I actually stayed late at work tonight… just because I had a lot of stuff to do. It was nice because there were about 3 people there, so I wasn’t interrupted by phone calls or much email.

Anyway, since my train station is close to my local huge warehouse store, I stopped in to buy a new DVD player since my current one crapped out last night. While I was there, I wandered around to see if there was anything else interesting going on (and ended up buying a canister of Laffy Taffy rope which I will be bringing to work to share with everyone - there’s an awful joke inside every wrapper!) and as I walked down the book aisle, I saw that there was some sort of to-do at the end of that aisle, including a large fabric banner about 20′ high. I couldn’t tell what it was since I was approaching it from behind, but then I turned the corner.

It was a huge sign advertising Rip It Energy Fuel. There were employees at the end passing out little sample cups of the various flavors. I stay far far away from energy drinks since they’re usually little more than over-caffeinated, highly sugary crap based in high fructose corn syrup with some token vitamins incorporated into the mix.

There was a young boy - perhaps 9 or 10 years old - standing at the sample table with his mother and grandmother. The little boy was obese - not fat, not chubby, but obese. He was only a few inches shorter than I, but was already about 3 times my circumference (and I’m not a thin chick.) He was wearing an orange t-shirt and it was really sort of frightening and simultaneously heartbreaking to see how much he resembled the actual fruit - his abdomen was almost perfectly spherical. His mother was also an extremely heavy woman; based on my own height, weight and appearance, I’d say she probably weighed about 400 pounds. The grandmother was not as heavy, but had a lot of weight in her stomach/belly region, which is an extremely unhealthy place in which to carry that extra weight, especially for a woman.

Now that I’ve set up the characters, here’s the story. The boy was standing at the end of the table and tried a sample cup of each of the three flavors they were sampling. His mother was talking to the employee handing out samples and asking if she could buy a case of the drinks (in cans), but make it an assortment of the three flavors her son was trying. While she was chatting with the employee, her son was throwing back those samples and repeating, loudly, “It tastes just like soda, mom! It tastes just like soda!”

I had to resist the urge to say, “The last thing your son needs is soda, and it would seem that that’s all he gets to drink.” For some reason, it really disturbed me. He kept repeating it until his mother responded and said, “We’re getting some so you can take it to camp with you.”

The other thing that popped into my mind there was that unless this child is participating in a highly strenuous exercise routine, he really doesn’t need an “energy drink.” These things are really reserved for people who are so physically active that they actually NEED calories, and might benefit from having some caffeine in their systems to rev up their metabolisms, etc. According to a WebMD article about energy drinks, “‘For people who are training and exercising on a regular basis, [energy bars and gels] can actually be a useful food item to help them meet their higher energy demands,’ says Lisa Bunce, MSRD”. Shown here on the left, from the Rip It Energy Fuel website, is a sample of the nutritional information. The cans they were selling (which cannot be closed once opened) were 16 ounce cans - a serving size is 8 ounces. So much for portion control. And look! Caffeine, taurine, inositol and guarana.

Caffeine: shown to improve athletes’ reaction time, but it can also have undesired effects such as addiction, anxiety, and a fast heart rate.
Taurine and inositol: “don’t have any special energy-boosting powers, says Moore, noting that our bodies already make inositol and taurine from the foods we eat. Inositol is a chemical found in foods including beans, brown rice, and corn. Taurine is an amino acid found in foods from animal sources.” So why include them? Does combining them with high fructose corn syrup make them somehow better? Just a note: inositol is also used as a cutting agent for cocaine or crystal meth. Nice.
Guarana: rich source of caffeine. Stimulates the central nervous system, much like coffee does.

So… this mother is going to pump her pre-teen son full of an energy drink which is nothing but sugar and caffeine, and then wonder why he’s so hyper and misbehaving (getting loud in public places), obese and unhealthy, unable to concentrate on school work, etc. I just wish that it wasn’t potentially dangerous in this litigation-crazed (and just generally crazy) world to SAY something about it. To say, “wouldn’t it be better to get him drinking bottled water or at least 100% fruit juice?” To say, “Does your 9 year old really need the equivalent of 3 cans of Jolt in his drink?” (Jolt has 71.2 milligrams of caffeine per 12 oz. can - if we multiply out the 102 mg in 8 ounces of this Rip It stuff to a 16 ounce can, you get 204, approximately 3 times 70.) A 5-ounce cup of coffee can have anywhere between 100 and 170 mg of caffeine… so again, the kid is basically having three cups of coffee in a can. Plus the sugar. Ugh.

Why do I care? I don’t have a kid. I drink soda once in a while. I am not thin. Seeing this child and hearing him compare this drink to soda made me think that THIS was his basis for comparison; that he’s probably not used to having “real” food and just having soda as a “treat” once in a while. When I was a child, it was a treat for our parents to take us to McDonald’s and get us Happy Meals and soda. It was a rare occasion to get pizza and drink soda… the rest of the time, it was fruit juice, milk or water. Anything unhealthy was dealt to us in moderation… not forbidden, but not given to us every day either.

Sigh. Oh, well. Not my problem… though it does annoy me.

When I got out of my local huge warehouse store, it had started to rain. So, I tucked the DVD box under my arm and the Laffy Taffy canister above it and made a quick march to the car (I was wearing a skirt and heels, so running to the car in a rain-slick parking lot while carrying a DVD player and Laffy Taffy was simply unwise). This was not an unpleasant rain to be in - the raindrops were, for lack of better description, soft. Sometimes, the rain is sharp and stinging and unpleasant. This rain, by comparison, was soft and warm and fat. It was actually a perfect summer rain… and I wished I was 8 years old and barefoot on the sidewalk at that moment.

I got home and helped my mom make an apple cake for my sister’s graduation party tomorrow. I am hungry and have a headache. I should eat something. It’s almost 10, so I guess that’s why. Perhaps a nice sandwich? Then there will be some sleep.