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Sugar in Energy Drinks

The sugar in energy drinks can be bad for your health.Sports beverages, or so called energy drinks, are not as healthy as they were once thought to be mainly due to the sugar in energy drinks. As a matter of fact, the term “energy drink,” which is often used under the moniker of a “sports drink,” is very misleading.

Energy drinks contain stimulants and aren’t very different than a cup of strong, black coffee. The difference between energy drinks and a plain ‘ol cup of black coffee is involves the crazy amount of sugar in energy drinks—it’s like ordering a Venti mocha at Starbucks. You end up getting copious doses of sugar and caffeine from these so-called sport drinks, which make you feel hyper and stimulated.

If your question is, “How can these sport drinks be bad for me?” The answer is the high amount of caffeine and sugar in energy drinks.

Because sugar is easily absorbed in the body, it is a quick source of energy. It gets into the bloodstream quicker than any other food consumed by humans. You feel the jolt of energy within minutes of consuming sugar, which is called “sugar high.” This is why sugar is such an important ingredient in sport drinks: the sugar content in sport drinks is so high that you don’t need to consume any more sugar for the day after drinking one of these drinks!

A chart showing the amount of sugar in energy drinks as well as other ingredients.

Image from Safefood.eu.

Consuming high amounts of sugar can lead to a host of metabolic diseases like diabetes. Sugar causes inflammation in your body, and America’s obesity epidemic can be tied to the increasingly among of sugar that’s ingested each year.

Example of sugary drinks. The sugar in energy drinks is not by any means healthy.When you ingest sugar, the body releases insulin to control the sugar levels in your system. Initially, you get that burst of energy, but then the body quickly crashes. This is due to blood sugar levels quickly decreasing as the insulin stores the sugar as glycogen.

A serving of one of these sport drinks a day may not cause much visible harm to you, but the problem is that many young people consume multiple cans a day to increase the stimulants in the drinks—I once knew a guy who would drink four Red Bulls in one sitting! The caffeine and sugar in energy drinks are are not healthy by any means. When taken in high doses, they can severely disturb the body’s chemical balance, which can lead to a host of health problems, such as anxiety, insomnia, depression and dehydration.

Another danger lies in the fact that you may get addicted to these drinks since caffeine is classified as a drug. Several such incidents occur when people consume as much as four cans in a sitting.

When it comes to increasing energy levels, eat a variety of foods that will help boost your alertness level. So-called energy drinks are nothing but a sugar and caffeine bomb in a pretty can.