186
Panera adds warnings about caffeinated lemonade after suit over student’s death
(www.theguardian.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2023
186 points (97.0% liked)
News
23266 readers
3428 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Yeah it's unfortunately not a very well known fact that drip coffee typically has a MUCH higher caffeine content than e.g. espresso drinks.
Googling tells me drop coffee has 60-125 mg per cup, which is much less than the 390 mg this drink had. She was probably expecting at most 125mg in the drink.
That 390 mg is in 30 oz, but your 60-125 mg per cup is per 8 oz (8oz = 1c). The lemonade is 13 mg/oz, while your coffee would be 7.5-15.6 mg/oz. The lemonade has the same amount of caffeine as coffee, just like their menu boards state.
Same as I said in another reply: The thing is, most people are not going to be calculating by amounts like that. If you see a drink labeled as having as much caffeine as a cup of coffee, most folks are going to the serving size you are getting has the same amount of caffeine as a cup of coffee, not that it has the same amount of caffeine per fluid ounce - that the 30 oz lemonade has the same amount of caffeine as a 8 oz cup of coffee. I know that’s what I would have assumed based on the picture of the display in the article. Panera needed to have stated very clearly how they were measuring this - one of the linked articles said the woman never even drank energy drinks, so I bet you money she wouldn’t have ordered this had it been labeled more clearly exactly how much caffeine was in.
It is not labeled "as much caffeine as a cup of coffee", it is labeled with the amount of caffeine per size on the individual dispensers and "as much caffeine as our dark roast coffee" on the big menu boards. For someone with a caffeine sensitivity, that means either it's non-zero and you shouldn't have any, or you know your tolerance and should find out exactly how much. Never assume.
A "cup" of coffee is typically an 8 oz serving. You need to look at it per volume to make an accurate comparison.
https://www.caffeineinformer.com/the-caffeine-database
In mg/fl oz:
Coca Cola is 2.8 (Diet Coke 3.8)
Mountain Dew is 4.5
McDonald's drip is 9.1
Red Bull is 9.5
Charged Lemonade is 13
Tim Hortons brewed coffee is 13.5
Chick-Fil-A brewed coffee is 13.6
So, this lemonade isn't actually that far away from comparable drip coffee, however, I am not sure whether the nutrition facts on the 30 oz charged lemonade is going to be inclusive of ice or not. Fountain drinks typically assume a "standard" amount of ice in their calorie projections, or you will see a calorie range on their menu to accommodate the spectrum of "no ice" - "extra ice"; if the 390mg of caffeine that they give for a large charged lemonade is for a 30 fl oz with no ice at all, then a standard amount of ice could bring it down into a more reasonable territory, but...
The thing is, and something I think folks aren’t figuring, is that most people are not going to be calculating by amounts like that. If you see a drink labeled as having as much caffeine as a cup of coffee, most folks are going to the serving size you are getting has the same amount of caffeine as a cup of coffee, not that it has the same amount of caffeine per fluid ounce - that the 30 oz lemonade has the same amount of caffeine as a 8 oz cup of coffee.
I think we more or less agree. The comparison to coffee is valid per volume, but that's not a mental math step you are likely to take if you're not thinking about it very hard.