Panera Bread’s highly caffeinated Charged Lemonade is now blamed for a second death, according to a lawsuit filed Monday.

Dennis Brown, of Fleming Island, Florida, drank three Charged Lemonades from a local Panera on Oct. 9 and then suffered a fatal cardiac arrest on his way home, the suit says.

Brown, 46, had an unspecified chromosomal deficiency disorder, a developmental delay and a mild intellectual disability. He lived independently, frequently stopping at Panera after his shifts at a supermarket, the legal complaint says. Because he had high blood pressure, he did not consume energy drinks, it adds.

  • 520@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    It’s what people don’t know that is causing these deaths. Charged lemonade has insane levels of caffeine. Right up to the FDAs safe daily intake limit in a single cup. People think a charged lemonade is roughly equivalent to a red bull. It is not. It is more like 4 red bulls in a large drink. And the company’s advertising itself compares the drink to a dark roast coffee, and slots the drink among their non-caffeine drinks.

    The problem is that they are not making informed decisions. If you picked this stuff up randomly one day, you’re not gonna think that it has an insane amount of caffeine in it.

    And they encourage people to have more by offering free refills. Remember that one cup goes right up against the FDAs safe intake limit, and that’s assuming you had no other caffeine that day. So they get a refill. Now they’re operating with twice as much caffeine in their system in that instance than the FDA considers safe for daily intake.

    • CaptPretentious@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Charged lemonade has insane levels of caffeine

      Quit your bullshit. Your lying by omission because you have some agenda to push. You report like Fox News does.

      The amount of caffeine per fluid ounce, is on par with coffee. Same goes for red bull, be it on the higher side, but still. A redbull is a 12oz. drink, you can’t blindly compare that to a 30oz drink and pretend they’re the same. I can walk into Starbucks right now, get a 20oz drink that has 475mg of caffeine it’s just a venti Featured Blonde Roast… which per ounce, is twice the caffeine than RedBull.

      There’s plenty of signs and verbiage, both in store and online, this stuff has caffeine.

      • queermunist she/her
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        1 year ago

        Surely you realize it’s easier to down lemonade than coffee?

        It’s like cannabis potency in edibles. When the drug is presented in an easy to consume form, people consume way more of it.

        Basically the lemonade tastes too good lol

    • Hawke@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Right up to the FDAs safe daily intake limit in a single cup.

      In four cups, rather.

      • 520@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Nah, a single large cup of Charged Lemonade is 390 mg of caffeine. The FDA limit is 400 mg

          • 520@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            Their large cups are 30oz. As in, they sold them in 30oz cups.

            https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/panera-lawsuit-charged-lemonade-sarah-katz-death-rcna120785

            To quote, and emphasis is my own:

            “But at 390 milligrams, the large Charged Lemonade has more caffeine than any size of Panera’s dark roast coffee, the complaint says — numbers that the nutrition facts on Panera’s website confirm. It also has guarana extract, another stimulant, as well as the equivalent of nearly 30 teaspoons of sugar, the complaint continues, adding that 390 milligrams of caffeine is higher than the caffeine content of standard cans of Red Bull and Monster energy drinks combined. Katz had gotten the large cup, which is 30 fluid ounces, according to the attorney representing her family.

            • Hawke@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              The point is that it doesn’t have any unusual amount of caffeine for an energy drink. Saying it has the limit in a single cup is misleading when the “cup” is not a normal size.

              • 520@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                The point is that it doesn’t have any unusual amount of caffeine for an energy drink.

                It has a very unusual amount of caffeine for an energy drink, at 13mg per ounce. Red bull is at 9mg and monster is at 10mg.

                That, and it was sold as a lemonade, not an energy drink. Lemonade typically has zero caffeine.

                Saying it has the limit in a single cup is misleading when the “cup” is not a normal size.

                It’s not misleading at all. It’s literally the cup they give you, expect you to consume and then offer free refills on.

                • Hawke@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  It’s absolutely typical. Here’s an article comparing 31 popular energy drinks. 3 at around 6-8 mg/FlOz, 16 of them are around 10 mg/FlOz, and the other 12 are in the range of 16-18 mg/FlOz. So that puts Panera right around the average of 12.4

                  Regarding terminology you might compare “hard lemonade” which has a lot more alcohol in it than is typical for lemonade…

                  Regarding the cup size, let me introduce you to the big gulp range with a “shocking” 690 mg per ‘cup’. It’s quite surprising but a larger drink contains more caffeine.

                  • 520@kbin.social
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                    1 year ago

                    It’s absolutely typical. Here’s an article comparing 31 popular energy drinks. 3 at around 6-8 mg/FlOz, 16 of them are around 10 mg/FlOz, and the other 12 are in the range of 16-18 mg/FlOz.

                    And how many of them come in a 30oz cup? Or come right up to safe daily intake limits in a single can? A: none of them.

                    Regarding terminology you might compare “hard lemonade” which has a lot more alcohol in it than is typical for lemonade…

                    And if a company sold that shit with alcohol levels slamming right against safe daily intake levels in a single cup, and placed that shit right next to their regular lemonade with basically no information on the fact that it contains a shit ton of alcohol, didn’t have an alcohol taste and allowed free refills, they’d be getting lawsuits up the ass for much the same reason.

                    Regarding the cup size, let me introduce you to the big gulp range with a “shocking” 690 mg per ‘cup’. It’s quite surprising but a larger drink contains more caffeine.

                    Jesus christ you couldn’t miss the point any harder if you were piss drunk at an archery range.

                  • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
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                    1 year ago

                    Alcoholic lemonade is an established thing. “Hard” is an industry standard term meaning “alcoholic.” It’s why you find hard cider, hard lemonade, and hard seltzer near the alcohol.

                    “Charged” is not standard. Have you ever heard of charged cider? Charged seltzer? It’s not a thing. To be sure, I googled “charged cider,” and found one result. It is not caffeinated cider.

                • Hawke@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  I know you saw my other comment but 13 mg/oz is a little above average for an “energy drink”, not unusual at all. Most of the upper range is 300 mg/16 oz = 18.75 mg/oz. Just below that, 200 mg/12 oz is common: 16.67 mg/oz. Then there’s a lot around 160 mg/16 oz = 10 mg/oz. Anything below that and you’re pretty much outside the range of “energy drink”. Heck even regular coffee is around 12 mg/oz (95 mg /cup). So this lemonade has slightly higher caffeine content than coffee.

                  The only unusual thing is drinking 90 oz in one sitting.