FrukostScones wrote:Big Mangalhit wrote:FrukostScones wrote:
as far as I know Tobacco advertising in F1 was banned.. alcohol advertising is banned in some countries France etc. and Energy drinks advertising will soon be banned... also it will be banned to sell this (overpriced) poison (not just junk) to youths under 18.
and rightly so... also Tobacco and Alcohol are not advertised towards children... and never directly were (maybe indirectly). Energy drinks are!
Tobacco industry used to, and arguably still very much does, market directly to kids/youth.
Some info on that
http://www.tobaccofreekids.org/microsit ... istory.pdf
http://tobaccofreeca.com/smoking-proble ... ing/youth/
Also it has been proven empirically that tobacco highly damages your health, while it has not been proven the same for energy drinks, even of you personally don't like them (I don't either but I value scientific studies).
The only molecules that could be truly damaging are caffeine, which is also proven to have huge benefits in health and is present at a content similar to a normal usage. And sugar (in case of non sugar-free drinks) and in this case it is a big problem for health of young people and people in general. Although I don't see any difference to any other soft-drink, which also market directly to kids btw.
don't fool yourself, it was only caffeine and glucose in there it would be no problem..
but check the ingredients... a lot of artficial stuff in high doses that are still considered safe by the legislators but only because they are no studies yet (or just a few), which study the long term effect of this mixture:
The ingredients include carbonated water, sucrose, glucose, citric acid, natural flavors, taurine, sodium citrate, color added, panax ginseng root extract, L-carnitine, caffeine, sorbic acid, benzoic acid, niacinamide, sodium chloride, glucuronolactone, inositol, guarana seed extract, pyridoxine hydrochloride, sucralose, riboflavin, maltodextrin, and cyanocobalamin.
(quickly taken from Wikipedia).
Especially Inositol and Glucuronolactone are very dodgy ingredients.
So If you say it's safe drink as much as you can, but I'd rather safe my liver, kidneys and heart for truly entertaining stuff.
Yeah chemical names are very powerful to put people discomfortable, but it doesn't mean they are harmful, all life on earth would die without di-hydrogen oxide.
From that list most are present in most if not all soft-drinks (sweetners, colourings), other are naturally occurring amino acids (taurine, l-carnitine) some are vitamins and some of the extracts there are actually good for your health.
Inositol itself can be used to treat several diseases and several tests exist in terms of Glucuronolactone effects (another naturally occurring chemical in glycolysis).
Again I am not a supporter of energy drinks nor a consumer. I just say that there is no concluding test that it is damaging in moderation, and I actually think they are marketed in a responsible way in terms of moderation. I have never seen a red bull 1,5L bottle, and I think it wouldn't be much worse than to have 1,5L of coke, or 75cl of whisky.
Until further proof these drinks are deem safe to a certain extent, like soft-drinks I would say. So I think it is a very different case from tobacco or even alcohol.
Having said this I also don't like the heavy marketing they make towards youth especially when they distribute free cans of it on schools' doors, but I think that that could be applied to every highly youth-marketable company and not exclusively energy drinks, but at least F1 is far from kid related marketing I think.