the cash) and beer will give you a high and they buy them for that purpose. Even if they don’t drink beer with the boosters, a couple of the boosters will have the same effect given the kids’ smaller body-mass. They really should not be sold to kids.
Yeah. I have a lot of caffeine in a day, but I don't do high caffeine content energy drinks, because they give an uncomfortable spike. It feels a whole lot better to get under 100mg with every cup or can of caffeinated drink. nearly 400mg in a single drink makes zero sense.
This. The lemonade had comparable caffeine content per ounce to a strong cup of coffee. But who sits down and drinks a 32 oz cup of black coffee with their lunch in 15 mins?! That’s Starbucks’ largest size, for the record. Most of the time, people order glorified milkshakes there, so it’s only half coffee, and half the caffeine. And people usually nurse their coffee milkshakes for an hour or so, too…
As someone who used to work at Starbucks it’s wild to me how so many people don’t find out that the Refreshers are also caffeinated with green coffee extract. While in the end it is up to the individual to order, these companies clearly fail at communicating all of the details of these beverages.
Green coffee seems to have a worse effect on my anxiety than just regular roasted beans. It's intense in a really bad way. Agreed that the companies and their marketing are to blame.
Yyyyup, I thought it was just a fun fruit juice drink. Had no idea it was caffeinated until reading this comments section. I thought they were called "refreshers" because they're cold fruit drinks! Like a refreshing glass of juice, not CAFFEINE!
@@jarvis5552its safe to assume most drinks at a coffee shop will have caffeine. I was more shocked to find out my vanilla bean creme didnt have espresso 😂
Here's a thought, the taste of caffeine is quite bitter. The crazy amount of sugar covers up that bitterness. This implies that they knew the amount of caffeine was notably high and actively tried to make the flavors when consumers had the product.
Caffeine is super bitter, but 10 mg/oz is... not especially. They're probably trying to cover up other 'energy drink' flavors from additives that attempt to smooth out the caffeine energy spike or handle side effects. Source: I mix my own energy drinks with caffeine powder, and am very sensitive to bitter flavors.
I avoid this drink like the plague because of my heart condition. That being said, I only knew it had caffeine because I first tried to order it online for pickup. If I had just walked into a store I would have had no clue based on their signage. Scary to think what could have happened.
Out of curiousity, what did you think "charged" meant in "charged lemonade"? because when I first heard about it I assumed it was either super sour or caffinated like an energy drink. Is the word "charged" not actually on the menu?
It actually was always labelled on the sign on the machine, but it was in smaller writing, you had to actively read the sign, it did not jump out at you. But if you are sensitive to caffeine, of course you want to always read the signs, ALL of it. I'm NOT defending Panera, since this high caffeine contents must be labelled with a warning, this is not normal and nobody knew that these were actually energy drinks, which they are with these insane high caffeine levels.
@@aromaladyellieif you asked me out of nowhere about it I would say it is meaningless marketing gimmick with no significant impact on indigrients. Gimmick like "lemonade ultra pro max" If I had to assume anything I would assume charged means sugar, extra sweet or whatever.
@@aromaladyellie For a juice I would've just assumed a "charged" meant "charged with electrolytes" or "charged with vitamins", haha . "Charged' just seems like a vague marketing term that could apply to anything, I definitely wouldn't automatically assume it means caffeine or sugar, particularly given the context.
I also have a history of heart disease leading me to be cautious of my caffeine. I once accidentally had a Starbucks refresher thinking it was a completely normal fruit drink. It resulted in heart palpitations. A refresher has a TENTH of the caffeine of this lemonade. If I’d had this it probably would’ve killed me too.
@@Spongebob-lf5dn It terrified me when it happened because there was no indication I’d just had a caffeinated drink. It was only later at the emergency room that we figured out what happened
@silversleeper1193 yea I was drinking them everyday without a clue. Sometimes closer to bed time. I started having anxiety because I would drink them and something else with caffeine because I didn't know they also had caffeine. I'm better now. Which is why I made sure to look at caffeine content before even trying the charged lemonades.
I'm super sensitive to caffeine and always have to ask at Starbucks if a new drink has caffeine because it's never obvious. I do the same thing everywhere else too though because of my experience with Starbucks.
I feel like this is one of those lawsuits that is going to go down as frivolous or ridiculous but was actually very substantial and impactful, but common media didn't spin it that way.
Because it is frivolous. It's unfortunate what happened, but the parents of the one girl were like "she doesn't drink caffeinated drinks because of her health issues". Unfortunately, she did drink them. If people could just learn English properly in schools then maybe she would be here. Charged was right on it. So was caffeinated and the amount. This was all well before these suits. Now if the individual restaurant did not put those on there like they should have, then I get it, otherwise, this is all on those who drank the drinks.
@@meversace1: Charged has no precedent for if it has caffeine and how much. Other companies like Mountain Dew have used similar language like voltage without caffeine. 2: Not only is the sign that says it’s caffeine small, but it’s not designed to warn you of its dangers. They put it next to the non caffeinated/ low caffeine drinks. Not using bright colors or large letters. And advertised as lemonade while not telling its staff that it’s a danger. 3: People warned Panera 10 months before the first death. Matpat made a goddamn video telling them customers would die from it. This is Panera fault for not seeing the most red flag I’ve seen.
I remember this “lemonade” when I visited a Panera in 2022. At the time, it was VERY easy to not notice the signage, since it was next to all the other beverages, had a visual aesthetic that promoted the idea of it being a “natural” drink, and did not have any prominent warning signs whatsoever. I think it was serious false advertising.
Yeah, I had a large one for lunch, without ice, and then went to fill it up as I left. Only when I was halfway through the second one did I realize I was about 600mg in. I certainly didn't sleep that nice.
As someone who takes 400mg of caffeine pills every morning to help manage ADHD this drink is like my dream. But I'm honestly shocked a drink is allowed to have that much caffeine and not come with a warning of some sort.
Same here and I've even specifically bought this drink to help manage my ADHD when I didn't want to drink my usual caffeinated options. It really should have come with a warning 'cause not everyone can handle 400mg like us.
Damn MatPat made a video about this almost a year ago... Why can't companies listen before people die because of their products? All of this was definitely avoidable. Hope the people suing get closure ❤
Why is this level if illiteracy and idiocracy put on a pedestal to begin with...? Call me crazy, but this is borderline close to "Nigerian prince offers you truckloads of gold in exchange for money." emails. Yes, this was avoidable, if people READ the labels instead of just stuffing themselves with anything that's bright and colourful. And we're not talking about toddlers that got into the cleaning supplies here. We're talking about ADULTS acting like there's no way they could've known.
@@danjal87nlthe label wasn't on the drink lmao. That's the whole point of the lawsuit. Ppl only found out Abt the caffeine because somebody went digging through the website. You don't Google the precise health facts of EVERY SINGLE food item you buy, you assume that it's safe enough that it won't send you into cardiac arrest after getting a free refill
@@danjal87nl I wouldn't say it's Nigerian prince bad since most people wouldn't know off the top of their head how much caffeine is bad for you but your overall point is one I can certainly agree with. On a tangential note, I just realized that caffeine is yet another word that doesn't follow the I before E except after C saying.
I've worked at Panera for over a year now and I've started months ago calling the charged Lemonade's caffeinated lemonades I feel like that easy switch would help the company so much
I'll give you at least 1 reason, caffeine is physically addictive, and lemonade doesn't naturally have caffeine in it. Ergo by putting a whack ton of caffeine in their "lemonade" (lemonade flavored energy drink) you can get people to associate the satiation of that addiction with drinking your specific beverage. This in no small part owing to the fact that at the start of this legal issue a large "lemonade" had almost as much caffeine as a pair of 5 Hour Energy shots, meaning you probably weren't likely to find a dose to satiate you with any other source of caffeine even if you did realize that the cause was the beverage being heavily caffeinated.
Part of it I think has to deal with shifting their demographic appeal. Offering caffeine based beverages and marketing it as “Charged” comes across as a lot more trendy than just saying “caffeinated lemonade”. That and paring it with their Unlimited Sip Club entices people to keep coming back specifically for the drinks.
@@AmaraTheBarbarianWell the normal response to just wanting an addictive product would be to have an arnold palmer, half tea and half lemonade. That's a very common (and already caffeinated) product.
hello, current Panara employee here! It was shocking even to a lot of us working in my cafe to learn that there was caffeine in our own charged lemonades, and even more so to learn just how much was in them. corporate is now requiring us as well to let every single person who wants to order a charged drink know that it has a lot of Caffeine in it and to ask them if it's okay as a result of this exact case. I know that at least for me it's a part time job while I'm studying in college, but it's still a really scary thing to think- and at least for everyone else in my store too -that we could've been responsible for something like this happening to someone and we didn't even know it.
@@LeolaGlamour unfortunately i think that a lot of people don't understand what "charged" means when they order it. Sure, knowing it has caffeine and that it's called a "charged" lemonade you can imagine why it's called that. Absolutely for a lot of people you can probably infer from the name is has caffeine, but for a lot of people the name doesn't tell them anything about what's in it. For all someone knows "charged" could just mean bursting with flavor or something to that effect. But generally yes I do agree that the name should be a hint at least for some people but unfortunately not everyone.
"charged" is a vague buzzy word on purpose. it's so that people can assume it's 'charged' with electrolytes, or vitamins, or fresh fruit, or whatever. people don't realize how profitable it is to get customers hooked on caffeine. @@LeolaGlamour
Good news Legal Eagle, fellow UA-camr MatPat did a video on this very topic when the Charged Lemonade first came out on his channel Food Theory, and indeed, when it first came out there was ZERO open or easily available information about how much caffeine was in this product, nor was there any proper labeling for it.
@@kingofhearts3185but no one is properly informing them that it's got a shit ton of caffeine, because just giving them the numbers doesn't help. 1 Newton, for example, doesn't mean much to the average consumer. Ditto for 1 Joule.
@@raawesome3851 Except the caffeine content of energy drinks for example are stated on the can. And considering the victim here was someone with a health condition who was cautious about these things, she would definitely understand it.
I had un-diagnosed AFib with a stroke, and the only thing my cardiologist and I could trace it to was that I was super-overdosing on caffeine ("power" drinks, "energy" shots, colas, Mountain Dew, etc.) to stay sharp in my IT support job, which may have caused the arrhythmia . Of course, that is only anecdotal, as I went caffeine free, and the AFib was electro-shocked back to normal, and my heart was tested as physically fine. The only way to "test" it would be to OD again, and see if it comes back (which we agreed would be stupid). No caffeine for me now, thank you...
"While our investigation is ongoing, out of an abundance of caution, we have enhanced our existing caffeine disclosure..." So that's code for: We spoke to our attorneys, and they said, "what were you thinking? You need to make changes now, while we work out how much we can settle this suit for on the quiet."
1 person with a known heart condition is the only person in the lawsuit for a drink that has been sold by a national chain selling in 50 states for over 2 years. If this drink was as dangerous as people are hyping it up to be, this would be a class action with multiple people suing all over the country. Legal Eagle is notoriously far left/pro-nanny state which is why he is taking a ridiculously critical stance on this one.
@@cowmath77 When the "nanny state" wants you to label products that are similar similarly so the common person understands the similarity when said similarity leads to potential ramifications. What a horrifying concept, the leftist nanny state wants an energy drink to be called an energy drink because it has a bunch of added caffeine, instead of lemonade, something that doesn't naturally have caffeine, it was such an imposition for Panera to put up additional warnings that it took hours *gasp*. 2 people have died with the lemonade being alleged as a factor, that doesn't mean that it isn't a factor or crucially that more people haven't died with the same correlation without said correlation being legally alleged. 2,200 people die every day in the US from heart issues. If you took a group of those people and found they had drank 3 cans of monster energy most days that on its face sounds correlative, you might say "well what did they expect? we know those things are bad for your heart", but if you found another group that had a large lemonade with lunch "so what? lemonade doesn't have caffeine"; except this lemonade does have a substantial amount of caffeine. I know that conservatives are opposed to change, things change all the time, grow up, but when the solution is literally as simple as telling people your large lemonade has about the same amount of caffeine as 3 monsters then I fail to understand your opposition. You can still drink the lemonade flavored energy drink, and if you were warned about the potential consequences nobody will care.
@@cowmath77 Not many people knew about the high caffeine amounts in these drinks to realize it could be an underlying cause. Case in point? Even the victim didn't. With raised awareness and people starting to check back on their 2 year medical histories, it's reasonable we'll see more cases come up. Let's wait and see.
I have long QT syndrome and I cannot stress enough how many companies do not list caffeine in drinks which is super worrying, this is life threatening to people who have heart problems and companies do not care one bit
It's not just the companies responsibility, it's the customers as well. I always google the drinks while in line, I ask for extra time. I too have a heart condition, I love energy drinks, but I tend to keep a safe level. It's both the company and the customers fault. I do feel sorry that she lost her life but she was in fact.. a RESEARCH expert so what she did for a living got over looked off the clock. My tip is always take the time, even before you go to a fast food place, to look up ingredients in their food and drinks. 😅 I have to due to allergies. But I have been told my advice on this subject has actually helped people in my family. I just find it as common sense. 😅 but I do want to say, I wish her soul peace and her family peace and love.
As someone unfamiliar with Panera, I wouldn’t automatically assume that “charged” had anything to do with caffeine - extra lemony, maybe? but not that it was caffeinated.
I would have assumed that it did, but someone who isn't addicted to caffeine like I am might not. It is not clear language. Honestly, I'm surprised that all drinks containing caffeine aren't required by law to announce it loud and clear on the nutrition facts label at the very least; sometimes the information is extremely well hidden on the container. It really is essential nutritional information
@@accountingethan yeah, all labels do actually state the caffeine content of the drink, but its in really small print and hard to notice. it should be required to print the caffeine content directly on the nutrition label, right above or below the sugar section imo, along with the percentage based on average safe dosage (which is 400mg for the average healthy adult)
I guess I would have just asked myself the question, what is "charged" about it, and done one minute of research. Of course I do realize we live in a society without personal responsibility and that it's up to companies to hold your hand through everything so you don't hurt yourself.
I remember MatPat’s video about the Charged lemonade, he concluded that you could die, but you would have to have some kind of medical condition such as diabetes, or Long QT, or drink a TON of the stuff.
I don't think it would take _that_ many lemonades to kill a healthy person. They wouldn't die of caffeine toxicity _(that would take 20+ of these)_ but imagine feeling energized after having 2 or 3 lemonades and deciding to go for a nice, hard run to burn off the energy.
@@jgray2718 Ok, running is good for you? Caffeine has never effected me at all. I've been drinking coffee since I was 8 months old, and I'm fine. Although it may have stunted my growth. I might never be 6' 8" like the doctor said I should have been. I'll be stuck at 6' 1" forever. The horror.
@@OR56 Hello fellow 6'1" person! Anyway, I was referring to the possibility that you might have a heart attack if you tried vigorous exercise with a truckload of caffeine in your system. And caffeine affects different people differently, so while you might be fine, someone else might have a bad reaction or even a weak heart without realizing it, especially if they didn't know how much caffeine they had just consumed.
It's absolutely insane this was even called a lemonade in the first place. Even calling it an energy drink sells it short. They should create a new category like "ultra caffeinated energy drink" or something. That would avoid any confusion.
@@stanc1858 it said caffeine on the menu, on the website, in the commercials, and on the drink dispensers..... it even listed the caffeine amounts on those dispensers
I stopped a kid from drinking this once. She was about 8 and with her grandparents. They didn’t realize it had 300+mg caffeine. I only knew because I had also missed the caffeine content and was shocked when I noticed.
Pure caffeine is very bitter. That's why you're not tasting the sweetness from the sugar, the sugar and caffeine are balancing each other out. That's also probably why people are being surprised by the caffeine. We kind of expect stuff with a lot of caffeine to be a little bitter.
Yes, I notice a difference when I have caffeinated and decaffeinated Chai tea. I have to put more sugar in the caffeinated tea which is one reason why I buy decaffeinated teabags.
Part of the reason it doesn’t taste overly sweet is because Caffeine itself has a bitter taste. This is why decaf coffee needs less sugar to taste sweet. Part of the reason you don’t taste the caffeine is the excessive levels of sugar. Resulting in a drink high in both but tasting like very little of either.
I go to the Panera in my university's student center about twice a week at least and there were no extra warnings for children, pregnant women, or caffeine-sensitive individuals until about a month and a half ago. Thank goodness I already had sworn off caffeine like a year ago bc it makes me feel quite anxious, but I was absolutely shocked when I learned how much caffeine was actually in this drink earlier this year
its literally called "charged" lemonade. I don't really know how one reads that and doesnt assume a highly caffeinated beverage... Also, the warnings were definitely there, nobody bothered to read them. The problem with warning labels is the people they are meant for dont read warning labels...
@@rabidkangar00 It's literally called "LEMONADE." I don't know how one reads it and is supposed to immediately suspect a death scare...... Also, your "charged" means jack shit if noone understands it, and it seems like most of the people, NATIVE SPEAKERS, don't. The warning labels were definitely there, the problem is, the company didn't give an f about making them visible or even legible. But you do you, boo. Keep laughing about people dying because of company negligence, but don't bitch and screech when something similar happens in your family, because it will surely be due to that person being too lazy to read the label, lol.
@@rabidkangar00 1. Charged is a vague term, there is no definition what it means with drinks. It can mean they are alcoholic, extra sugar, caffeine, more electrolytes, etc. 2. The problem with people not reading warning labels is that they are invisible until you look for them, it's ridiculous when warning label can be mistaken with ingridient list. 3. It's false advertising by making consumers mistaken, simply because they didn't label it correctly.
@@rabidkangar00 "charged" is not synonymous with caffeine. Charged could just mean the drink has a more intense. Additionally, the AMOUNT of caffeine in those drinks is terrifying.
@@rabidkangar00 I personally think caffeine when I see charged, but I wouldn't assume everyone would think that all the time. For example, one time I ordered a "Flamethrower Grillburger" from Dairy Queen, and I was surprised that it was spicy, because my brain interpreted the "flamethrower" part to mean it was flame-grilled. Luckily I like spicy things and probably would have gotten it anyway if I had understood what it meant.
Sort of reminds me of my time making cocktails in a nightclub. The best cocktails don't taste like they're loaded with alcohol, but they'll still pack the same punch. The history of cocktails was precisely because during Prohibition, the alcohol was low grade and tasted awful. Bad gin mixed with OJ suddenly didn't taste so bad.
I got an aversion to coffee when I was pregnant, and I stayed away from all forms of caffeine almost my entire pregnancy. I went to Panera with my family one afternoon and ordered one without thinking about it (I loved them before I got pregnant). A few sips in, and I was practically trembling and felt absolutely horrible. I immediately looked up how much caffeine was in it, and at the time, I couldn’t find definitive information. Since then, I’ve stayed away from all “plant based” charged drinks, especially if they don’t list the amount of caffeine anywhere. I hope this situation makes everyone think twice about drinking these things
I hate that they market them as "plant-based". I mean, it's true, but that's because we derive _all_ caffeine from plants like coffee beans and kola nuts. They just say "plant based" to make it sound mild or gentle, then put 7 espressos worth of caffeine in it.
@@jgray2718yeah, ‘plant based’ don’t mean shit but marketers know it’s associated with health, wellness, purity, etc. and take advantage of the contradiction in consumers expectations versus reality all while remaining within the bounds of technically not explicitly lying
I totally agree. What they mean by “plant based” is simply misleading false advertisement meaning “so natural it cannot harm you so we didn’t find it necessary to give you the exact amount of caffeine it contains” or “we cannot know the amount of caffeine because it is “plant based” message which is even more horrible.
Reminds me of a case in the uk where a girl died after eating a sandwich at a chain called Pret. She had a severe nut allergy but Pret didn’t label the sandwich as being made in a kitchen that also handled nuts Edit. Just fact checked myself, it was worse, the sandwich had it as an ingredient but didn’t have it on the label
I remember that case! They got a lot of shit for not labelling "contains nuts" I never did understand why with such a high allergy rate that disclosure was so overlooked by so many people through the chain of advertisment. Crazy.
Damn, there are prets all over major cities in the Northeast US. Thanks for sharing, I'll avoid on an ethical basis (although I'm generally avoiding it already since it's way overpriced).
I get my groceries delivered. We mark certain items as Do Not Substitute due to allergies. I'm extremely allergic to nuts. We ordered Baskin-Robbins mint chocolate chip ice cream at the grocery. The picture for mint and pistachio ice cream are very similar. Chances are quite high that the person packing our groceries doesn't know English. They probably relied upon the picture. Later I got the ice cream out based upon the picture on the label. We didn't order pistachio, so we never expected it might be pistachio. Luckily I realized the texture was off and spat it out. The crunch wasn't chocolate, but nuts. Fortunately, all I needed was Benedryl. Unfortunately, this scare caused anxiety attacks. These can land me in the hospital. After I calmed down I went onto the Baskin-Robbins website to tell them how the similar looking pictures caused a severe problem. I had simple suggestions that might prevent this. (Change the lid color of nut flavors, prominent label warning, and adding infomation in Spanish) There was no way to give this feedback. (I only use Instagram and a Twitter alternative. Neither were any help.) I'm not upset with the grocery store, the person who packed them, or the person who put the groceries away. It's Baskin-Robbins that I'm furious with for not having a way to voice concerns. The ideas I offered, to me, are very simple changes.
@@checker4714 the pret case changed the law in the UK, we didn't require ingredients to be listed on food made on premises but since the death of the girl with the sesame allergy that is now law
This reminds me of a patient I had (work in ems) that had a "nut free cookie with macadamia nuts in it" at an event. Thankfully we were on site for medical standby with Epi and benadryl on hand.
I noticed that too! I thought it was a fun touch. Not only was he laying out the core arguments and theories about the case, but also demonstrating how expert witnesses would be questioned.
2:55 - Chapter 1 - Katz V Panera bread 8:00 - Chapter 2 - Product liability 12:10 - Chapter 3 - Panera's response 13:10 - Chapter 4 - Does the rarity of sarah's condition matter 14:45 - Chapter 5 - Doctor's Mike Segment 14:50 - Chapter 5.1 - What is long QT syndrome 16:00 - Chapter 5.2 - How does caffeine affect someone with long QT syndrome 16:50 - Chapter 5.3 - Is it possible for the panera drink to be lethal for someone with long QT syndrome 17:55 - Chapter 5.4 - Caffeine Overdose ? 19:05 - End of the segment 19:20 - Conclusion
I had an issue with this Panera lemonade even before it became viral. I remember I went to Panera one day and saw the new charged lemonades right next to the other lemonades in the self-serve spot. I always get a large drink, and I typically go to those lemonades because they’re marketed as being healthier etc. I didn’t even realize that “charged” meant highly caffeinated because usually when I think of Panera I think of “healthy bakery food,” so I figured “charged” had to do with health related stuff, maybe electrolytes, etc. I didn’t think much into it. Anyway I ended up getting (I kid you not) like 3 refills. 2 refills in store and one to go, as I always do when dealing with self serve stuff. Problem is I’m VERY caffeine sensitive; everyone in my life knows this. I limit my soda intake, especially at night, and I pretty much never drink coffee. Sometimes I drink tea but I like decaf and tea generally doesn’t have too much caffeine. Anyway I only sip tea at that because I don’t generally like hot drinks so I might have one thing of tea and it’ll take me like 2 hours to drink. Point is I started driving and on my way home I literally had to pull over because I had such bad anxiety. I was crying, hyperventilating, and calling my siblings and spouse because I thought I was having a heart attack and I didn’t understand why. I was super jittery and I almost rear ended somebody and I literally had to pull over and do breathing exercises. By the time I parked near my house I was so scared. I even considered going to the emergency room but my friend had to calm me down over the phone to remind me to breathe. It was so bad. Everyone thought I was being “dramatic” because the charged lemonades were super new, but then a bunch of stuff started coming out about them and I was like YOU SEE?!?!? And now everyone believes me, especially considering how much I drank. It’s super irresponsible for them to even think to put it in the self serve isle without properly educating people on how much caffeine is in there. Also, HELLO, PEOPLE HAVE KIDS. Imagine a kid drinking two whole cups of that stuff??? I’m still thinking I should sue because I was really terrified that day and I genuinely thought I was having a heart attack and I literally had to like figure my stuff out because I was panicking like crazy.
MatPat over at Food Theory actually did a video about Panera's charged lemonade and called it out for the very issues brought up in the lawsuit. Marketed as regular lemonade while downplaying the levels of caffeine present in the drink, and how much it had in comparison to other energy drinks on the market.
I watched that video a while ago, but I remember he also watched the website, and since it was some months ago, maybe it shows if the caffeine being mention in the site was before all of this happened
its even specifically called a "charger" and has a sign with caffiene content on it, not to say i didn't expect them to get sued over it, i worked there when they came out and regularly saw adults just hand their kids their cups to fill up on their own and filled a full 20oz glass of this stuff for someone who was probably less than 10 year old glad to see they moved it behind the counter at least. @@davidsotomayor8713
@@davidsotomayor8713If you were right and that was a universal thing, then I'd agree. But there's a lot of photo and video evidence that they only relatively recently began advertising these drinks were even caffeinated, let alone how much caffeine they contain. Which is stated in this very video if you actually pay attention. And while some specific locations may have been better at advertising how much caffeine is in their charged lemonade, that is not universally true. Furthermore, advertising that it is caffeinated may not be enough defense when it's been shown that the amount of caffeine it contains (which their website falsely claims is "the same as in their dark roast") is approximately the safe limit for caffeine consumption. Even if they advertised just how much caffeine there was in the product, they are clearly doing nothing to help protect customers. They still have a responsibility to at least try to prevent customers from surpassing that limit, just like how a bartender can be found legally responsible for letting someone drink alcohol beyond a certain limit, thus risking death by alcohol poisoning. I believe bartenders are even legally responsible to provide at least some measurements to prevent drunk driving, or at least they are in some places, which is why they can take your keys and another reason why they can cut you off, as well as part of why they will sometimes call taxis or Ubers for customers that drank too much. So similarly, it would make sense for Panera to still have legal responsibility to help ensure customers do not surpass the safe dosage of caffeine, especially when one large Charged Lemonade is pretty well at that limit. Instead, not only do they barely advertise there is any caffeine, they insist it's the same amount as their dark roast coffees, have no warnings about the risks of drinking too much caffeine, and seem to not only make it too easy for someone to make the mistake by placing the drink machines next to all of their normal drinks, but even encourage it by allowing (at least for some customers) free refills. All of that shows gross negligence, especially when they don't even try preventing children from consuming any. If it was obvious not only how much caffeine there was in one of their charged lemonades, but also how dangerous that much caffeine could be, there would not be so many videos of people being shocked by how much caffeine is there. Don't make this like the McDonald's hot coffee incident.
Caffeine is a migraine trigger for me and when I started a new job in the same building as a Panera, I started getting the mint lemonade when I arrived in the morning. After a while, the migraines kicked in and I eventually learned how overloaded these are with caffeine; had I known, I never would have tried it. I'm a reasonably alert and intelligent person, so this video really resonates with me. I'm just glad that my outcome is substantially less severe.
Migraines are such a weird beast. Caffeine is the opposite for me, I drink a metric shitload of caffeine to keep a migraine at bay. The breakthrough I take has some absurd amount of caffeine in it, can't sleep for almost a day after taking one.
Both are true for migraines. Migraine docs recommend 0 caffeine as that keeps your brain more stable (migraine brain is sensitive). But OTC Excedrin as well as other medications like Fioricet have significant caffeine content (yet still less than a charged lemonade!). Excedrin, Fioricet, and also painkillers frequently cause "rebound headaches" which can be worse than the original. Migraine docs will recommend less than 4 a week or 4 a month for stronger medications. I imagine OP may have gotten rebounds with charged lemonades daily. The current best medications on the market are CGRPs, which have neither caffeine nor ibuprofen etc. They're the safest drugs too, better than triptans. But because they have only been made the past 2-3 years (a bit longer for the injection form vs the pill form), they are wildly expensive specialty medications. Most insurance will pay for it, but they may have certain stipulations or requirements (a specific brand, failure of lower cost medications, or severity/frequency of migraines). If you can get CGRPs, they are by far the best option. Best wishes for your health migraineurs and others with medical conditions!
Interesting. I prefer being on caffeine as well with my migraines, and especially when I get one caffeine in combination with medication can help a lot. But migraines are wild in how different they are anyway, it’s always insane talking to others and seeing how different yet similar the struggles are!
Sarah was not someone I knew even superficially but its always noticeable in the school. Im sure many people miss her and mourn her over. Rest in peace.
My wife has ADHD and idk if this is common knowledge, but caffeine tends to have the opposite effect on those with ADHD. It pretty much overloads your system and, in the case of my wife, makes you extremely sleepy and crash for a few hours. I would assume it would have this effect on others with the same condition if they had large quantities of it, but she doesn't drink caffeine beverages at all because of how badly it effects her. We went to Panera for lunch one time and she got a charged lemonade because she doesn't like soda but loves lemonade. She had a normal sized cup filled with quite a bit of ice and after a few sips, we had to leave early because she was starting to nod off at the table. A Mega can of Monster has 240 mg of caffeine. The first tiktoker at the beginning of the video said the REGULAR charged lemonade had 260. They either need to make it extremely clear that this is an energy drink with an absurd amount of caffeine or take it off the market. I'm worried that this will become another McDonald's coffee incident where their PR team makes the victim out to be stupid for something out of their control or knowledge.
Can confirm the backwards effect on some people with ADHD, but for other people it doesn't seem to have any effect at all, another fun fact. Do make sure that she isn't taking it to help her fall asleep though, just because it makes us tired doesn't stop it from having the same negative effects on our sleep!
not technically overload or backwards - but the ADHD brain is starved of stimulation. a regular brain has a baseline of stimulation that it needs for rest and sleep or for doing tasks, and that stimulation is delivered via your circadian rhythm and your positive feedback centers giving out serotonin and dopamine at appropriate times. ADHD brain is chronically under-stimulated, meaning it doesn't give out the correct sleep hormones or deliver the right amount of serotonin and dopamine at the right times. stimulants like caffeine or adhd meds deliver that stimulation, and when you spend so long under-stimulated, getting juuuust the right amount can K O you because your brain FINALLY reaches equilibrium at the correct level of stimulation for sleep and rest. i use it sometimes when being under-stimulated has kept me awake for too long [sometimes days], drink 1-2 cups of coffee on the front porch and go to sleep lol
400mg of caffeine is the full daily allowance. One of my *ER night shift* coworkers got concerned about the fact that my powdered energy drink mix has 200mg. Looking at the volumes, their lemonade has the same caffeine per volume as my energy drink when mixed at full strength, which is slightly stronger than most energy drinks.
Like.... I will accept 2g of caffeine as a daily allowance, but 400 mg is just... ridiculously small. Like, even now, when I don't drink much in the way of caffeine, that is like, 2/3s of my daily total.
@@rambysophistry1220do you drink like 3 Monsters a day? Chug 2-liters of soda? Consume a half gallon of black coffee? Because I doubt you're consuming that much caffeine (unless you've been a Panera patron, having two of their lemonades)
I had 3 cans of monster in one day once or twice but 1) I knew how much caffeine they have because it's mandated there to have that information on the can (32mg/100ml) 2) It takes way more time to drink 3 of them, the fact you have to open another means you will probably do it later
When they came out, I thought they were competing with Starbuck’s refreshers, which have 45-80 mg of caffeine depending on size (around half for the same amount of normal coffee). It’s insane how much caffeine they have.
If I saw charged lemonade I would guess it had the same amount of caffeine as say Mountain Dew. Not more then 2 Monster's and an energy drink called Cocaine.
This is such a sad case. I read a news article where commenters were blaming the decedent for drinking the drink knowing it had caffeine in it, but Panera is wrong in my eyes for not disclosing the high amounts of caffeine in these drinks. They marketed it in the same deceiving way that Starbucks marketed their refreshers & now both are being sued.
that's so ridiculous, right? as if her friends weren't there with her and also totally aware of her health condition. if they had known it was dangerous, same as her, they would have stopped her. there was very little standing in the way of danger to her in this case
The caffeine content is listed on the sign that's placed on the bubbler. If you have a condition like that it's up to you to make sure that what your ingesting is safe. But there's no personal responsibility with people like you, right?
Both things are correct imo. Panera should have made it clear it was that heavily caffeinated, and someone with a heart condition buying caffeinated drinks should find out how much is in it before drinking it.
@@scottcameron8329 Was that sign there in that Panera when she drank that lemonade? Is the text on those easily visible to not just those with healthy vision, but to also those who are vision impaired? Would someone blind be easily able to find out that a single drink contains twice the caffeine as a Monster energy, let alone that they have caffeine at all?
Oh, man. I remember the Refreshers. I worked with somebody who knew I couldn't have caffeine for medical reasons, and he got me one while insisting it was "just juice." Cue me feeling like I was going to die for the remainder of my shift. X_X I'm, like, legitimately afraid to get any juice-related drink anywhere after that, lol. The charged lemonade is just making me double down on that.
2:50 Fun fact! Energy drinks only taste like they do because we associate the effect of them with the taste. It's absolutely possible to make them taste different, we just associate the taste with the effect so why bother dissuade it?
From what I heard, the drop in caffeine is only because they are accounting for ice. I saw employees from Panera say that it’s the same mix that they’ve been using.
If this is true, I hope the plaintiffs' lawyers bring this up in court. Not disclosing caffeine levels is bad, but actively deceiving customers by giving false information might open the door to punitive damages.
I’ve gotten caffeine intoxication once from a coffee place called Aroma Joe’s. I thought I was dying and called my doctor and he somehow immediately knew what was wrong with me and gave me advice to drink plenty of water and ride it out. At least I felt slightly better knowing I wasn’t experiencing a knock on death’s door. Man it was awful. Side note: He has since retired and God I miss him. 😢
Caffeine as a chemical is absurdly bitter, which is probably why there's so much sugar and you don't taste it. because that much caffeine would be so bitter it would need that much sugar just to cover it up
This explains a lot. I've been going to Panera more often lately and wondered why there was such explicit signage regarding the charged lemonade. I had no idea this had happened. This just comes across as a stupid product to offer in the environment of basically a fast food restaurant.
I don't drink energy drinks often, but I have noticed they usually come with a caffeine content warning and it seems that that's all Panera needed to provide and didn't. I don't understand why Panera didn't settle this outside of court. Seems like a slam dunk for the plaintiff, but still very sad.
@@thenerktwinsYeah because I always go to the McDonald's website before I buy a burger. The website is not enough of a disclaimer. Cigarette warnings are on the package. Nutrition facts are on the package. Imagine if sunny d launched a new pineapple flavor and only on the website did it mention the 400mg of caffeine per serving. That's what we have here.
A few years ago, I was visiting my sister and she brought me to lunch at Panera. I had one of these, being a big fan of lemonade and not realizing there was caffeine in it. Cue the worst panic attack of my life; the only other time in my life that my chest had ever hurt that much I was suffering from pneumonia and pleurisy at the same time. That crap needs a warning label and a disclaimer to sign...
@@raerohan4241 I’m saying that the individual above could not have tasted the Charged Lemonade “a few years ago” as it has only been available from the first half of 2022 until now. It hasn’t even been available for 2 whole years yet.
I usually go by wording. Charged. Phones gets charged. Batteries get charged. Chargers are indicated by lightning bolts. So the word charged to me usually indicates in my mind that that item is going to pack a punch. Like I'm drained and need to be charged up.
MatPat from The Food Theorist did a video on the dangers of this drink about a year ago (give or take), and he predicted that there was as severe risk against people's health because of the poor marketing and signage. I HIGHLY recommend watching the video for more context.
That's the first video I saw about this drink in fact. I knew about the caffeine levels due to that, but apparently I overlooked the sugar content. I'm amazed this drink even has any flavor with all of that. People say stuff like Pepsi and Coke is unhealthy, but those are NOTHING compared to how unhealthy this lemonade seems.
@@undefinederror40404 In addition to The Game Theorist, The Food Theorist and Film Theorist channels are both great! Personally, I'm still on the fence over Style Theorist though.
I’m extremely sensitive to caffeine for some years now, my heart skips beats, and my heart rate goes up. so every where I go, I always ask for a nutrition menu or look online. So when I started to try the sip club I saw the drinks contained some sort of green tea, or black tea and a natural caffeine by a plant based. I always went with the Agave lemonade as that is the only one that doesn’t contain any amount of caffeine. Even the new frozen lemonade at Starbucks has caffeine and is a good amount when I asked about if they had any and I’m glad the barista was honest to me . Just wish a lot of companies stop making normal drinks like lemonade with caffeine as a lot of people are watching the amount they intake or others who cannot. Just would like a treat once in a while when out n bout .
Oh Four Loko… I miss those. When we got word that they were pulling their initial ingredient cans and were replacing them with the new version, my buddies and I went out to gas stations and bought huge cases to store at our college house. We had a pallet. It was awesome.
will say as someone who works there/worked during the original enrollment period last year, on the magnets that displayed the drink name it is printed at the bottom that it contains caffeine/the amount of caffeine per drink size. but it looks like the other drink labels that one could confuse 300 mgs of caffeine as the calories per beverage. i always tried to tell parents who’s children were asking for “pink lemonade!” that like “hey heads up this drink has x amount of caffeine, just wanted to let you know” because i always felt uncomfortable knowing we have a drink that’s higher in caffeine content than drinks like monster/Red Bull (which have purchasing age limit in the UK/EU due to their high caffeine content.)
As a current employee that was also allowed at the time, can back it up. The labeling was limited and let's be honest most people don't look at those labels anyway unless they are attention grabbing. And to go off something else you said, we will explicitly told at my store to make sure to warn parents If we even suspected they were buying the drink for their kids.
@@strawberryoolong people like you on the ground are the only ones keeping this from having been much worse for a lot of people. You don't get enough credit
Even with the clear labeling, ss someone who doesn't know much about caffeine, even knowing the mg wouldn't really mean anything to me - but if it were paired with info like daily recommended limit, or comparisons with other known energy drinks, that would've definitely given me pause
Im so sorry to hear, hope youre doing ok now. This is mega scary. I hope the FDA investigate properly and the lawsuit gets some justice for the girl and some change in the industry. Im in the UK so havent seen this drink. It does worry me alot that this drink exists. I dont understand why a lemonade needs more caffiene than a coffee. The same amount or similiar, ok I guess but not that excessive amounts. I hope no one else suffers as a result of the drink
One would think an easy way for Panera to avoid alot of these issues would be to get stickers printed with nutritional facts that can be slapped on cups. They do make those, I've seen them on cups of fruit at grocery stores. Its not hard.
This is so crazy, I had one of those drinks a couple months ago and I remember that it said it was caffeinated but it didn’t say how much caffeine was in it. I’m glad I know now. It is so horrible that a beautiful soul is no longer with us, my prayers go out to her family.
I have consumed multiple energy drinks a day for well over a decade. If Panera advertised this properly they would have made so much money. Caffeine abuse is huge in a ton of subcultures: Gamers, Gym Bros, College Kids, people coming off other addictions. But none of us want to go to the place where moms get soup, so we didn't hear about you're crazy drink. Panera has the dumbest marketing department in history.
This is actually an excellent point. I've never been to panera in my life but if I found out they had lemonade that had that much caffeine in it I'd have been a daily customer.
This is so scary, I’m very sensitive to caffeine, and Ive trusted Panera’s fruity drink section as a delicious, low sugar, non caffeinated drink option. I never saw its campaign, and if I had opted to try their new charged lemonade it could have put me in the hospital.
Re: low sugar, remember that fruit juices are high in sugar. As in, normal store bought juice may well contain as much sugar as cola. I know a lemonade is likely to be diluted with water, but also likely (as is clearly the case here) to have more sugar added.
I am also very sensitive to caffeine and I'm not sure why I never tried it. Heck maybe I did and had unexplained symptoms that day. That's another scary think. You could go to the hospital and not even know why. I guarantee there is at least one person that has. People deserve very clear warnings for this level of drug.
@@grahamgrilliyes, doctor mike and devon of legal are both experts in their respective fields. i mean, they both went to school for years and have been practicing for years. why is it so funny to see someone call them experts when the fit the definition?
I went to panera a lot when I was working 45 minutes from home back in 2021-22... I saw the charged lemonade and it had a label on it with the amount of caffeine on it on the front. I remember that because I NEVER drank it because of that. I was having issues with blood pressure so I steered clear of it. This was months before she passed. It was clearly labeled at the ones I stopped at. Why would it not be at others??
I accidentally drank two cups of this stuff because it wasn't labeled correctly once, and it caused such a horrible reaction due to my chronic disorder that i was in pain for a few days. horrifying to find out exactly how much caffine was in these and why i had such an awful experience
Ignore the other guy clearly this can be harmful and Panera hasn't done enough to even protect vulnerable people from their dangerous product. I'm very sorry this happened to you
Unfortunately people will treat this like they treated the lawsuit where a woman got severe burns from McDonald's coffee, impulsively siding with the corporation over the person who was injured
@vfreeman3188 it wasn't lol it was new at my location at the time and none of their teas or lemonades had their tags out. I asked an employee about it and they told me it was strawberry mint lemonade and recommended it, never told me it was caffeinated. and with such dangerous levels of caffeine, even for people who don't have health issues associated with caffeine consumption, there should absolutely have been a warning like they have now.
As a manager at panera I always told everyone that they had caffeine and regularly stopped parents from giving their kids the drinks. It wasn’t very clear that they had caffeine but I told all my associates to tell guests about it.
@@whitediggity Because advertising something as an electrolyte lemonade drink that you can get refills on when in reality there's more caffeine in a portion than 5 cans of red bull which makes it very much not that? False advertising is not the fault of the consumer lol. Though not sure you can call it neglect from Panera rather than greed and dancing on the 'technically not illegal, probably, hopefully' line.
@@whitediggity according to other comments who work at or have been to Panera, some locations do not even mention the fact that there is caffeine in the drinks. The matpat video the original commenter brought up even mentions how info about ingredients for this product were hard to find. Advertising a drink with nearly 400 mg of caffeine as a "boost" is an understatement at best, on top of an unlimited refills campaign.. The victim was already managing her heart condition and caffeine intake, so I'd say she was trying to be as responsible as possible.
@@whitediggity The plaintiffs had very clearly described how incredibly responsible the consumer who died was. The information was just buried so hard that she couldn't reasonably have known because Panera *neglected* to put the nutrition info anywhere that any sensible person would find them.
20yr old college student here. I'm in engineering and work full time upon other tasks so caffeine is often super important to keeping up with my objectives in every aspect of life including personal goals. I know most can relate to this in some way I'm already noticing that I'm drinking too much of it and will take this as a sign that I should work harder to preserve my health in my youth or risk a decline later on in life. Caffiene and excess sugars are not as valuable as consistent sleep, a healthy diet and exercize. ❤ Drink some water, y'all. 😂
Just heard the part about four loko. Those cans had around 4-5 beers of alcohol in there? I remember vividly being at a party and people were drinking them like they were a beer and we just thought they were lightweights when they were telling us how drunk it made them. Even after I heard about the lawsuit, I never heard about this detail.
4Loko had 12% ABV (Alcohol by volume), and was/is a 24oz can. A normal US beer is 4-5% ABV, and is 12oz. So 1 can of 4Loko is somewhere around 4.5 (a 5% beer) to 6 cans of beer worth of alcohol. This was combined with tons of caffeine and sugar. Comparable tall boy high alcohol beverages at the time were at most around 8%. So yes, 4Loko is/was crazy amounts of alcohol for its size. Note that Wine often has 10-12% abv, but the average serving of wine is about 6oz, which works out close enough to a beer for alcohol
I looked it up. The advice in the Netherlands is not to drink more than 200 mg of caffeine in one go/ drink. The maximum legal amount of caffeine in an energy drink/ soda is 350 mg per liter (350mg per 35 oz) So this would be illegal here.
I've seen 300-400 mg in a 473 ml drink here in the states. I believe the most popular energy drink here is around 136 mg per 473 ml. Most have around 200 mg.
I have a friend who would get violently sick if she drank one of these things. Seriously, what in the actual hell is Panera thinking? This is an insane amount of caffeine not to warn people about. This was an accident waiting to happen and unfortunately a young woman lost her life because of it.
Especially since they absolutely knew to have this: there was a rather large lawsuit regarding caffeine and taurine in the energy drinks mentioned in this. There is NO way this company doesn't know how dangerous this is even to people without contraindications to ingesting caffeine.
Dunkin Donuts won't let you add more than one Turbo Shot to a coffee drink, just for some reference of how some other brands take this stuff seriously. Starbucks not so serious, they've let me add at least five espresso shots on top of the 3 in the drink already, I haven't tried going higher than that, my friend was wired af, he said he could handle it lol. But we're both used to caffeine since a young age, not like someone sensitive to it not knowing what they're about to drink. But when I try to add Turbo Shots at Dunkin, it prevents me from adding more than one on the app, they don't want to even entertain that liability. I haven't tried in person because I assume they'll say the same, that it's limited to one shot per drink, so I didn't bother asking. Also for reference, I believe a Starbucks espresso shot is around 75mg and a Dunkin Turbo Shot is like 120mg of caffeine, so adding it to Dunkin drinks can bring them up to 200-300mg, but also that's a coffee you're choosing to add a Turbo Shot of espresso to and that's usually the large which is huge for a coffee shop size, nothing is being snuck in there, but they're still wary about just letting you select to add 5 Turbo Shots into your large coffee lol.
Me and my roommate were talking about how dangerous it was that they didn't label that there was caffeine in those. I drank 3 in one sitting because I had no idea they were caffinated at all. Let alone to that degree. I'm glad they are warning people now. It's too bad that someone had to die for it, though.
@@scottcameron8329 And? It was sold as a lemonade. Why would anyone read how much caffeine it has on a LEMONADE. If it was correctly labeled as an energy drink then yeah, sure... and it would still be too much. 390 mg of caffeine is way too close to a dose when its starting to be harmful WITHOUT any real symptoms, so you can't even tell if you are in a group that can drink it safely.
@@scottcameron8329as many have said the signage varies by location. At my local Panera it says it contains caffeine in 10pt font and is the smallest text on the sign. Simply saying it has caffeine is not enough in this case either. The daily limit for an adult male is 400mg of caffeine while this drink contains 390mg. No other company has a drink on the market that contains anywhere near that amount of caffeine. Why does Panera even need to sell a lemonade with that much caffeine?
As someone with a serious heart condition I’m glad I asked what was in their charged lemonade before ordering it in the drive thru! Although they told me it had about the same amount of Caffeine as a coffee. Which was clearly incorrect. Scary
Just a note for anyone with a heart condition. By volume, that lemonade did have the same caffeine as Panara's coffee (it's just a large coffee is 22oz... but the small lemonade is 22oz, while a large lemonade is 30oz, the size difference is where the 'extra' caffeine comes from), so don't be drinking their large coffee either if you're worried about the caffeine intake.
@@Jobastion That's pretty deceptive on their part if true. They only say "the same amount of caffeine as a coffee", which implies equivalent concentration in both ordinary language and technical communication. A reasonable person would not take that to mean "the same amount of caffeine as OUR coffee, comparing across different drink sizes", because most people know intuitively that coffee can come in many different drink sizes and that drinking a different volume of coffee will give you different amounts of caffeine, and mentally it's simpler to compare across equivalent volumes unless given a specific reason otherwise. When the claim is free-floating and doesn't refer to a specific product, there's no reason to assume that they mean it in that way.
I remember seeing these and they were just out in the open for anyone to get. I saw they were caffienated but don't recall seeing "same as a cup of coffee". I'm sensitive to caffiene due to medical issues and will often drink lemonade at restaurants to avoid it, so 💀💀💀 This is so bad
"Same as a cup of coffee" is also not just misleading, but outright false! The average dark roast has 60 milligrams of caffeine! Panera updated their statement after this poor woman's death to try to pretend they've had a warning there all along, but they still keep the original lie to downplay the risk! Energy drinks need a warning on them legally for less than half that amount, what makes Panera so different?
⚖ What should we cover next? 🥗 Get delicious, healthy meals from Factor! legaleagle.link/factor 🦅 Get a great lawyer with EagleTeam legaleagle.link/eagleteam
Caffeine is an alkaline, I've never tested caffeine powder because 1g is enough to kill you but it's chemistry implies it would have a chalky bitter taste. The same applies to gauraine & taurine (sorry I know that's spelled wrong) This is why energy drinks are loaded up with sugars and/or artificial sweeteners.
Also fun fact about caffeine it evolved as plant defense, it's a toxin and is generally fatal to non-primate mammals.
Talk about the judge in road Island throwing out another indictment on January 6 do to lack evidence. . So little coverage on court cases after trump win I wonder 🤔 how court cases o the 2020 election he won
Jerry rig phone case, case
More lawsuits in popular media. There have to be some you haven't done.
I can confirm you used to be able to pour it yourself, and signage did not make it obvious it had so much caffeine. I was using the unlimited pours app. I have an unusual medical history that used to make it where I could/needed to drink enough red bull, coffee, and soda to kill a normal person, and I couldn't handle 2 charged lemonades before I thought I might need to go to the hospital. I have doctors that can confirm my medical claims/drinking history.
I hate that they're marketing it as "plant-based caffeine", as if coffee beans and cola nuts don't come from plants.
Literally 😂 green washing at it’s absolute worst
Exactly 🤦😅
It's like saying "vegan spinach".
@@bulletflight 😂 oh that’s good
You never know, they could've been extracting the caffeine straight from my veins!
I used to work by a Panera and we would frequently have customers come in that still were finishing their drinks. We all knew about the crazy levels of caffeine in the drink, but customers often wouldn’t. One day an old lady walked in with a large charged lemonade. After talking to her about what she came in for I brought up the drink. She brought up that it was a new lemonade and i warned her that the drink she had contained almost twice the caffeine of a monster energy and she threw it away and thanked me profusely. She didn't even realize there was caffeine and she suffered from a heart condition.
To this day, it's still weird to think that i may have saved that woman's life because she decided to grab a lemonade at Panera.
Good on you for giving a damn about the people around you. You could have just shrugged it off, and let her suffer the results of her bad decisions, but you didn't, and that's admirable.
EDIT: Poorly phrased. It's not a bad decision when the company doesn't provide adequate information. My bad.
@@jacksongreen4107 Not sure most people would consider drinking lemonade a "bad decision" but I agree that it was good of DaliProse to warn that lady.
Thanks for caring enough to warn her.
About this video, and food safety - the sponsor's food is packed in plastic that has to be heated up, and that has been shown to be harmful to health. I wonder if in several years, the industry will be required to care about harming people this way.
You were like a bartender in that situation and recognized the clientele that needed for you to intervene
That's insane that you weren't trained to inform senior citizens that it has more caffeine than 10 cans of Coke zero.
As someone who works at panera, you can tell how oblivious our customer base was to the high level of caffeine content. Nearly every time that I explain why we moved our lemonades behind the counter i get a response like "i didnt know they were so caffeinated" or something along those lines. The other big issue is the fact that the drinks are mixed by employees, yet only a few employees are taught how to do it and it's treated like something everyone knows how to do. I have seen multiple times where someone made charged lemonade with not enough water in it, which would result in over 500 mg in caffiene per 30 ounces.
Customers should not expect high levels of caffeine in their LEMONADE. It's not due to the customers being "oblivious", it's to the manufacturer to make it obvious and stop advertising it as a soft drink when it clearly falls under other category, one which should not be available to small children. They should say clearly on the label that it contain caffeine, specially since many people suffer from heart problems and would never expect that a soft drink would contain more caffeine than a cup of coffee or an energy drink.
I have a family member that this was given to, a child, through the drive thru. The person ordering the drink was not alerted to the caffeine content, as normal folks would NEVER think of a lemonade to be caffeinated!
@@Valyoyoable I absolutely agree issued even being considered a lemonade. It's an energy drink. Lemonade is supposed to have water lemon sugar, nothing else.
And panera It's supposed to be a healthier safer choice. Put everyone into a false sense of security. Who's going to think their lemonade is dangerous.
@@wimsylogic65Starbucks has the same issue. The frozen lemonade refreshers or the regular refreshers. You have to go to the app under the nutrition info to find out. At least the charged label gives a little clue whereas refresher does not
We always warned customers about the caffeine amount tbh. They always seemed annoyed at the warning
Former Panera employee here. My manager got mad at me for warning a pregnant woman how much caffeine was in the drink (she said she couldn’t have coffee, so I figured I should warn her), and also got mad at me for warning a mother who was about to get one for her son. They also encourage employees to drink MULTIPLE a day to “stay focused”
you did the right thing
What do they put in the stuff, cigarettttttttes?
@@nado9159 wouldn’t be surprised lmao.
I would have been pissing that manager off all the time then. I like my sleep and I do not need the on my chest. No Thanks!
@@bleumoonscott2149 oh yeah. He hated me and I hated him. And I made sure I outlined issues with him when I quit with no notice lol
As someone who used to work at Panera Bread. I had to CONSTANTLY warn parents about how much caffeine is in those lemonades as most wouldn’t realize there was any. Like keeping it out of 5 year old kids hands was a daily issue
I'd believe it.
Just I am sure you had the parents who got all haughty for you daring to suggest they not feed their child a bunch of caffeine and sugar.
And that’s what the lawsuit should address. Would a reasonable person know it contained that much caffeine based on how it was marketed, clearly not.
I just want to thank you for not letting that happen. Too many people just watch as the chaos unfolds
I’m glad you tried to do what you could…
@@JJRoelant They definitely should. My brother drank 2 celsius thinking it was a soda not energy drink because he didn't even read the full front of the bottle. Is that celsius's fault even tho they advertise being an energy drink very clearly? No its him being an idiot.
My old job had a Panera across the street and they just let you free refill the charged lemonades as much as you wanted. I drank 2 giant sizes in a lunch hour and I swear I saw the face of god. Every other Panera I've gone to has excluded the charged lemonades from free refills
Wait you drank 2 Liters of lemonade in a single sitting?
What do you mean by seeing the face of God?
@@kimrose1559almost died
Yeah, I have an unhealthy obsession with caffeine. I can have 600 mg of the stuff in a span of two hours but like... I know I am going it and I know how unhealthy it is. It's just my choice to do I can also get an extra 10 hours of work done and not have it be a sloppy mess. It is a trade-off but one I willingly make, just having it happen without my knowledge is no good.
The one I worked at advertised using the free refill on it, hell the store owner advertised it to me despite me frequently saying to people including him that I have a caffeine intolerance and had to spend an entire evening on the toilet cause I tried a large
I hope this doesn’t go like the McDonald’s hot coffee lawsuit where the giant corporation spread rumors about the case to make the victim look like an idiot
They definitely will. Otherwise they would have settled out of court.
I mean, knowing you have a heart condition, electing to buy a product known as Charged, the same product that is advertised as caffinated, neglecting to check the caffeine content, and then getting not one but two larges... is much different than spilling boiling coffee on you when somebody else prepared it above guidelines and didn't secure the lid properly.
EDIT: Liebeck removed the lid herself, so it can't be said McDonald's didn't secure the lid properly. Either way, the temperature was still higher than advertised.
@@ceulgai2817 ah, but did the victim actually know how much caffeine the drink had? Did she know if it had *any* caffeine? Issues that need to be addressed in the suit.
She's not an idiot, but she definitely failed to take care of herself as she should have. I literally just looked up "what is a charged drink?" and it told me what it was, examples, and warnings. Search results in 2022 couldn't have been that much different. Also, as someone with gluten intolerance who researches everything I consume, you can't blame others for a mistake.
@thatjeff7550 Most of the ads did mention that it was caffinated, but it wasn't very clearly labeled on the store. Charged does make sense as labeling for something that contains caffeine. However, how much wasn't clear. And that is the gap that may show they are liable for her death
Another person has now died from drinking the Charged Lemonade sold by Panera. He drank three, he was developmentally disabled and had poor vision (but no heart condition!), and likely was completely unaware it contained caffeine. Insanely sad. At my Panera store they keep them behind the counter now, but it was free for anyone to fill at the drink station for years!
He did have high blood pressure, and according to his family, he tried to avoid caffeine because of this. If Panera had labeled it correctly and warned their customers about the high caffeine content of the lemonade, he might still be alive right now. It’s heartbreaking.
@maxlastname2004 it's ALWAYS been labeled correctly
@@maxlastname2004it’s been labeled since the last time I had it back in early 2020
@@Vinla_Rhoagreed, I worked there when they were introduced to the menu. They are labeled under the name of the beverage on the bubbler. It shows the caffeine content for the regular and large cups.
They had "severe" hypertension, and died from cardiac arrest likely secondary to hypertensive crisis. Healthy people CAN sometimes overdose on caffeine (most case reports involve 3-5g of caffeine taken as powder), but the cause of death is not cardiac arrest, its typically rabdomyolysis. Also in the majority of intentional caffeine overdoses, the patient survives. Whenever you see a death caused by caffeine, outside of intentional overdose, you can be certain health conditions are involved.
Considering a family member was offered this when the decaf coffee was out two weeks ago - I am pretty sure the people behind the counter are completely clueless about what is in the drink.
other peoples ignorance and shitty advertising suddenly becomes a problem of the past when you become educated yourself.
@@Calibrumm If there is a new product that I had no prior intention of buying is being offered as a replacement for a noncaffeinated beverage by someone who could be considered an expert of the company's products that is not of the consumer. Especially when you are in a pressure situation like ordering and there is a line behind you. Most people will feel pressured to make a snap decision in the moment and chose to trust the individual with arguably the most knowledge. No reasonable person would assume that if you asked for decaf, find out they are out and are offered a lemonade as a substate would think that lemonade had more caffeine in it that a monster energy drink.
Ex panera employee here- yeah they don’t tell us anything. When these came out they let us try them for free so we all had a cup. I could not sleep that night, and I’m the kind of person that can drink 300mg of caffeine and go to sleep right after. I had to look it up myself how much caffeine was in it. I made sure to warn people after that, but the company itself does not encourage anyone to make it known just how much caffeine and sugar is in them. I’ve seen so many parents order them for their children too.
@@Hoodwinklenow we just need you to comment this a million more times. Not really but it would be nice if everyone knew that employees arent told ****, which is basically true with most companies.
dunkin decaf, used to (maybe still does) have more caffeine per serving than coke
I actually learned about this when inside a Panera, where a customer complained to staff that the charged lemonades had been moved behind the counter. The staff member reasonably summarized that there was a death so the lemonades were moved "out of an abundance of caution". The customer's reaction though, was to guffaw and say "how could someone die from lemonade?"
I've seen a few comments comparing the misinformation in the McD coffee case. This might have a similar uphill battle in the court of public opinion.
Yeah, a better way to say that would be to say "the caffeine is so much that it killed someone with a heart condition, so we need to be careful"
There's a lot more information out there with the Internet these days. Most comments I see online about the McDonald's case have shown a big shift towards the plaintiff. And unlike the Monster Energy Drink lawsuit from about 8 years ago, I haven't seen anyone in the comments placing the blame on the person who died
@@kelseypapst9248there's just as much misinformation on the internet, though... And before and after the decision is found in this case, there will continue to be opinions all over the place
Can confirm, those kinda people eat at panera
I just informed someone about the reality of the lady's burns last week and she went "oh, I didn't know it was that bad." so... we got a ways to go. It's the dingo's ate my baby case where that's LITERALLY what happened... @@kelseypapst9248
I remember watching the Food Theory on this drink before this lawsuit went viral on the internet. It’s kind of crazy how MatPat already pointed out how dangerous this drink was.
Yikes, no kidding Matt part might have just saved lives.
@@skylerricketts7392it’s matt’s video that kept me from ever trying it even as my brother started to down large size cup of it. i have no caffeine issues but i do have an addiction and if i got addicted to a *360g* caffeine drink it would be over for me
@@valen9835 Theories can be true ( math is sexier then loli ) or false ( Overwatch being a better game ) , sadly the Deadly effect of the *D* rink theory is not only right but too true .
It was this obvious to see that consumers, TikTokers and UA-camrs all realized it was deadly before Panera did
for reallllllllllllllllllll
I think that one aspect of this that was underplayed is the fact that for most of us, if we drink 400mg/day, it's usually spread out over the whole day. I bet most people drinking this specific drink do so within, say 15 minutes or so. Therefore the body is receiving all that caffeine in one big whammy. That can't be good for anyone.
Depends on what you're aiming for. Caffeine is actually used to treat several medical conditions, though admittedly often as self-medication, which is risky. For some of those, you actually need pretty high doses. I know this because I have several of those conditions, and have been considering it as an option. Especially with how difficult it is to consistently get my hands on my current ADHD medication these days. I am on what's effectively extended release, though, so I probably wouldn't go that high in one dose. But I'm sure someone out there could use it. Maybe.
Its not good for anyone, but its not dangerous. Keep in mine that a large starbucks medium roast has 410mg of caffeine. Caffeine is extremely well tolerated. The reason lawyers use things like energy drinks is because as far as concentration is consumed, energy drinks arent actually super caffeinated, redbull in particular has super low doses of caffeine. Their largest product has less than a single 200mg standard dose.
@@fink7968a gram of caffeine in one sitting can kill you.
@@fink7968The highest amount of caffeine in a roast is 360mg. Experts recommend less than that in a day. That’s coffee, not lemonade. You know what you’re getting into. You sip it slow, and it’s hot. You don’t gulp it like cold lemonade and you don’t get refills. 2 grandes in one sitting can kill you. The first that died from the lemonade had 1270mg of caffeine. That would kill a normal person.
@ThatRaineChicc iced coffee exists?
I worked at Panera when this charged lemonade came out, I called it from day one when I saw the caffeine and sugar content with a tiny tiny label and parents giving it to their KIDS that someone would die from it. Really sad.
If you see parents giving these drinks to their kids, did you tell them that their drink was filled with caffeine?
@@kathydelarosa1286They probably weren't the person selling the lemonades for every purchase of the lemonade. Some parents don't understand the harm in things like caffeine and high sugar content. Or they might not realize how harmful it is. It's not the employees responsibility to make a company's product safe for consumers. Also it was self serve so they just needed to order a cup and they could get the lemonade themselves.
@@yukikanegawa7470it’s the parents fault then
@Ooweeeooo yes, but also no. Yes it's the parents fault for giving their kid a drink loaded with sugar and caffeine.
But it's not the parents fault they didn't know the drink was loaded with sugar and caffeine when Panara made sure to bury that information rather than presenting it up front.
@@Mr.Sparks.173It is not the underpaid worker’s business to tell a parent how much caffeine is in a product the parent can just look at the label of.
to me, the most insane part is that a drink that can be dangerous if consumed in large quantities is being offered through an unlimited refill subscription service, imagine if pubs offered a service that allowed subscribers to drink unlimited beer...
for real, are the cashiers supposed to cut you off when youre bouncing off the walls?
Depending on the strength all you can drink beer in a pub could be really easy to do with comparable safety to any other kind of pub drinking. Now if it was all you could drink shots...
Unlimited beer? I'm there
You've never been to a cafe with free coffee refills or McDonald's with unlimited Coca-Cola?
@@skippycoulterThere are all you can drink pubs in Japan
Doesn't matter if you have a heart condition. 400mg is the daily recommended maximum by the FDA, and 1200mg is listed on their website as an amount associated with toxic affects, like seizures in a healthy person. That woman who said she drinks one every 2 hours is lucky to be alive.
to be clear, it's very, very unlikely a healthy person would have seizures. The toxicity that the FDA is talking about is a feeling of nausea, dizziness, headache, etc. Seizures are pretty rare and happen at much higher levels.
@@CRneu I said what was literally on their website.
Toxicology student here and that 400mg is the daily RDI and based off an average 70kg white man drinking 4-5 cups of black coffee over multiple hours. As Dr Mike explained Caffeine has a very long half life so putting 400mg in a drink could easily cause an overdose in most people as the human body can only process so much caffeine at a time - and the toxic effect is dose/body weight/time dependant...meaning that women and children would likely suffer a overdose from a single serve. This is why other countries like Australia set a maximum limit on Energy Drinks of 320 mg and require clear warnings/labels of caffeine per serve and a warning logo to warn pregnant people. It's also important to note that this drink appears to be designed to addict people unaware that the 'buzz' and good feelings from drinking a 'lemonaid' was a s#!*ton of sugar and caffeine messing with their brains!.. No wonder people would go back for seconds when they were mislead into thinking it was from a 'natural buzz' of plant based ingredients - suggesting it was healthier than a soft drink.
You could tell from her eyes that she's overcaffeinated.
That's honestly hilarious to me. I've drank well over 900mg in a day while being on 300mg of wellbutrin and I was fine.
I was later diagnosed with SEVERE adhd. My heart rate may have been 110 sitting. But God damn did I have a lot of energy.
I have cardiomyopathy and heart arrythmia. Thanks to MatPat on Food Theory, I was aware of the lemonade and it's high caffeine levels. My mom got me the lemonade because she didn't know about the caffeine.
I only drank about a quarter of the drink, when I started feeling my throat tighten (for me it's a sign of anxiety, which corresponds with my PVCs) I stopped drinking it and told my mom about the lemonade. (I'm so glad that I'm aware of the caffeine levels in that drink. It's ridiculous!)
Scary, had you kept drinking it you may not be here…….. glad your ok!
Omg I’m so thankful that you didn’t die to this drink. The fact that Panera bread is not removing it from their stores and saying it is “safe” is crazy when multiple people have passed away from it. They way they market it as healthy too 🤢
By mom has PVC’s the combo of the sugar and caffeine would’ve potentially been fatal. I’m glad you are ok ❤
@@gigiearth Alcohol: 2500 deaths per year (from acute poisoning alone)
Nuts/peanuts: 50 deaths per year
Grapefruit juice: has a massive number of seriously dangerous medication interactions
Exercise: multiple deaths annually due to exercise induced rabdomyolysis
Chewing food: results in thousands of elderly deaths annually due to choking and pneumonia
Driving: .....
It's almost as if a lot of things are dangerous in certain contexts, the same could perhaps be said about drinking a highly dosed (dosage was on the fountain label in medium print, very readable) caffeine product, which is statistically substantially safer than most of what I just listed above. The actual crux of the issue is, is it reasonable to expect people to be aware of what they are putting in their bodies? and are restaurants responsible for inquiring about and understanding medical conditions that customers may have? Strong yes and a no from me.
@@BiscuitTheDoodle I thought PVC's themselves are not dangerous..
The "plant-based" caffeine thing reminds of the time I read some ridiculous article suggesting people get caffeine from "natural sources" like tea instead of coffee.
reminds me of those products that say "gluten free" yeah i hope my fuckin ketchup doesn't have gluten lmao
@@hurpdurpueruhuryou mean like packs of "gluten-free bacon" and "gluten-free frozen strawberries"?
@@hurpdurpueruhur
Going to be unfun, but your ketchup may have been processed in a gluten-processing location. For strong allergies that's already too much so the branding is not totally absurd.
"plant-based caffeine"...
Me to Panera: "you mean the caffeine extracted out of coffee beans isn't plant-based?????? Huh????"
(I actually do not know if they synthesize caffeine from other sources or in a lab for energy drinks or caffeine pills)
Considering that caffiene, like most other alkiloid amines, is the plants way of trying to poison you in order to preserve itself from being eaten, how is it then advisible within common sense that we shpuld consume these types of things without the due caution and respect they deserve in their own right?
The crazy thing about this is that MattPat did a video literally highlighting how unsafe and irresponsible the marketing at the time was around these charged lemonades - 10 months ago and they still did nothing !!!
Literally in the title was 'this could kill you'...
MatPat
It also went viral several times last year, and made the news.
@@OldDemonTooth MaPat. Like a mother hen protecting its chicks.
hey shocker. american capitalism just doesnt care
just know that the repiblican party is fighting HARD to neuter our laws so companies like panaera can k!ll us without consequences and to throw anyone that criticises them into prison
Wasn't it at some kind of restaurant? They have labels in restaurants now? I thought they only had menus.
4:20 small correction: the caffeine amount is the same, it has not been reduced. the difference is that previously, the caffeine content was listed accounting for NO ICE in the cup. the recent change is that now, the charged lenonades are only available behind the counter and the caffeine content is listed assuming the standard amount of ice in the cup, hence the ~40% "reduction" in total caffeine content
So they're assuming that caffeine disappears in the presence of ice cubes?
So no recipe change at all- just intentionally giving less.
So instead of 100% lemonade it's 60% lemonade and 40% ice? That sounds like a lot of ice. More than I get at fast food restaurants.
@@klisterklister2367 no, you do understand that ice fills up the cup though? so there is less of the drink. that is all.
@@aquaintsound you could look at it that way i suppose, but realistically it's moreso that when it was self service, they had to account for the customer filling the cup full and to give an accurate nutrition facts
I was a manager at Panera until this year, and frankly we knew well before this happened that something like it was coming. We got so many complaints from parents who got it for their kids, or when their kids got it themselves without knowing what was in it. I personally saw plenty of high schoolers drinking 2-3 large drinks in one sitting. It was so obviously dangerous that many stores in my area pulled the beverage dispensers behind the counter even before it was mandated, and advised their employees to discourage parents from giving it to kids. The drinks are good, but it’s frankly ludicrous that Panera got away with serving them for so long without anyone noticing.
Good on those managers for making that call.
My niece worked at a Panera and said she'd warn parents, but lots of parents ordered the drink for the kids anyhow. Sigh.
3 drinks in a row sounds like it could be possibly lethal
My sister loves these lemonades and got them frequently this last summer. She has no problem with it and tends to drink a ton of caffinated products, so it didn't bother her. She recommended it to me without knowing it had caffeine. I never consume caffeine, as I have tourettes syndrome and caffeine makes my symptoms worse, along with just making me feel sick and like I'm having a panic attack. So I got a large lemonade because I wanted a drink I could have throughout a long day of work. I felt completely awful. It was a horrible day, I had no idea why I felt so bad that day and why I had such bad symptoms until I went to Panera a few weeks later with my mom who pointed out that the lemonade had caffeine in it. They really need to advertise it better. Even if someone doesn't have a heart condition, caffeine can have a big impact on different people, especially if kids had the drink thinking it was just a flavored lemonade
So true. I can handle small amounts of caffeine but if I drank just one of those lemonades I would end up with a headache and nausea for hours, and even if it would not have lasting health effects that is not a good time.
I get chest pain when I have too much caffeine too, & my limit is lower than most people due to heartburn & what I suspect to be an undiagnosed heart condition. Heart problems run in my family, but don't usually start at my age. I don't live near a Panera, but drinking one of those lemonades could easily kill me or one of my family members. I agree, they need to advertise it better. I don't want to add to, or know someone who adds to, this lemonade's body count.
I have AFib and Tachycardia. Drinking this unaware of it's caffeine content could possibly really hurt me.
They should have been more transparent from the git.
As a former worker at panera, I know that my specific general manager always would get mad at me, and other workers, when we had warned people how caffeinated these lemonades were
Yup, because making $7 on a lemonade is more important than a kid not dying.
WHY
It's possible that these drinks did contribute to other peoples deaths or serious illness without knowing that the drink is what triggered it. The reason they wold be more likely to figure it out for Sarah was because of her condition and how she monitored what she consumed so closely that it would be easier to spot what factors could have triggered cardiac arrest.
It is statistically likely that they caused a few miscarriages, maybe the republicans should go after them for killing the unborn children they love so much.
And yet she didn't check the ingredient sheet that was accessible online at the time. She was so careful, except this one time right? Just a fluke that this time, she didn't bother checking what she was drinking and it just happened to kill her.
I don't think she was as careful as her family and lawyer are pretending that she was.
@@Reinforce_ZweiBecause nobody assumes that lemonade contains ginormous amounts of caffeine.
Btw they even label Cola as a drink that contains caffeine over here in Europe although it is obvious.
@@Reinforce_Zwei you're blaming the victim when the drink was not advertised as a energy drink, it did not say that it contained caffeine and was in a self serve/unlimited refill where children could access it and looked identical to their non-caffeinated/normal soft drinks. The information was NOT on display in store at the time and only someone who specifically asked was given the nutritional information. The only warning was that it had the same caffeine content as their black coffee which was misleading as A NORMAL black coffee only contains around 50mg of caffine per serve, not over 300mg. As someone with food allergies it is exhausting/difficult to check every label when eating out which is why context clues matter - I wouldn't ask if a Pizza contains Strawberry unless there was something on the menu to hint that it was a dessert or had berries listed... Instead I just avoid anything listed with Strawberry or 'berries' in general and check if the labelling is unclear.
@@Reinforce_Zwei it can easily be the case that she wouldn't have any problems from coffee or an energy drink and still get a problem from this drink... The amount of caffeine in this drink is just ridiculous...
I have long QT syndrome and had absolutely no clue this drink has that much caffeine in it. I had one a few weeks ago and my heart rate shot through the roof, I thought for sure my pacemaker/defibrillator was going to deliver a shock. At the time I had no clue why but now I do. I got extremely lucky.
What did you think made it "charged" then? The drink tanks have been clearly labeled with the caffeine content since the lemonades were debuted.
@@jokeassasin7733no they haven’t 😂
@@jokeassasin7733They say how much caffeine is in it, the raw MG content, but they don't say anything about the context of this. And it should also be noted that the 400mg recommended max by the FDA is for over the course of an entire day, not in a single sitting. 400mg caffeine in under half an hour is dangerous to ANYBODY, not just someone with long QT. It's just that, for most people, it takes way more caffeine for the heart problems in the drink to kick in.
@@jokeassasin7733 When something says "Charged" do you automatically think "Caffeine"? Yeah, obviously _something_ is making it "Charged", but that doesn't immediately make you think of caffeine
Edit: As another comment said, it could mean "Charged" like full of electrolytes, similar to gatorade. It's an extremely vague term that doesn't properly say what's actually making it "Charged"
@level20art50 . 400mg is safe for a healthy young adult. Even 1000mg within a couple hours will only make you feel sick. The deadly dose is 3000mg, for a normal person. But it's very possible to die from much lower.
I like how the dr mike segment subtly shows us the proper way to use an expert witness. Devin just asked questions to continue the point, and let the expert do all the talking.
You got a good memory I seen that video too.
this
one of the real issues is now how many places have nutritional information on their website and not on the product or in the store. I don't think it is unreasonable to say you have to tell people what is in your product.
Yeah, the pressure to list nutrition information clearly was targeted at fast food places like McDonald's, particularly after Super Size Me. People forget that Panera, Starbucks, Chipotle, etc are also arguably fast food restaurants.
especially if it's a drug like caffeine is
Agreed or more reasonable name. When I get lemonade I don't think it's going to have 300+mg of caffeine. You label something as coffee or energy drink and I automatically think that and look at the amount
@@cripplemadewhole this. why lemonade even needs caffeine ?
The problem with this from a legal standpoint is that they technically did tell you. My worry is that with the internet being so readily available, specially with young people being the ones that use it the most, courts would rule that companies ARE in fact informing you. Though, my hope is that stuff like this does end being mandatory for in store information.
Secondly, a diligent lawyer (not saying a moral one) might even point out how long she’s had the condition and place the responsibility on her. Not saying I agree but it is these lawyers’ job to win cases and they’ll use any excuse.
I’m allergic to shellfish and an asthmatic since 6 months old, I am now 33, I would hope most restaurants practice clean procedures when having a kitchen with multiple proteins but I always make it VERY clear what my condition is. I’ve gone through anaphylaxis which triggered my asthma after closing my throat. Not fun.
I do hope the family gets whatever peace they need. I’m heartbroken over this poor young girl and the courts should be reasonable when it comes to this kind of situation.
I'm a manager at a panera, and we've been saying this would happen since the first came out
Corporate doesn't listen to the peons. In any corporation.
It is a hell of an advertisement.
I wonder if that sort of thing will have an effect on the lawsuit? If the family's lawyers can point to people who work at Panera who have been predicting problems I would think that would make Panera look potentially negligent.
@@jaynestrange
I would intuite that they could get employees to testify regarding the actual conditions during sale and instructions given
@jaynestrange hear what you are daying, but I don't think that the average Panera employee is qualified to act as an expert witness or give opinions on matters of health.
For reference, in Germany, you need to declare any caffeine concentration in excess of 18mg/100ml. Cola usually is BELOWB that threshold.
Calculated that this drink is about 42mg/100ml.
That is a LOT.
and that's assuming it was mixed correctly, could be higher as comments point out.
Yeah, as someone who's sensitive to caffeine...not insanely sensitive, but if I drink a cup of tea or a can of caffenated soda to late in the evening, my sleep is disrupted.... this drink would have me hanging off the ceiling trying to calm down lol
european food safety laws are sooo much better compared to american laws it’s literally insane
They don’t care about us in America … unfortunately
Oh, but they do care about you. "Health-care" after the food industry poisoned you. For lots of $$$, of course.
A normal country with actual laws
It was always marketed as caffeinated on the app, but it wasnt a prominent warning in the store. It seems weird they would sell 30 oz cups with free refills knowing how potent it was. Even as someone who needs 3 large coffees with espresso each day, its an obscene amount of caffeine to put in lemonade.
I think what makes it even worse is that they seemed to undersell how much caffeine is in them. If my memory serves me what signage they had claimed it was about as strong as a cup of coffee.
@@rookiemechwarriorthat too!! I refused to even try it because I don't respond well to energy drinks. It's too much caffeine all at once, and they should have learned from Bang Energy and Four Loko how dangerous that is
It just says it has as much caffeine as their coffee
Yeah even seeing the commercial explicitly stating it has caffeine, nothing in its branding or marketing would lead me to believe that this is a beverage with caffeine levels higher than 2 large lattes (along with other stimulants, and being iced you're likely drinking it and absorbing those things faster).
The plant based and green coffee extract stuff, along with being a juice based beverage, makes me immediately think of it as a competitor to a Starbucks Refresher type drink, which has 45 MG of caffeine on the lower end and the highest caffeine content I see is 90 MG on a 30 Oz cup.
Nothing about chill vibes outside, "plant based" and "green coffee extract" for caffeine leads me to think at all about stuff like Red Bull or Monster
That isn´t even lemonade! lemonade is sqeezed fruit, nothing more. That was an homebrew contoction.. kinda like the witches do..
The açai drinks at Starbucks are a similar story. Parents often order it for their kids, thinking it's just a refreshing fruity lemonade drink, and we have to explain they're highly caffeinated
Wait what???? I have those all the time, and the description on the website is just strawberry lemonade, coconut water, dehydrated strawberries, and flavour syrup. I'm gonna have a look at the nutritional list. If this is true, no wonder I don't feel hydrated after drinking them.
Edit: had a check and luckily a grande strawberry acai lemonade has "only" 45mg of caffeine. Still 45mg more than I expected. That's a coffee's worth. I literally try to avoid caffeine due to it flaring my health condition. Wtf. Why do they have to put caffeine in everything? I also tried to check for caffeine in their ice shaken lemon passion tea but it's literally publicly unavailable, you have to email the company.
Rhetorical question, caffeine is addictive, they are trying to get people addicted to their drinks.
@@shadycatz85 Former barista here, the passion tea is a herbal tea, so it contains no caffeine. Black, Green, an white teas are do contain caffeine tho. (do they even still serve the white tea? its been years since ive stepped foot in a starbucks lol)
@@TrashRat45 Ours occasionally has the Youthberry blend teabags (I believe they're either herbal or white tea)
I had one of the Refresher Drinks at Starbucks once not knowing they were heavily caffeinated until after I drank it and felt like I was crawling out of my skin. They are not easily marked as heavily caffeinated at at the time they just sounded 'refreshing'
@@TrashRat45Sorry, but if there can be undisclosed caffeine in a fruit juice, I'm not trusting the conventional wisdom on any kind of tea.
Something not mention is also the rate at which you could consume one of these drinks compared to something like a Monster or a coffee. Most people will generally pace themselves a little with those drinks (or at least are aware of what they're doing if they chug it). With these lemonades, like you said doesn't really taste caffinated or like an energy drink, and comes with a straw, you could easily down one very quickly, giving yourself a massive and unexpected caffeine dose all at once.
Perhaps it's because I knew there was caffeine in it beforehand, but I never felt like I could drink one of these lemonades quickly. There's also a ton of sugar in them, and it showed in how it tasted. I always up mixing mine with iced tea if they let me fill it myself, because it's too much on its own.
Here, they have banned the sale of caffeinated “booster” drinks in bars because the massive amount of caffeine combined with alcohol is dangerous.
You, of course, can’t monitor or stop people from buying alcohol and beer or liquor in stores.
And kids find out that the caffeinated boosters (the little bottles sold at the cash) and beer will give you a high and they buy them for that purpose. Even if they don’t drink beer with the boosters, a couple of the boosters will have the same effect given the kids’ smaller body-mass. They really should not be sold to kids.
Yeah. I have a lot of caffeine in a day, but I don't do high caffeine content energy drinks, because they give an uncomfortable spike. It feels a whole lot better to get under 100mg with every cup or can of caffeinated drink. nearly 400mg in a single drink makes zero sense.
This. The lemonade had comparable caffeine content per ounce to a strong cup of coffee. But who sits down and drinks a 32 oz cup of black coffee with their lunch in 15 mins?! That’s Starbucks’ largest size, for the record. Most of the time, people order glorified milkshakes there, so it’s only half coffee, and half the caffeine. And people usually nurse their coffee milkshakes for an hour or so, too…
what does caffinated taste like
As someone who used to work at Starbucks it’s wild to me how so many people don’t find out that the Refreshers are also caffeinated with green coffee extract. While in the end it is up to the individual to order, these companies clearly fail at communicating all of the details of these beverages.
Green coffee seems to have a worse effect on my anxiety than just regular roasted beans. It's intense in a really bad way. Agreed that the companies and their marketing are to blame.
Yyyyup, I thought it was just a fun fruit juice drink. Had no idea it was caffeinated until reading this comments section. I thought they were called "refreshers" because they're cold fruit drinks! Like a refreshing glass of juice, not CAFFEINE!
@@jarvis5552its safe to assume most drinks at a coffee shop will have caffeine. I was more shocked to find out my vanilla bean creme didnt have espresso 😂
I work at Starbucks and people always order those for their kids, I’m like uh ok 🤔
This was how I learned about green coffee bean extract.
Here's a thought, the taste of caffeine is quite bitter. The crazy amount of sugar covers up that bitterness. This implies that they knew the amount of caffeine was notably high and actively tried to make the flavors when consumers had the product.
Exactly, it doesn't taste as sweet because it's got both caffeine and citric acid that are balanced by sugar.
Yup! The sugar is to balance the extreme amounts of citric acid and the citric acid is to cover the extreme amount of caffeine
Caffeine is super bitter, but 10 mg/oz is... not especially. They're probably trying to cover up other 'energy drink' flavors from additives that attempt to smooth out the caffeine energy spike or handle side effects. Source: I mix my own energy drinks with caffeine powder, and am very sensitive to bitter flavors.
Good catch!
I avoid this drink like the plague because of my heart condition. That being said, I only knew it had caffeine because I first tried to order it online for pickup. If I had just walked into a store I would have had no clue based on their signage. Scary to think what could have happened.
Out of curiousity, what did you think "charged" meant in "charged lemonade"? because when I first heard about it I assumed it was either super sour or caffinated like an energy drink. Is the word "charged" not actually on the menu?
It says on the sign it has caffeine in it and how much per cup
It actually was always labelled on the sign on the machine, but it was in smaller writing, you had to actively read the sign, it did not jump out at you. But if you are sensitive to caffeine, of course you want to always read the signs, ALL of it. I'm NOT defending Panera, since this high caffeine contents must be labelled with a warning, this is not normal and nobody knew that these were actually energy drinks, which they are with these insane high caffeine levels.
@@aromaladyellieif you asked me out of nowhere about it I would say it is meaningless marketing gimmick with no significant impact on indigrients.
Gimmick like "lemonade ultra pro max"
If I had to assume anything I would assume charged means sugar, extra sweet or whatever.
@@aromaladyellie For a juice I would've just assumed a "charged" meant "charged with electrolytes" or "charged with vitamins", haha . "Charged' just seems like a vague marketing term that could apply to anything, I definitely wouldn't automatically assume it means caffeine or sugar, particularly given the context.
I also have a history of heart disease leading me to be cautious of my caffeine. I once accidentally had a Starbucks refresher thinking it was a completely normal fruit drink. It resulted in heart palpitations. A refresher has a TENTH of the caffeine of this lemonade. If I’d had this it probably would’ve killed me too.
Yea I had no idea the refreshers had caffeine. They don't tell you at all.
@@Spongebob-lf5dn It terrified me when it happened because there was no indication I’d just had a caffeinated drink. It was only later at the emergency room that we figured out what happened
@silversleeper1193 yea I was drinking them everyday without a clue. Sometimes closer to bed time. I started having anxiety because I would drink them and something else with caffeine because I didn't know they also had caffeine. I'm better now. Which is why I made sure to look at caffeine content before even trying the charged lemonades.
I'm super sensitive to caffeine and always have to ask at Starbucks if a new drink has caffeine because it's never obvious. I do the same thing everywhere else too though because of my experience with Starbucks.
I work at a Starbucks & I didn’t know the refreshers were caffeinated
I feel like this is one of those lawsuits that is going to go down as frivolous or ridiculous but was actually very substantial and impactful, but common media didn't spin it that way.
Because it is frivolous. It's unfortunate what happened, but the parents of the one girl were like "she doesn't drink caffeinated drinks because of her health issues". Unfortunately, she did drink them. If people could just learn English properly in schools then maybe she would be here. Charged was right on it. So was caffeinated and the amount. This was all well before these suits. Now if the individual restaurant did not put those on there like they should have, then I get it, otherwise, this is all on those who drank the drinks.
@@meversace1: Charged has no precedent for if it has caffeine and how much. Other companies like Mountain Dew have used similar language like voltage without caffeine.
2: Not only is the sign that says it’s caffeine small, but it’s not designed to warn you of its dangers. They put it next to the non caffeinated/ low caffeine drinks. Not using bright colors or large letters. And advertised as lemonade while not telling its staff that it’s a danger.
3: People warned Panera 10 months before the first death. Matpat made a goddamn video telling them customers would die from it. This is Panera fault for not seeing the most red flag I’ve seen.
I remember this “lemonade” when I visited a Panera in 2022. At the time, it was VERY easy to not notice the signage, since it was next to all the other beverages, had a visual aesthetic that promoted the idea of it being a “natural” drink, and did not have any prominent warning signs whatsoever. I think it was serious false advertising.
Yeah, I had a large one for lunch, without ice, and then went to fill it up as I left. Only when I was halfway through the second one did I realize I was about 600mg in. I certainly didn't sleep that nice.
As someone who takes 400mg of caffeine pills every morning to help manage ADHD this drink is like my dream. But I'm honestly shocked a drink is allowed to have that much caffeine and not come with a warning of some sort.
Same here and I've even specifically bought this drink to help manage my ADHD when I didn't want to drink my usual caffeinated options. It really should have come with a warning 'cause not everyone can handle 400mg like us.
the drink also has 4 times the amount of recommended maximum refined sugar for daily intake.
Panera just needs to sell this as ADHD medication 😂
@@ThisisTechieI'll buy it. It's probably better for me than Ritalin without the anger issues.
I just start the day with 400mg Caffeine…
Damn MatPat made a video about this almost a year ago... Why can't companies listen before people die because of their products? All of this was definitely avoidable. Hope the people suing get closure ❤
I rewatched that video recently
When MatPat makes a video on a drink :D
When LeagleEagle makes a video on a drink D:
Why is this level if illiteracy and idiocracy put on a pedestal to begin with...?
Call me crazy, but this is borderline close to "Nigerian prince offers you truckloads of gold in exchange for money." emails.
Yes, this was avoidable, if people READ the labels instead of just stuffing themselves with anything that's bright and colourful.
And we're not talking about toddlers that got into the cleaning supplies here. We're talking about ADULTS acting like there's no way they could've known.
@@danjal87nlthe label wasn't on the drink lmao. That's the whole point of the lawsuit. Ppl only found out Abt the caffeine because somebody went digging through the website.
You don't Google the precise health facts of EVERY SINGLE food item you buy, you assume that it's safe enough that it won't send you into cardiac arrest after getting a free refill
@@danjal87nl I wouldn't say it's Nigerian prince bad since most people wouldn't know off the top of their head how much caffeine is bad for you but your overall point is one I can certainly agree with. On a tangential note, I just realized that caffeine is yet another word that doesn't follow the I before E except after C saying.
I've worked at Panera for over a year now and I've started months ago calling the charged Lemonade's caffeinated lemonades I feel like that easy switch would help the company so much
Sounds like a lot of Panera workers care more about customer safety than corporate does.
@@Tracymmoyeah its capitalism lol. Elon Musk would melt poor people in a magma pit if it was profitable
More than anything I just do not understand why Panera made this cursed hell-drink in the first place.
I'll give you at least 1 reason, caffeine is physically addictive, and lemonade doesn't naturally have caffeine in it. Ergo by putting a whack ton of caffeine in their "lemonade" (lemonade flavored energy drink) you can get people to associate the satiation of that addiction with drinking your specific beverage. This in no small part owing to the fact that at the start of this legal issue a large "lemonade" had almost as much caffeine as a pair of 5 Hour Energy shots, meaning you probably weren't likely to find a dose to satiate you with any other source of caffeine even if you did realize that the cause was the beverage being heavily caffeinated.
Part of it I think has to deal with shifting their demographic appeal. Offering caffeine based beverages and marketing it as “Charged” comes across as a lot more trendy than just saying “caffeinated lemonade”. That and paring it with their Unlimited Sip Club entices people to keep coming back specifically for the drinks.
@@AmaraTheBarbarian
Makes sense.
I do think they should have considered the danger of killing their customers though.
Probs for the employees tbh
@@AmaraTheBarbarianWell the normal response to just wanting an addictive product would be to have an arnold palmer, half tea and half lemonade. That's a very common (and already caffeinated) product.
hello, current Panara employee here! It was shocking even to a lot of us working in my cafe to learn that there was caffeine in our own charged lemonades, and even more so to learn just how much was in them. corporate is now requiring us as well to let every single person who wants to order a charged drink know that it has a lot of Caffeine in it and to ask them if it's okay as a result of this exact case. I know that at least for me it's a part time job while I'm studying in college, but it's still a really scary thing to think- and at least for everyone else in my store too -that we could've been responsible for something like this happening to someone and we didn't even know it.
It says charged... is that not obvious it has caffeine... I mean are we a society just bad at comprehension?
@@LeolaGlamour unfortunately i think that a lot of people don't understand what "charged" means when they order it. Sure, knowing it has caffeine and that it's called a "charged" lemonade you can imagine why it's called that. Absolutely for a lot of people you can probably infer from the name is has caffeine, but for a lot of people the name doesn't tell them anything about what's in it. For all someone knows "charged" could just mean bursting with flavor or something to that effect. But generally yes I do agree that the name should be a hint at least for some people but unfortunately not everyone.
@@LamentedLucia It was marketed an an energy drink in everything I saw...
"charged" is a vague buzzy word on purpose. it's so that people can assume it's 'charged' with electrolytes, or vitamins, or fresh fruit, or whatever. people don't realize how profitable it is to get customers hooked on caffeine. @@LeolaGlamour
I was wondering what this looked like from an employee perspective. I can only imagine what the corporate break room morning announcement was like
Good news Legal Eagle, fellow UA-camr MatPat did a video on this very topic when the Charged Lemonade first came out on his channel Food Theory, and indeed, when it first came out there was ZERO open or easily available information about how much caffeine was in this product, nor was there any proper labeling for it.
And as it turned out, it would be simply illegal in some places.
I just checked his video, there's a sign on the drink machines with how much caffeine is in the drinks.
@@kingofhearts3185 Yes, but no context as to what that means, or how much caf that is compared to whats recommended.
@@kingofhearts3185but no one is properly informing them that it's got a shit ton of caffeine, because just giving them the numbers doesn't help.
1 Newton, for example, doesn't mean much to the average consumer. Ditto for 1 Joule.
@@raawesome3851 Except the caffeine content of energy drinks for example are stated on the can. And considering the victim here was someone with a health condition who was cautious about these things, she would definitely understand it.
I had un-diagnosed AFib with a stroke, and the only thing my cardiologist and I could trace it to was that I was super-overdosing on caffeine ("power" drinks, "energy" shots, colas, Mountain Dew, etc.) to stay sharp in my IT support job, which may have caused the arrhythmia . Of course, that is only anecdotal, as I went caffeine free, and the AFib was electro-shocked back to normal, and my heart was tested as physically fine. The only way to "test" it would be to OD again, and see if it comes back (which we agreed would be stupid). No caffeine for me now, thank you...
"While our investigation is ongoing, out of an abundance of caution, we have enhanced our existing caffeine disclosure..."
So that's code for: We spoke to our attorneys, and they said, "what were you thinking? You need to make changes now, while we work out how much we can settle this suit for on the quiet."
exactly. if they had to "enhance" the labeling, then it was likely barely there to begin with
1 person with a known heart condition is the only person in the lawsuit for a drink that has been sold by a national chain selling in 50 states for over 2 years. If this drink was as dangerous as people are hyping it up to be, this would be a class action with multiple people suing all over the country. Legal Eagle is notoriously far left/pro-nanny state which is why he is taking a ridiculously critical stance on this one.
@@cowmath77I am not arguing, I am genuinely asking. What makes him far left? Are there any videos that display it well?
@@cowmath77 When the "nanny state" wants you to label products that are similar similarly so the common person understands the similarity when said similarity leads to potential ramifications. What a horrifying concept, the leftist nanny state wants an energy drink to be called an energy drink because it has a bunch of added caffeine, instead of lemonade, something that doesn't naturally have caffeine, it was such an imposition for Panera to put up additional warnings that it took hours *gasp*.
2 people have died with the lemonade being alleged as a factor, that doesn't mean that it isn't a factor or crucially that more people haven't died with the same correlation without said correlation being legally alleged. 2,200 people die every day in the US from heart issues. If you took a group of those people and found they had drank 3 cans of monster energy most days that on its face sounds correlative, you might say "well what did they expect? we know those things are bad for your heart", but if you found another group that had a large lemonade with lunch "so what? lemonade doesn't have caffeine"; except this lemonade does have a substantial amount of caffeine.
I know that conservatives are opposed to change, things change all the time, grow up, but when the solution is literally as simple as telling people your large lemonade has about the same amount of caffeine as 3 monsters then I fail to understand your opposition. You can still drink the lemonade flavored energy drink, and if you were warned about the potential consequences nobody will care.
@@cowmath77 Not many people knew about the high caffeine amounts in these drinks to realize it could be an underlying cause. Case in point? Even the victim didn't. With raised awareness and people starting to check back on their 2 year medical histories, it's reasonable we'll see more cases come up. Let's wait and see.
I have long QT syndrome and I cannot stress enough how many companies do not list caffeine in drinks which is super worrying, this is life threatening to people who have heart problems and companies do not care one bit
I just mostly drink water. Any drink that does not come in a can should properly reviewed for caffeine, sugar and other ingredients.
Corporations act like they're not selling a serious drug. It's grossly irresponsible in general and I hope new regulations are coming
there are signs on the machine that clearly say it has as much caffeine as a large coffee
@@gro8085 There are _now._ Because of this lawsuit.
It's not just the companies responsibility, it's the customers as well. I always google the drinks while in line, I ask for extra time. I too have a heart condition, I love energy drinks, but I tend to keep a safe level. It's both the company and the customers fault. I do feel sorry that she lost her life but she was in fact.. a RESEARCH expert so what she did for a living got over looked off the clock. My tip is always take the time, even before you go to a fast food place, to look up ingredients in their food and drinks. 😅 I have to due to allergies. But I have been told my advice on this subject has actually helped people in my family. I just find it as common sense. 😅 but I do want to say, I wish her soul peace and her family peace and love.
As someone unfamiliar with Panera, I wouldn’t automatically assume that “charged” had anything to do with caffeine - extra lemony, maybe? but not that it was caffeinated.
I have thought that charged lemonade would imply more electrolytes or something similar to Gatorade where it's a sports/hydration drink
I would have assumed that it did, but someone who isn't addicted to caffeine like I am might not. It is not clear language. Honestly, I'm surprised that all drinks containing caffeine aren't required by law to announce it loud and clear on the nutrition facts label at the very least; sometimes the information is extremely well hidden on the container. It really is essential nutritional information
@@accountingethan yeah, all labels do actually state the caffeine content of the drink, but its in really small print and hard to notice. it should be required to print the caffeine content directly on the nutrition label, right above or below the sugar section imo, along with the percentage based on average safe dosage (which is 400mg for the average healthy adult)
Yeah, I would have guessed a drink similar to a lemon flavored gatorade, not the most potent energy drink I’ve very heard of.
I guess I would have just asked myself the question, what is "charged" about it, and done one minute of research. Of course I do realize we live in a society without personal responsibility and that it's up to companies to hold your hand through everything so you don't hurt yourself.
I remember MatPat’s video about the Charged lemonade, he concluded that you could die, but you would have to have some kind of medical condition such as diabetes, or Long QT, or drink a TON of the stuff.
I don't think it would take _that_ many lemonades to kill a healthy person. They wouldn't die of caffeine toxicity _(that would take 20+ of these)_ but imagine feeling energized after having 2 or 3 lemonades and deciding to go for a nice, hard run to burn off the energy.
@@jgray2718 Ok, running is good for you? Caffeine has never effected me at all. I've been drinking coffee since I was 8 months old, and I'm fine. Although it may have stunted my growth. I might never be 6' 8" like the doctor said I should have been. I'll be stuck at 6' 1" forever. The horror.
@@OR56 Hello fellow 6'1" person!
Anyway, I was referring to the possibility that you might have a heart attack if you tried vigorous exercise with a truckload of caffeine in your system. And caffeine affects different people differently, so while you might be fine, someone else might have a bad reaction or even a weak heart without realizing it, especially if they didn't know how much caffeine they had just consumed.
@@jgray2718 I see.
It's absolutely insane this was even called a lemonade in the first place. Even calling it an energy drink sells it short. They should create a new category like "ultra caffeinated energy drink" or something. That would avoid any confusion.
Caffeinade!
it literally says 'charged', what do you think charged means?
@@Offechenit’s not clear what charged means. Why should it be?
@@Offechen As it was kind of said, some level of electrolyte refresher like Gatorade. It is poor advertising and should have had a better label.
@@stanc1858 it said caffeine on the menu, on the website, in the commercials, and on the drink dispensers..... it even listed the caffeine amounts on those dispensers
I stopped a kid from drinking this once. She was about 8 and with her grandparents. They didn’t realize it had 300+mg caffeine. I only knew because I had also missed the caffeine content and was shocked when I noticed.
You may have saved her life, well done
Pure caffeine is very bitter. That's why you're not tasting the sweetness from the sugar, the sugar and caffeine are balancing each other out.
That's also probably why people are being surprised by the caffeine. We kind of expect stuff with a lot of caffeine to be a little bitter.
came here to say this
Yes, I notice a difference when I have caffeinated and decaffeinated Chai tea. I have to put more sugar in the caffeinated tea which is one reason why I buy decaffeinated teabags.
No one expects soda to be bitter, and I guarantee soda would be the first or second thing people list as a caffeinated beverage.
@@sumelar
It's almost like soda is also well known to have so much sugar in it (to cover the bitterness) it should be labeled as "liquid candy".
Fermentation is the same thing yet lots of drinks have a lot of sugar to hide the bitterness
Part of the reason it doesn’t taste overly sweet is because Caffeine itself has a bitter taste. This is why decaf coffee needs less sugar to taste sweet.
Part of the reason you don’t taste the caffeine is the excessive levels of sugar.
Resulting in a drink high in both but tasting like very little of either.
I go to the Panera in my university's student center about twice a week at least and there were no extra warnings for children, pregnant women, or caffeine-sensitive individuals until about a month and a half ago. Thank goodness I already had sworn off caffeine like a year ago bc it makes me feel quite anxious, but I was absolutely shocked when I learned how much caffeine was actually in this drink earlier this year
its literally called "charged" lemonade. I don't really know how one reads that and doesnt assume a highly caffeinated beverage...
Also, the warnings were definitely there, nobody bothered to read them. The problem with warning labels is the people they are meant for dont read warning labels...
@@rabidkangar00 It's literally called "LEMONADE." I don't know how one reads it and is supposed to immediately suspect a death scare......
Also, your "charged" means jack shit if noone understands it, and it seems like most of the people, NATIVE SPEAKERS, don't. The warning labels were definitely there, the problem is, the company didn't give an f about making them visible or even legible.
But you do you, boo. Keep laughing about people dying because of company negligence, but don't bitch and screech when something similar happens in your family, because it will surely be due to that person being too lazy to read the label, lol.
@@rabidkangar00 1. Charged is a vague term, there is no definition what it means with drinks. It can mean they are alcoholic, extra sugar, caffeine, more electrolytes, etc.
2. The problem with people not reading warning labels is that they are invisible until you look for them, it's ridiculous when warning label can be mistaken with ingridient list.
3. It's false advertising by making consumers mistaken, simply because they didn't label it correctly.
@@rabidkangar00 "charged" is not synonymous with caffeine. Charged could just mean the drink has a more intense. Additionally, the AMOUNT of caffeine in those drinks is terrifying.
@@rabidkangar00 I personally think caffeine when I see charged, but I wouldn't assume everyone would think that all the time. For example, one time I ordered a "Flamethrower Grillburger" from Dairy Queen, and I was surprised that it was spicy, because my brain interpreted the "flamethrower" part to mean it was flame-grilled. Luckily I like spicy things and probably would have gotten it anyway if I had understood what it meant.
Sort of reminds me of my time making cocktails in a nightclub. The best cocktails don't taste like they're loaded with alcohol, but they'll still pack the same punch. The history of cocktails was precisely because during Prohibition, the alcohol was low grade and tasted awful. Bad gin mixed with OJ suddenly didn't taste so bad.
I got an aversion to coffee when I was pregnant, and I stayed away from all forms of caffeine almost my entire pregnancy. I went to Panera with my family one afternoon and ordered one without thinking about it (I loved them before I got pregnant). A few sips in, and I was practically trembling and felt absolutely horrible. I immediately looked up how much caffeine was in it, and at the time, I couldn’t find definitive information. Since then, I’ve stayed away from all “plant based” charged drinks, especially if they don’t list the amount of caffeine anywhere. I hope this situation makes everyone think twice about drinking these things
I hate that they market them as "plant-based". I mean, it's true, but that's because we derive _all_ caffeine from plants like coffee beans and kola nuts. They just say "plant based" to make it sound mild or gentle, then put 7 espressos worth of caffeine in it.
@@jgray2718yeah, ‘plant based’ don’t mean shit but marketers know it’s associated with health, wellness, purity, etc. and take advantage of the contradiction in consumers expectations versus reality all while remaining within the bounds of technically not explicitly lying
I totally agree. What they mean by “plant based” is simply misleading false advertisement meaning “so natural it cannot harm you so we didn’t find it necessary to give you the exact amount of caffeine it contains” or “we cannot know the amount of caffeine because it is “plant based” message which is even more horrible.
I like how the name of the civil violation is "Wrongful death" as if there is a "Proper death"
Reminds me of a case in the uk where a girl died after eating a sandwich at a chain called Pret. She had a severe nut allergy but Pret didn’t label the sandwich as being made in a kitchen that also handled nuts
Edit. Just fact checked myself, it was worse, the sandwich had it as an ingredient but didn’t have it on the label
I remember that case! They got a lot of shit for not labelling "contains nuts" I never did understand why with such a high allergy rate that disclosure was so overlooked by so many people through the chain of advertisment. Crazy.
Damn, there are prets all over major cities in the Northeast US. Thanks for sharing, I'll avoid on an ethical basis (although I'm generally avoiding it already since it's way overpriced).
I get my groceries delivered. We mark certain items as Do Not Substitute due to allergies. I'm extremely allergic to nuts. We ordered Baskin-Robbins mint chocolate chip ice cream at the grocery. The picture for mint and pistachio ice cream are very similar. Chances are quite high that the person packing our groceries doesn't know English. They probably relied upon the picture. Later I got the ice cream out based upon the picture on the label. We didn't order pistachio, so we never expected it might be pistachio. Luckily I realized the texture was off and spat it out. The crunch wasn't chocolate, but nuts. Fortunately, all I needed was Benedryl. Unfortunately, this scare caused anxiety attacks. These can land me in the hospital. After I calmed down I went onto the Baskin-Robbins website to tell them how the similar looking pictures caused a severe problem. I had simple suggestions that might prevent this. (Change the lid color of nut flavors, prominent label warning, and adding infomation in Spanish) There was no way to give this feedback. (I only use Instagram and a Twitter alternative. Neither were any help.) I'm not upset with the grocery store, the person who packed them, or the person who put the groceries away. It's Baskin-Robbins that I'm furious with for not having a way to voice concerns. The ideas I offered, to me, are very simple changes.
@@checker4714 the pret case changed the law in the UK, we didn't require ingredients to be listed on food made on premises but since the death of the girl with the sesame allergy that is now law
This reminds me of a patient I had (work in ems) that had a "nut free cookie with macadamia nuts in it" at an event. Thankfully we were on site for medical standby with Epi and benadryl on hand.
I love how Devin asks Dr. Mike questions as if he's a witness.
Not a witness, an expert witness!
I noticed that too! I thought it was a fun touch. Not only was he laying out the core arguments and theories about the case, but also demonstrating how expert witnesses would be questioned.
It felt like a zoom trial!
I came to the comments to write the same thing. Devin understands his audience!
@@andrew66862yeah, it was constructed, but the point stands: it was constructed to look and sound like an expert witness on a trial
2:55 - Chapter 1 - Katz V Panera bread
8:00 - Chapter 2 - Product liability
12:10 - Chapter 3 - Panera's response
13:10 - Chapter 4 - Does the rarity of sarah's condition matter
14:45 - Chapter 5 - Doctor's Mike Segment
14:50 - Chapter 5.1 - What is long QT syndrome
16:00 - Chapter 5.2 - How does caffeine affect someone with long QT syndrome
16:50 - Chapter 5.3 - Is it possible for the panera drink to be lethal for someone with long QT syndrome
17:55 - Chapter 5.4 - Caffeine Overdose ?
19:05 - End of the segment
19:20 - Conclusion
Bro got the spark notes
I had an issue with this Panera lemonade even before it became viral. I remember I went to Panera one day and saw the new charged lemonades right next to the other lemonades in the self-serve spot. I always get a large drink, and I typically go to those lemonades because they’re marketed as being healthier etc. I didn’t even realize that “charged” meant highly caffeinated because usually when I think of Panera I think of “healthy bakery food,” so I figured “charged” had to do with health related stuff, maybe electrolytes, etc. I didn’t think much into it. Anyway I ended up getting (I kid you not) like 3 refills. 2 refills in store and one to go, as I always do when dealing with self serve stuff. Problem is I’m VERY caffeine sensitive; everyone in my life knows this. I limit my soda intake, especially at night, and I pretty much never drink coffee. Sometimes I drink tea but I like decaf and tea generally doesn’t have too much caffeine. Anyway I only sip tea at that because I don’t generally like hot drinks so I might have one thing of tea and it’ll take me like 2 hours to drink. Point is I started driving and on my way home I literally had to pull over because I had such bad anxiety. I was crying, hyperventilating, and calling my siblings and spouse because I thought I was having a heart attack and I didn’t understand why. I was super jittery and I almost rear ended somebody and I literally had to pull over and do breathing exercises. By the time I parked near my house I was so scared. I even considered going to the emergency room but my friend had to calm me down over the phone to remind me to breathe. It was so bad. Everyone thought I was being “dramatic” because the charged lemonades were super new, but then a bunch of stuff started coming out about them and I was like YOU SEE?!?!? And now everyone believes me, especially considering how much I drank. It’s super irresponsible for them to even think to put it in the self serve isle without properly educating people on how much caffeine is in there. Also, HELLO, PEOPLE HAVE KIDS. Imagine a kid drinking two whole cups of that stuff??? I’m still thinking I should sue because I was really terrified that day and I genuinely thought I was having a heart attack and I literally had to like figure my stuff out because I was panicking like crazy.
Healthy bakery foods? Bro what, bread makes you fat.
MatPat over at Food Theory actually did a video about Panera's charged lemonade and called it out for the very issues brought up in the lawsuit. Marketed as regular lemonade while downplaying the levels of caffeine present in the drink, and how much it had in comparison to other energy drinks on the market.
I watched that video a while ago, but I remember he also watched the website, and since it was some months ago, maybe it shows if the caffeine being mention in the site was before all of this happened
Def not marketed as "regular" lemonade, people are just clueless. They list the caffeine content all over the place.
its even specifically called a "charger" and has a sign with caffiene content on it, not to say i didn't expect them to get sued over it, i worked there when they came out and regularly saw adults just hand their kids their cups to fill up on their own and filled a full 20oz glass of this stuff for someone who was probably less than 10 year old glad to see they moved it behind the counter at least. @@davidsotomayor8713
@@davidsotomayor8713If you were right and that was a universal thing, then I'd agree. But there's a lot of photo and video evidence that they only relatively recently began advertising these drinks were even caffeinated, let alone how much caffeine they contain. Which is stated in this very video if you actually pay attention. And while some specific locations may have been better at advertising how much caffeine is in their charged lemonade, that is not universally true.
Furthermore, advertising that it is caffeinated may not be enough defense when it's been shown that the amount of caffeine it contains (which their website falsely claims is "the same as in their dark roast") is approximately the safe limit for caffeine consumption. Even if they advertised just how much caffeine there was in the product, they are clearly doing nothing to help protect customers. They still have a responsibility to at least try to prevent customers from surpassing that limit, just like how a bartender can be found legally responsible for letting someone drink alcohol beyond a certain limit, thus risking death by alcohol poisoning. I believe bartenders are even legally responsible to provide at least some measurements to prevent drunk driving, or at least they are in some places, which is why they can take your keys and another reason why they can cut you off, as well as part of why they will sometimes call taxis or Ubers for customers that drank too much. So similarly, it would make sense for Panera to still have legal responsibility to help ensure customers do not surpass the safe dosage of caffeine, especially when one large Charged Lemonade is pretty well at that limit. Instead, not only do they barely advertise there is any caffeine, they insist it's the same amount as their dark roast coffees, have no warnings about the risks of drinking too much caffeine, and seem to not only make it too easy for someone to make the mistake by placing the drink machines next to all of their normal drinks, but even encourage it by allowing (at least for some customers) free refills. All of that shows gross negligence, especially when they don't even try preventing children from consuming any.
If it was obvious not only how much caffeine there was in one of their charged lemonades, but also how dangerous that much caffeine could be, there would not be so many videos of people being shocked by how much caffeine is there. Don't make this like the McDonald's hot coffee incident.
@@davidsotomayor8713exactly. It is amazing how oblivious consumers are.
Caffeine is a migraine trigger for me and when I started a new job in the same building as a Panera, I started getting the mint lemonade when I arrived in the morning. After a while, the migraines kicked in and I eventually learned how overloaded these are with caffeine; had I known, I never would have tried it. I'm a reasonably alert and intelligent person, so this video really resonates with me. I'm just glad that my outcome is substantially less severe.
Migraines are such a weird beast. Caffeine is the opposite for me, I drink a metric shitload of caffeine to keep a migraine at bay. The breakthrough I take has some absurd amount of caffeine in it, can't sleep for almost a day after taking one.
Both are true for migraines. Migraine docs recommend 0 caffeine as that keeps your brain more stable (migraine brain is sensitive). But OTC Excedrin as well as other medications like Fioricet have significant caffeine content (yet still less than a charged lemonade!).
Excedrin, Fioricet, and also painkillers frequently cause "rebound headaches" which can be worse than the original. Migraine docs will recommend less than 4 a week or 4 a month for stronger medications. I imagine OP may have gotten rebounds with charged lemonades daily.
The current best medications on the market are CGRPs, which have neither caffeine nor ibuprofen etc. They're the safest drugs too, better than triptans. But because they have only been made the past 2-3 years (a bit longer for the injection form vs the pill form), they are wildly expensive specialty medications. Most insurance will pay for it, but they may have certain stipulations or requirements (a specific brand, failure of lower cost medications, or severity/frequency of migraines). If you can get CGRPs, they are by far the best option.
Best wishes for your health migraineurs and others with medical conditions!
Interesting. I prefer being on caffeine as well with my migraines, and especially when I get one caffeine in combination with medication can help a lot. But migraines are wild in how different they are anyway, it’s always insane talking to others and seeing how different yet similar the struggles are!
Its about the specific amount of caffeine to avoid migraines for me. Too much or too little and i risk a migraine )):
Sarah was not someone I knew even superficially but its always noticeable in the school. Im sure many people miss her and mourn her over. Rest in peace.
My wife has ADHD and idk if this is common knowledge, but caffeine tends to have the opposite effect on those with ADHD. It pretty much overloads your system and, in the case of my wife, makes you extremely sleepy and crash for a few hours. I would assume it would have this effect on others with the same condition if they had large quantities of it, but she doesn't drink caffeine beverages at all because of how badly it effects her.
We went to Panera for lunch one time and she got a charged lemonade because she doesn't like soda but loves lemonade. She had a normal sized cup filled with quite a bit of ice and after a few sips, we had to leave early because she was starting to nod off at the table.
A Mega can of Monster has 240 mg of caffeine. The first tiktoker at the beginning of the video said the REGULAR charged lemonade had 260.
They either need to make it extremely clear that this is an energy drink with an absurd amount of caffeine or take it off the market. I'm worried that this will become another McDonald's coffee incident where their PR team makes the victim out to be stupid for something out of their control or knowledge.
Can confirm the backwards effect on some people with ADHD, but for other people it doesn't seem to have any effect at all, another fun fact. Do make sure that she isn't taking it to help her fall asleep though, just because it makes us tired doesn't stop it from having the same negative effects on our sleep!
not technically overload or backwards - but the ADHD brain is starved of stimulation. a regular brain has a baseline of stimulation that it needs for rest and sleep or for doing tasks, and that stimulation is delivered via your circadian rhythm and your positive feedback centers giving out serotonin and dopamine at appropriate times. ADHD brain is chronically under-stimulated, meaning it doesn't give out the correct sleep hormones or deliver the right amount of serotonin and dopamine at the right times. stimulants like caffeine or adhd meds deliver that stimulation, and when you spend so long under-stimulated, getting juuuust the right amount can K O you because your brain FINALLY reaches equilibrium at the correct level of stimulation for sleep and rest. i use it sometimes when being under-stimulated has kept me awake for too long [sometimes days], drink 1-2 cups of coffee on the front porch and go to sleep lol
400mg of caffeine is the full daily allowance. One of my *ER night shift* coworkers got concerned about the fact that my powdered energy drink mix has 200mg. Looking at the volumes, their lemonade has the same caffeine per volume as my energy drink when mixed at full strength, which is slightly stronger than most energy drinks.
Like.... I will accept 2g of caffeine as a daily allowance, but 400 mg is just... ridiculously small. Like, even now, when I don't drink much in the way of caffeine, that is like, 2/3s of my daily total.
@@rambysophistry1220do you drink like 3 Monsters a day? Chug 2-liters of soda? Consume a half gallon of black coffee? Because I doubt you're consuming that much caffeine (unless you've been a Panera patron, having two of their lemonades)
I had 3 cans of monster in one day once or twice but
1) I knew how much caffeine they have because it's mandated there to have that information on the can (32mg/100ml)
2) It takes way more time to drink 3 of them, the fact you have to open another means you will probably do it later
@@bandana_girl6507 Hahahaha! Try 4 blended niners, double shots, with caramel, extra sweet, no whip. From Dutch Bros.
@@bandana_girl6507 Note, each double shot niner is between 560 and 680 mg of caffeine.
When they came out, I thought they were competing with Starbuck’s refreshers, which have 45-80 mg of caffeine depending on size (around half for the same amount of normal coffee). It’s insane how much caffeine they have.
That’s what I thought too.
If I saw charged lemonade I would guess it had the same amount of caffeine as say Mountain Dew. Not more then 2 Monster's and an energy drink called Cocaine.
I would have thought the exact same
And those got the job so I could only imagine how wired up people were on those charged lemonade
I remember having one and being confused as to why my hands were so shaky later.
This is such a sad case. I read a news article where commenters were blaming the decedent for drinking the drink knowing it had caffeine in it, but Panera is wrong in my eyes for not disclosing the high amounts of caffeine in these drinks. They marketed it in the same deceiving way that Starbucks marketed their refreshers & now both are being sued.
that's so ridiculous, right? as if her friends weren't there with her and also totally aware of her health condition. if they had known it was dangerous, same as her, they would have stopped her. there was very little standing in the way of danger to her in this case
The caffeine content is listed on the sign that's placed on the bubbler. If you have a condition like that it's up to you to make sure that what your ingesting is safe. But there's no personal responsibility with people like you, right?
Both things are correct imo. Panera should have made it clear it was that heavily caffeinated, and someone with a heart condition buying caffeinated drinks should find out how much is in it before drinking it.
@@scottcameron8329 Was that sign there in that Panera when she drank that lemonade? Is the text on those easily visible to not just those with healthy vision, but to also those who are vision impaired? Would someone blind be easily able to find out that a single drink contains twice the caffeine as a Monster energy, let alone that they have caffeine at all?
Oh, man. I remember the Refreshers. I worked with somebody who knew I couldn't have caffeine for medical reasons, and he got me one while insisting it was "just juice." Cue me feeling like I was going to die for the remainder of my shift. X_X
I'm, like, legitimately afraid to get any juice-related drink anywhere after that, lol. The charged lemonade is just making me double down on that.
2:50 Fun fact! Energy drinks only taste like they do because we associate the effect of them with the taste. It's absolutely possible to make them taste different, we just associate the taste with the effect so why bother dissuade it?
From what I heard, the drop in caffeine is only because they are accounting for ice. I saw employees from Panera say that it’s the same mix that they’ve been using.
If this is true, I hope the plaintiffs' lawyers bring this up in court. Not disclosing caffeine levels is bad, but actively deceiving customers by giving false information might open the door to punitive damages.
I’ve gotten caffeine intoxication once from a coffee place called Aroma Joe’s. I thought I was dying and called my doctor and he somehow immediately knew what was wrong with me and gave me advice to drink plenty of water and ride it out. At least I felt slightly better knowing I wasn’t experiencing a knock on death’s door. Man it was awful.
Side note: He has since retired and God I miss him. 😢
The MatPat to LegalEagle pipeline is so real
Hold on. The what now?
Tf is MatPat
@@Squeekyflamingo89 The guy who made the Game Theory youtube channel.
@@Squeekyflamingo89game theory/food theory had a video on this and oh boy is it crazy
Glad I wasn't the only one thinking this.
Caffeine as a chemical is absurdly bitter, which is probably why there's so much sugar and you don't taste it. because that much caffeine would be so bitter it would need that much sugar just to cover it up
This explains a lot. I've been going to Panera more often lately and wondered why there was such explicit signage regarding the charged lemonade. I had no idea this had happened. This just comes across as a stupid product to offer in the environment of basically a fast food restaurant.
I don't drink energy drinks often, but I have noticed they usually come with a caffeine content warning and it seems that that's all Panera needed to provide and didn't. I don't understand why Panera didn't settle this outside of court. Seems like a slam dunk for the plaintiff, but still very sad.
They mentioned the caffeine on the website where they list all other nutritional information.
@@thenerktwins they changed it after her death ...
Maybe it was that specific Panera because the Panera near my work had the caffeine amount available for anyone interested from Day 1 of the release.
@@thenerktwinsYeah because I always go to the McDonald's website before I buy a burger. The website is not enough of a disclaimer. Cigarette warnings are on the package. Nutrition facts are on the package. Imagine if sunny d launched a new pineapple flavor and only on the website did it mention the 400mg of caffeine per serving. That's what we have here.
@@sammiller6631yes I've always seen it advertised as having caffeine
A few years ago, I was visiting my sister and she brought me to lunch at Panera. I had one of these, being a big fan of lemonade and not realizing there was caffeine in it. Cue the worst panic attack of my life; the only other time in my life that my chest had ever hurt that much I was suffering from pneumonia and pleurisy at the same time. That crap needs a warning label and a disclaimer to sign...
The Charged Lemonade has only been out since the first half of 2022.
@@AshtaAJ And yet two people (that we know of) have already died. One just a few days ago.
@@raerohan4241 I’m saying that the individual above could not have tasted the Charged Lemonade “a few years ago” as it has only been available from the first half of 2022 until now. It hasn’t even been available for 2 whole years yet.
I usually go by wording. Charged. Phones gets charged. Batteries get charged. Chargers are indicated by lightning bolts. So the word charged to me usually indicates in my mind that that item is going to pack a punch. Like I'm drained and need to be charged up.
MatPat from The Food Theorist did a video on the dangers of this drink about a year ago (give or take), and he predicted that there was as severe risk against people's health because of the poor marketing and signage. I HIGHLY recommend watching the video for more context.
First thing I thought of when I saw this case.
That's the first video I saw about this drink in fact. I knew about the caffeine levels due to that, but apparently I overlooked the sugar content. I'm amazed this drink even has any flavor with all of that.
People say stuff like Pepsi and Coke is unhealthy, but those are NOTHING compared to how unhealthy this lemonade seems.
Ah shi, food theory is actually good? I'll give it a try then, starting with that video. Thanks for the recommendation!
@@undefinederror40404 In addition to The Game Theorist, The Food Theorist and Film Theorist channels are both great! Personally, I'm still on the fence over Style Theorist though.
Who would have thought that less than one year later, Matpat's fears would come true.
Can you link that video?
@@sinclari1 search 'Food Theory: This Lemonade Could Kill You (Panera)'
What were his fears?
@@SmashingSnow That someone would end up dying from cardiac complication from Panera's shady listing of the drink
SO MATPAT IS ACTUALLY A SOOTHSAYER!
...but that's just a theory
I’m extremely sensitive to caffeine for some years now, my heart skips beats, and my heart rate goes up. so every where I go, I always ask for a nutrition menu or look online. So when I started to try the sip club I saw the drinks contained some sort of green tea, or black tea and a natural caffeine by a plant based. I always went with the Agave lemonade as that is the only one that doesn’t contain any amount of caffeine. Even the new frozen lemonade at Starbucks has caffeine and is a good amount when I asked about if they had any and I’m glad the barista was honest to me . Just wish a lot of companies stop making normal drinks like lemonade with caffeine as a lot of people are watching the amount they intake or others who cannot. Just would like a treat once in a while when out n bout .
Same, I hate how I feel after I have caffeine.
honestly. it's crazy how many drinks have caffeine in them. most sodas have caffeine and that's pretty ridiculous
Oh Four Loko… I miss those. When we got word that they were pulling their initial ingredient cans and were replacing them with the new version, my buddies and I went out to gas stations and bought huge cases to store at our college house. We had a pallet. It was awesome.
will say as someone who works there/worked during the original enrollment period last year, on the magnets that displayed the drink name it is printed at the bottom that it contains caffeine/the amount of caffeine per drink size. but it looks like the other drink labels that one could confuse 300 mgs of caffeine as the calories per beverage. i always tried to tell parents who’s children were asking for “pink lemonade!” that like “hey heads up this drink has x amount of caffeine, just wanted to let you know” because i always felt uncomfortable knowing we have a drink that’s higher in caffeine content than drinks like monster/Red Bull (which have purchasing age limit in the UK/EU due to their high caffeine content.)
As a current employee that was also allowed at the time, can back it up. The labeling was limited and let's be honest most people don't look at those labels anyway unless they are attention grabbing.
And to go off something else you said, we will explicitly told at my store to make sure to warn parents If we even suspected they were buying the drink for their kids.
@@ysf-psfx usually after i told them the caffeine content at the register, they changed their minds and just opted for normal lemonade instead lol
@@strawberryoolong people like you on the ground are the only ones keeping this from having been much worse for a lot of people. You don't get enough credit
Even with the clear labeling, ss someone who doesn't know much about caffeine, even knowing the mg wouldn't really mean anything to me - but if it were paired with info like daily recommended limit, or comparisons with other known energy drinks, that would've definitely given me pause
I'm so glad people are talking about this. I was hospitalized after having this
jeez how many did you have 😭
@@weese03 literally not even a full one , I'm really sensitive to caffeine
Glad you're okay now @Amagicmarie
Im so sorry to hear, hope youre doing ok now. This is mega scary. I hope the FDA investigate properly and the lawsuit gets some justice for the girl and some change in the industry. Im in the UK so havent seen this drink. It does worry me alot that this drink exists. I dont understand why a lemonade needs more caffiene than a coffee. The same amount or similiar, ok I guess but not that excessive amounts. I hope no one else suffers as a result of the drink
One would think an easy way for Panera to avoid alot of these issues would be to get stickers printed with nutritional facts that can be slapped on cups. They do make those, I've seen them on cups of fruit at grocery stores. Its not hard.
This is so crazy, I had one of those drinks a couple months ago and I remember that it said it was caffeinated but it didn’t say how much caffeine was in it. I’m glad I know now. It is so horrible that a beautiful soul is no longer with us, my prayers go out to her family.
I have consumed multiple energy drinks a day for well over a decade. If Panera advertised this properly they would have made so much money. Caffeine abuse is huge in a ton of subcultures: Gamers, Gym Bros, College Kids, people coming off other addictions. But none of us want to go to the place where moms get soup, so we didn't hear about you're crazy drink. Panera has the dumbest marketing department in history.
don't forget literally every tradesman under the sun pounding down monsters for lunch lmao
And the military lol
This is actually an excellent point. I've never been to panera in my life but if I found out they had lemonade that had that much caffeine in it I'd have been a daily customer.
@@michaelkeller5555Saaame bro, I've been missing out!
When I found out last year, I told my gym bro and suggested he get this for free as part of a sip club trial, instead of buying caffeine pills 😂.
This is so scary, I’m very sensitive to caffeine, and Ive trusted Panera’s fruity drink section as a delicious, low sugar, non caffeinated drink option. I never saw its campaign, and if I had opted to try their new charged lemonade it could have put me in the hospital.
Re: low sugar, remember that fruit juices are high in sugar. As in, normal store bought juice may well contain as much sugar as cola.
I know a lemonade is likely to be diluted with water, but also likely (as is clearly the case here) to have more sugar added.
I am also very sensitive to caffeine and I'm not sure why I never tried it. Heck maybe I did and had unexplained symptoms that day. That's another scary think. You could go to the hospital and not even know why. I guarantee there is at least one person that has. People deserve very clear warnings for this level of drug.
I’m so addicted to experts reacting to and explaining stuff, you an Doctor Mike are the dream team.
'experts' 😂
@@grahamgrilli what’s this mean?
@@grahamgrilliyes, doctor mike and devon of legal are both experts in their respective fields. i mean, they both went to school for years and have been practicing for years. why is it so funny to see someone call them experts when the fit the definition?
Watch Food Theory.
I went to panera a lot when I was working 45 minutes from home back in 2021-22... I saw the charged lemonade and it had a label on it with the amount of caffeine on it on the front. I remember that because I NEVER drank it because of that. I was having issues with blood pressure so I steered clear of it. This was months before she passed. It was clearly labeled at the ones I stopped at. Why would it not be at others??
I accidentally drank two cups of this stuff because it wasn't labeled correctly once, and it caused such a horrible reaction due to my chronic disorder that i was in pain for a few days. horrifying to find out exactly how much caffine was in these and why i had such an awful experience
You're not special and it was labeled correctly, you just didn't take the time to read about what you were about to consume.
Ignore the other guy clearly this can be harmful and Panera hasn't done enough to even protect vulnerable people from their dangerous product. I'm very sorry this happened to you
Unfortunately people will treat this like they treated the lawsuit where a woman got severe burns from McDonald's coffee, impulsively siding with the corporation over the person who was injured
@@vfreeman3188 Was it laballed correctly? Just because it was at your location, doesn't mean it was at this person's.
@vfreeman3188 it wasn't lol it was new at my location at the time and none of their teas or lemonades had their tags out. I asked an employee about it and they told me it was strawberry mint lemonade and recommended it, never told me it was caffeinated. and with such dangerous levels of caffeine, even for people who don't have health issues associated with caffeine consumption, there should absolutely have been a warning like they have now.
As a manager at panera I always told everyone that they had caffeine and regularly stopped parents from giving their kids the drinks. It wasn’t very clear that they had caffeine but I told all my associates to tell guests about it.
Its crazy how matpat called this out months ago in his video. And now we’re here with the consequences of the neglect from panera 😢
How is it neglect from Panera and not irresponsibility from the consumer?
@@whitediggity Because advertising something as an electrolyte lemonade drink that you can get refills on when in reality there's more caffeine in a portion than 5 cans of red bull which makes it very much not that? False advertising is not the fault of the consumer lol. Though not sure you can call it neglect from Panera rather than greed and dancing on the 'technically not illegal, probably, hopefully' line.
@@whitediggity according to other comments who work at or have been to Panera, some locations do not even mention the fact that there is caffeine in the drinks. The matpat video the original commenter brought up even mentions how info about ingredients for this product were hard to find. Advertising a drink with nearly 400 mg of caffeine as a "boost" is an understatement at best, on top of an unlimited refills campaign.. The victim was already managing her heart condition and caffeine intake, so I'd say she was trying to be as responsible as possible.
Say you didn't watch the video without saying you didn't watch the video@@whitediggity
@@whitediggity The plaintiffs had very clearly described how incredibly responsible the consumer who died was. The information was just buried so hard that she couldn't reasonably have known because Panera *neglected* to put the nutrition info anywhere that any sensible person would find them.
20yr old college student here.
I'm in engineering and work full time upon other tasks so caffeine is often super important to keeping up with my objectives in every aspect of life including personal goals. I know most can relate to this in some way
I'm already noticing that I'm drinking too much of it and will take this as a sign that I should work harder to preserve my health in my youth or risk a decline later on in life.
Caffiene and excess sugars are not as valuable as consistent sleep, a healthy diet and exercize. ❤
Drink some water, y'all. 😂
Just heard the part about four loko. Those cans had around 4-5 beers of alcohol in there? I remember vividly being at a party and people were drinking them like they were a beer and we just thought they were lightweights when they were telling us how drunk it made them. Even after I heard about the lawsuit, I never heard about this detail.
4Loko had 12% ABV (Alcohol by volume), and was/is a 24oz can. A normal US beer is 4-5% ABV, and is 12oz. So 1 can of 4Loko is somewhere around 4.5 (a 5% beer) to 6 cans of beer worth of alcohol. This was combined with tons of caffeine and sugar.
Comparable tall boy high alcohol beverages at the time were at most around 8%.
So yes, 4Loko is/was crazy amounts of alcohol for its size.
Note that Wine often has 10-12% abv, but the average serving of wine is about 6oz, which works out close enough to a beer for alcohol
I looked it up. The advice in the Netherlands is not to drink more than 200 mg of caffeine in one go/ drink.
The maximum legal amount of caffeine in an energy drink/ soda is 350 mg per liter (350mg per 35 oz)
So this would be illegal here.
Incredible.
It's amazing what the US just lets its people consume without more *reasonable* regulation
I've seen 300-400 mg in a 473 ml drink here in the states. I believe the most popular energy drink here is around 136 mg per 473 ml. Most have around 200 mg.
I have a friend who would get violently sick if she drank one of these things. Seriously, what in the actual hell is Panera thinking? This is an insane amount of caffeine not to warn people about. This was an accident waiting to happen and unfortunately a young woman lost her life because of it.
Especially since they absolutely knew to have this: there was a rather large lawsuit regarding caffeine and taurine in the energy drinks mentioned in this. There is NO way this company doesn't know how dangerous this is even to people without contraindications to ingesting caffeine.
They're thinking they want addicted customers. Apparently rubbing two braincells together doesn't tell them not to make their customers OD
I worked there when they released these, there was 100% without a doubt signage on them each saying the caffiene content, i cleaned it every night.
Dunkin Donuts won't let you add more than one Turbo Shot to a coffee drink, just for some reference of how some other brands take this stuff seriously.
Starbucks not so serious, they've let me add at least five espresso shots on top of the 3 in the drink already, I haven't tried going higher than that, my friend was wired af, he said he could handle it lol. But we're both used to caffeine since a young age, not like someone sensitive to it not knowing what they're about to drink.
But when I try to add Turbo Shots at Dunkin, it prevents me from adding more than one on the app, they don't want to even entertain that liability. I haven't tried in person because I assume they'll say the same, that it's limited to one shot per drink, so I didn't bother asking.
Also for reference, I believe a Starbucks espresso shot is around 75mg and a Dunkin Turbo Shot is like 120mg of caffeine, so adding it to Dunkin drinks can bring them up to 200-300mg, but also that's a coffee you're choosing to add a Turbo Shot of espresso to and that's usually the large which is huge for a coffee shop size, nothing is being snuck in there, but they're still wary about just letting you select to add 5 Turbo Shots into your large coffee lol.
Me and my roommate were talking about how dangerous it was that they didn't label that there was caffeine in those. I drank 3 in one sitting because I had no idea they were caffinated at all. Let alone to that degree. I'm glad they are warning people now. It's too bad that someone had to die for it, though.
The sign on the bubbler where you get your lemonade discloses how much caffeine is in it.
I went to Panera on Friday and there were no signs up. Might depend on location.
@@scottcameron8329 And? It was sold as a lemonade. Why would anyone read how much caffeine it has on a LEMONADE.
If it was correctly labeled as an energy drink then yeah, sure... and it would still be too much.
390 mg of caffeine is way too close to a dose when its starting to be harmful WITHOUT any real symptoms, so you can't even tell if you are in a group that can drink it safely.
@@scottcameron8329as many have said the signage varies by location. At my local Panera it says it contains caffeine in 10pt font and is the smallest text on the sign. Simply saying it has caffeine is not enough in this case either. The daily limit for an adult male is 400mg of caffeine while this drink contains 390mg. No other company has a drink on the market that contains anywhere near that amount of caffeine. Why does Panera even need to sell a lemonade with that much caffeine?
😮hello.
As someone with a serious heart condition I’m glad I asked what was in their charged lemonade before ordering it in the drive thru! Although they told me it had about the same amount of Caffeine as a coffee. Which was clearly incorrect. Scary
Just a note for anyone with a heart condition. By volume, that lemonade did have the same caffeine as Panara's coffee (it's just a large coffee is 22oz... but the small lemonade is 22oz, while a large lemonade is 30oz, the size difference is where the 'extra' caffeine comes from), so don't be drinking their large coffee either if you're worried about the caffeine intake.
@@Jobastion That's pretty deceptive on their part if true. They only say "the same amount of caffeine as a coffee", which implies equivalent concentration in both ordinary language and technical communication. A reasonable person would not take that to mean "the same amount of caffeine as OUR coffee, comparing across different drink sizes", because most people know intuitively that coffee can come in many different drink sizes and that drinking a different volume of coffee will give you different amounts of caffeine, and mentally it's simpler to compare across equivalent volumes unless given a specific reason otherwise. When the claim is free-floating and doesn't refer to a specific product, there's no reason to assume that they mean it in that way.
also, you don't usually put ice in coffee. initially, the caffeine content of the lemonades was listed accounting for NO ice in the cup.
It was probably something Panera corporate makes their employees say when customers ask about it.
@@gordatados I’m sure it was. I don’t blame the employees at all bc that’s likely as much as they were told. It’s corporate I have the issue with
I remember seeing these and they were just out in the open for anyone to get. I saw they were caffienated but don't recall seeing "same as a cup of coffee". I'm sensitive to caffiene due to medical issues and will often drink lemonade at restaurants to avoid it, so 💀💀💀 This is so bad
"Same as a cup of coffee" is also not just misleading, but outright false! The average dark roast has 60 milligrams of caffeine!
Panera updated their statement after this poor woman's death to try to pretend they've had a warning there all along, but they still keep the original lie to downplay the risk! Energy drinks need a warning on them legally for less than half that amount, what makes Panera so different?