It was a bizarre thing. Energy drinks are at least marketed as having extreme amounts of caffeine, but this has more, is sold at a bread store, and the caffeine is intentionally downplayed.
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Aye, that's the weirdest part. Panera is like the basic mom place, coffee and bagels and sandwiches. Seems like a demographic mismatch, and not being blatent about the caffeine intake literally got people killed.
Point is, shouldn't have been a thing and should have gone away sooner.
Right? Like I feel like it's already run its entire promotional campaign course and they're announcing this just because they're "done with it" (for now at least. Who knows about next year).
Like it's been the 4-6 months or however long they originally planned it for and are just finishing up the cycle.
panera turned multiple accidental deaths into a marketing stunt to sell more lemonade. They should burn.
And how many basic moms go on about their coffee?
Cowards. Bring back the heart attack juice
You could always drink a Gin Panic.
Recipe:
- Pour an amount of Gin into a large lager glass
- Add a tablespoon of instant coffee to the Gin and stir vigorously
- Fill the rest of the glass up with a Monster (What flavor? It doesn't matter, your not drinking this for flavor. This whole recipe went sideways the moment you picked up that coffee)
Voila, Cheers!
This puts into context how truly dangerous Panera’s lemonade was: combining instant coffee and monster energy drink together would only net you maybe 200mg of caffeine (160mg from a 500ml monster, and most instant coffee is incredibly weak with 25-40mg of caffeine being in them). You’re combining two known stimulants together and still cannot approach 1 charged lemonade. It was incredibly stupid of Panera to make this, and then defend it (although I get why they defended it in court).
I did the math, a gallon of coke doesn't have this much caffeine. It's more than just filling the cup with redbull without ice. You can knock back 2 16oz monsters and get less. It's more caffeine than two original recipe Four Loko.
This stuff would have still been irresponsible if served in shot glasses, let alone a 30oz.
Coke doesn't have all that much caffine compared to something like coffee.
No, I looked it up when this first came out. The caffeine content in Panera's stuff was about the same as an equivalent amount of coffee.
It’s only equivalent to something like a pour over. Most people can’t properly brew something even remotely close to the straight caffeine content of the charged lemonade. Not to mention that to most people a lemonade is refreshing and they’re drinking 24+ ounces of it at a time.
You’re looking at it from the perspective of caffeine per ml (which still, is not close since they’re artificially loading this with straight caffeine), but it’s really more about how this guises the caffeine behind something refreshing and easy to drink in large quantities. It’s why fruity alcohol cocktails are so much more dangerous to drink since they cover how much actual alcohol you’re consuming.
Would be healthier to just do meth
I used to have the drink plan thing, because a year of it came as a perk/promo on a credit card we have. I called it "artisanal red bull" and I had to be careful with how fast I drank it. I've only got the uncontrollable jitters twice. Once when I didn't realize that a coffee shop doing big-assed iced coffees was just sugaring their coffee and adding a couple ounces of cream, not adding any particularly large amount of milk.
Then with the charged lemonade. I knew it had caffeine, a lot even, but I didn't do the math and assumed it was like a little more than mountain dew or something.
I was mistaken. I saw my ancestors in the vibrations of the universe strings.
I went back the next day.
It isn't so bad if you don't drink it all at once
Right, I just tried one for the first time the other day. Just put a bigger warning on it.
What this article doesn't say is that it's being replaced with an endless refill Four Loko original recipe fountain.
And when you say "fountain," you don't mean the dispenser for "fountain drinks," you mean like a chocolate fountain.
Exactly. Right in the middle of the store, a fountain featuring renaissance-style fish spewing Four Loko from their marble mouths.
And a child in a small boat sailing around filling up people's cups.
I think that that might make the ethanol evaporate, as it'll do so more-readily than water.
It seems to me that that would have two effects:
-
That would presumably cause the ethanol content to drop over time. You'd either have the impact fall off, or need to replenish it. I'd suggest a small Cupid statue urinating pure ethanol into the Four Loko fountain.
-
If you can evaporate enough of it, maybe you can get enough ethanol vapor going on to get everyone in FlyingSquid's Panera's establishment drunk from breathing. I dunno if fountains would be enough, though. I'm thinking maybe add some of those ultrasonic misters, which would create a mysterious Four Loko fog at ankle level and add to the ambiance.
You just gotta drink it really fast before too much evaporates.
Why do they keep bringing out these drinks that are so over caffeinated? They never learn their lesson until people start dying.
this is why we can't have nice bad things.
The stuff was a good product imo, just horribly displayed/advertised. Now the brand for it is rightfully tarnished.
I mean, based on the image, it does say the caffine content prominently up front. Just doesn't run around saying "EXTREME" or the like on it, and I dunno how many people have a feel for how many milligrams does what, because other stuff doesn't normally indicate caffine content like that.
I'd never bothered trying it at my Panera's, as I prefer zero-calorie drinks, but I didn't think of it as being an energy drink.
I mean, based on the image, it does say the caffine content prominently up front.
It wasn't always labeled so prominently.
I once tried an energy drink that had 300mg of caffeine, and I deeply regretted it. Apparently one of the people who died from Charged Lemonade drank three of them. Just imagining having that much caffeine is giving me heart palpitations
Killer.
Just have the same lemonade with no caffeine added. It was delicious
Charged Lemonade tasted like crap anyway. Good riddance.
Panera's regular Lemonade and regular sweetened Green Tea tastes great. So I'm still overall happy with their drink options. But whoever the chef was who created this "Charged Lemonade" stuff needs to be fired.
They should sell a canned version and call it "Killer Lemonade"
Come play the lemonade roulette!